Influence Without Authority

Do you have a dream? I bet you do, me either. What about those that surround you, do they have their dreams too? No doubt. Who’s responsible for their dream to come true?

You.

You are responsible for their dream fulfillment.

by mikelens

Matthew Kelly poses an interesting question in his book The Dream Manager:

“Isn’t one of the primary responsibilities of all relationships to help each other fulfill our dreams?”

I say “Yes”, it is.

That is why I want to Become A Superhero.
That is why I believe that Experience Is The Most Valuable Product.

In every interaction I reflect on what I do and try to see the other party as a customer, I try to constantly reflect on myself - “Am I offering this customer the best experience?”.

Today I am better than yesterday

The result was amazing:

My kids get their daddy more often and with full attention. Their biggest wish is having their parents to spend more time with them. Not just be but interact.
My wife gets more attention. Less transactions, more meaningful conversations, and more positive emotions. We both noticed our interactions become transactional lately. We wished to seize our passion and our love back, just like it was 10 years ago. And we seize it back now.
My managers and co-workers … I realized I made few serious mistakes. Now I know what to improve.

I think that today I am a better person than yesterday. I help making other people make their dream come true, and they help me to make mine to come true in response.

My other posts you might like:

How do you keep up with the exponentially growing pace of our time?
How do you cope with tons of information in interconnected, interdependent flat world?
How to overcome the failure of hierarchical organization structures (search “Knowledge Worker Age” on the page)?

You continuously learn.

clip_image001

by lexdenn

These three questions are the core reasons that make learning a core capability according to Peter M. Senge and his book titled The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization.

Keep up with the exponentially growing pace

Set your own pace. Find Your Strengths, Know Your Life Purpose. Build an architecture of your own life. Develop yourself iteratively and in cycles.

Cope with information in interconnected world?

Paradoxically, I started to read more lately. I mean I started to read books. Yes, I am ashamed I never did it before. Here is the list of books I have read recently:

Reading books is time consuming. The following resources and techniques are much more effective and efficient for me:

“Read” audio books utilizing drive time.
Regularly read JD’s The Book Share where he distills gold nuggets from the books he reads. And he reads a lots of books.
Subscribe to www.getAbstract.com/.
Practice ninja techniques for RSS consumption. Readers do not read the Web - they scan the Web. This might be a good tip for bloggers to publish more readable or should I say scannable blogs with eyes friendly and effective layout.
Never read in depth emails with knowledge nuggets, store it in dedicated folder for further re-use.

I am also regular reader of Mike King’s Learn This blog were he passionately shares new stuff he learns.

Consider adapting software performance engineering practices to day-to-day life. Here is an example how caching can improve your response times - The Fast And The Peaceful.

Overcome the failure of hierarchical organization

Find organization that resonates with your values. Speak your manager’s language and then Manage Your Manager For Fun And For Profit. Check periodically asking yourself One, Two , Three - Is This Manager For Me? Offer your work echo-system best Experience you can offer. There is no reports and managers. There are team members that are responsible for each one’s part. Build A Tag Team. Become a superhero, it is easy.

Footnote

“There are no mistakes in life, there are only lessons to be learned: Advice to the Youth.” - Mark Twain

Have a look at one of the most viewed videos to learn more. It might make you decide to start learning differently - Did You Know; Shift Happens - Globalization; Information Age

My other posts you might like:

Fear of public speaking? Are you getting freaked out in front of the audience? I know the feeling. Been there too. Not any more. I adopted Dale Carnegie’s basic skills of effective speaking fundamentals.

by s-t-r-a-n-g-e

In his timeless book The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking Dale Carnegie shares proven practices for that matter. Among other basic fundamental skills I loved these the most:

Keep your goal before you.
Seize every opportunity to practice.

Keep your goal before you

To frame the goal and the overall course of presentation or public speech use one of the following simple frames:

KFD

What you want your audience to Know? For example, “WordPress plug-in X is deprecated.”
What you want your audience to Feel? For example, “Do not panic, relax. It has support grace period.”
What you want your audience to Do? For example, “Install our new version of the plug-in. The beta is open for subscription.“

OMA (this one I adopted from J.D. Meier)

What are your Objectives? For example, “Improve SEO of your blog“.
What are your Messages? For example, “You can do it yourself right away“.
What are your Asks? “Tell your friend about Alik’s blog where he shares similar useful and practical nuggets“.

Other great write-up I always use when preparing to my presentations and public speeches is PickTheBrain’s Nail Your Next Presentation with these Classic Principles of Public Speaking. It helps me checking the flow of my speech against timeless principles outlined in the article.

BTW, does not it remind you the structure of the post? Don’t you want your reader to know something new? Do not you want your reader to connect emotionally to your messages? Do not you want your reader to take action, like leaving comment, subscribing, or actually doing what you have just written?

Seize every opportunity to practice

This one is impossible to overestimate. Understanding stuff does not mean it can be presented smoothly and flawlessly. Knowing stuff by heart IS the way to relax on the stage. Blogrdoc mentions a quote from Dr. Scott Peck’s book The Road Less Traveled

“Only once we constrain our freedom through discipline can we experience freedom most abundantly”

The other quote to support learning by heart is Anthony Hopkins’ quote mentioned by Pierre Mornell in his book 45 EFFECTIVE WAYS FOR HIRING SMART: How to Predict Winners and Losers in the Incredibly Expensive People-Reading Game:

“I brainwash myself with a scene. I go through each one 200 times”

Is not it perfectly explains The Secret Behind GTD and why it works too?

There is much more to effective public speaking - like storytelling skills and keeping your audience engaged - but these two are absolutely fundamental:

Keep your goal before you.
Seize every opportunity to practice.

Result

After performing few high visibility speeches I admit that focused and polished speech is most effective for me. How I measure effectiveness? I get business leads, I get invited to more sessions to present, I get nice evaluation forms from the attendees. Here are few comments I’ve got:

“…excellent pace.”
“perfect blend of presentation and demos.”
“…His presenting skills were also good with a healthy dose of humor.”
“great session with enough fun in it and a serious message“

I get less flattering comments too. These give me more food for thought and desire to learn and improve.

My other posts you might like:

Why you keep returning to the same restaurant? Why you keep buying at the same supermarket? Why you marry to some brands for life? The quality and the prices are comparable any place else. Then what turns you into Raving Fan of the brand?

Experience is the answer.

by Clearly Ambiguous

I just started reading “Married to the Brand: Why Consumers Bond with Some Brands for Life” book by William J. McEwen. This is what I read on the second page “Marty isn’t just buying a coffee. He’s buying an experience.”

What if I’d offer to all of my customers best experience they ever had? Would not I become their superhero?

I want to give my customers best experience.
I want to give my manager best experience.
I want to give me colleagues best experience.
I want to give my reports best experience.
I want to give my wife best experience.
I want to give my kids best experience.

What I’d get in return? My emotional, mental, and spiritual reservoirs will be filled with energy and my personal power will skyrocket.

I am on my quest to offer most valuable product - experience.

How?

My take is Win the Heart, the Mind Follows

What’s your take?

My other posts you might like:

How to become an underdog blogger’s Superhero?

You subscribe to her blog, leave helpful comments, and give her link love - just like Hare Krishna does.

This post is a response to comments left on my 3 Easy Steps To Become A Superhero.

@ Jason Rakowski

I am using Copyblogger template by Chris Pearson. It was long road to this one. Check on JD’s comprehensive research on templates - How To Choose an Effective Blog Template or Theme. Jason, I liked a lot your blog’s focus on customer service.

@ Vered - MomGrind

Vered, first off - thanks for warm words on writing. What is the hardest part for you? Seeing everybody as a customer or these:

Decide what you want. <- This one is hardest for me.
Discover what the customer wants and…
… deliver plus one.

Seeing everybody as a customer was for me a wake up call. Especially with my kids. It hit me when I yelled at my daughter “stop bothering me - I need to work!” Duh! Work for what purpose? Who’s the first and the best customer? My family. Would I yell at my customers at work? No. Then why I yell at my most important customer?

Same with my boss, co-workers, reports, and any other around me.

Me and my wife never fight - we do have tense situations though. Too often. We cope with this. Just like any unexpected situation with the customer. No one will benefit just accusing the other side. We all manage our business. Fighting never helps. Do you think these doctors see their patients as a customers? - Medical Mistakes Kill 100,000 Americans Each Year.

@ J.D.

No, JD. I won’t be wearing a cape when we meet - cape is so passé. I am trying something less common, how’s this one?

Working hard to visit the US this summer and meet you once more. BTW, the “work” is totally based on Performance Frame.

@ Shilpan|successsoul.com

Thanks for warm words. The main idea behind the post is not mine. I just digested what I read in the “Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach To Customer Service” book. Hard to believe but I was both laughing out loud (like LOL, you know…) and crying with tears in my eyes when reading it. It hit me with its simple and true content, content that resonated with so much. I truly believe it is all about value - a match of the value I offer and the value the customers seek. Your latest, 4 Fallacies of Myth about Wealth, resonates with it a lot. Here is another quote by Einstein that leads me “Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.” Another one is more recent from 10 Golden Google Design Principles : “Focus on the user and all else will follow.”

@ blogrdoc

Thanks for warm words, buddy. I like your way of unleashing a hero inside by sharing human errors and the way to avoid it at http://dohe.blogrlab.com/. BTW, I have a nomination in the end how not to set up FeedBurner feed on the blog. Read on.

@ Mike King

Thanks for warm words and for the Stumble. I liked your recent Sharing your opinion reinforces your beliefs. One of my blog goals is just about that. It is easier to believe in something that is written. Judaism is one of the oldest religions and it comes as written and oral (which is written too). It is ton of complex read. Although I am agnostic, my favorite is 82. Each male must write a Torah scroll. I saw another interpretation to this one, and it goes like this - “each one must write his own Bible” - which I like best.

We All Made This FeedBurner Mistake

How do you manage your subscribers? You use FeedBurner.
How do you set FeedBurner feed on your blog? You add fancy image linked to your feed burned on FeedBurner.
What you forgot to remove? Built-in feed that comes with WordPress or other blogging platform.
How your potential subscriber usually subscribes? She hits this button in Internet Explorer or FireFox

What it shows when your potential subscriber hits it? Built in WordPress feed. Ouch!!!!
What I’ve done to fix it? Found this line in Header.php:

The I replaced <?php bloginfo(’rss2_url’); ?> with hard coded URL of my FeedBurner feed.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/PracticeThis?format=xml

Got better solution? Share.

My other posts you might like:

Take Your Life For A Test Drive

Entries Tagged 'Influence Without Authority' ↓