This is one of the lessons included in the Strategic Communication unit of Communication Mastery, my online program for organizations.
Humans are social beings. We have learned to function within a community and that’s why we need one another to thrive.
This is clearly noticeable in those projects that require the collaboration of several people in order to succeed.
The problem is that we are also selfish beings. For survival purposes, we have been designed to protect our individual interests first and this clashes with our social nature.
“People care about you as long as they can benefit from you”
But what does this mean?
It means that if your way of communicating doesn’t take into account your audience and only revolves around you and your desires, it will be very hard for you to get others to support your ideas.
The key lies in “Strategic Empathy”
Empathy is the capability to put ourselves in other people’s shoes in order to understand them.
Making use of strategic empathy in order to communicate your ideas, sell your services, or promote a project within your company entails putting yourself in the other person’s shoes in order to adapt your message and focus it on what interests them.
Strategic empathy allows you to understand what the other person wants to align it with what you want. By doing this, you can manage to have both parties achieving your goals. It is all about finding that common ground where your objectives and their objectives intersect so that you can both win.
Since communication within the workplace always aspires to achieve objectives in a collaborative way, you’ll achieve your goals as long as you are able to think about others.
There are three useful questions that help you focus your communication strategy on the other person so that you can help them see the advantages derived from paying attention to you. I recommend that you always ask yourself these questions.
Who are they?
It will help you understand the other person and find out their level of knowledge. This way you’ll be able to communicate with them and make sure you are being understood.
What do they want?
It will allow you to understand what they want or are interested in. Once you find this out, it is quite easy to communicate in a way that they may find interesting.
How can I help them get what they want?
It will allow you to clearly identify your capability of adding value, which is key to explaining how you can help them achieve their goals.
And this is where the magic of influence lies.
Imagine that your job is to sell contracts for an electricity company…
As a telephone operator, you want to sell a given number of contracts per month. The person you’ll call will be looking to pay less for their electricity bill.
If you make your call revolve around the fact that you want to sell electricity contracts (your objective), the person you’re calling won’t be interested in your message because it only benefits you.
However, if you revolve your message around helping this person pay less for their electricity bill (their objective), you’ll be able to capture their attention and interest.
In addition, if you prove to them with actual evidence how you’ll help them achieve that, you’ll manage to make them want what you’re offering, and then you’ll be achieving your objective.
This concept does not only apply to salespeople: this is a crucial concept for all professionals across the board who want to have an influence on other people’s opinions.
In fact, in every meeting, presentation, or work gathering, both parties will have their own different sets of objectives. And without a common ground, there is no deal.
That is why, in order to become more influential, always try to understand how to go from having two different objectives (the other person’s and yours) to have a common objective. In other words, the trick lies in trying to turn your objective into a function of theirs.
In the workbook, you will find many additional questions that will help you analyze your audience and the context in which you will present your ideas. Deep diving into these questions will allow you to always talk in a way that captures your audience’s interest.
Want to learn more about Communication Mastery and how to bring it to your organization?
Contact me at info@sebastianlora.com
