Real Influence: Persuade Without Pushing and Gain Without Giving In

by Mark Goulston, John Ullmen

Overview

Authentic influence is about more than creating a strong initial connection—it’s about sustaining professional relationships long after an agreement has been reached.

When others sense they are being pushed, their guard goes up. In business interactions, even if the person you are pitching to does comply with your requests, lingering resentment may undermine the relationship forever. So why do most books on influence still portray it as something you do to someone else to get your way?

Based on their commitment to listening, genuine engagement, and the pursuit of win-win outcomes, doctors and authors Mark Goulston and John Ullmen share a new method that business leaders can utilize to persuade others.

In Real Influence, Goulston and Ullem teach you how to:

• examine priorities,
• learn about the needs of key players,
• earn others’ attention,
• motivate others to hear more,
• and add value with question and actions.

Outdated approaches that portray influence as a means to get your way invites resistance and cynicism from those who recognize the techniques. Manipulative tactics fail to produce the mutual trust that sustains successful relationships.

Complete with examples of the steps in action and insights from real-world “power influencers,” Real Influence is a one-of-a-kind guide that showcases how being straight with everyone means winning for all.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781400238835
Publisher:	AMACOM
Publication date:	09/06/2022
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.73(d)

About the Author

Mark Goulston, MD, FAPA is a board-certified psychiatrist, fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, former assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA NPI, and a former FBI and police hostage negotiation trainer. He is the creator of Theory Y Executive Coaching—which he provides to CEOs, presidents, founders, and entrepreneurs—and is a TEDx and international keynote speaker. He is the creator and developer of Surgical Empathy, a process to help people recover and heal from PTSD, prevent suicide in teenagers and young adults, and help organizations overcome implicit bias. Dr. Goulston is the author or principal author of seven prior books, including Why Cope When you Can Heal: How Healthcare Heroes of COVID-19 Can Recover from PTSD, PTSD for Dummies, Get Out of Your Own Way: Overcoming Self-Defeating Behavior, Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone, Real Influence: Persuade Without Pushing and Gain Without Giving In, and Talking to Crazy: How to Deal with the Irrational and Impossible People in Your Life. He hosts the My Wakeup Call podcast, where he speaks with influencers about their purpose in life and the wakeup calls that led them there. He also is the co-creator and moderator of the multi-honored documentary Stay Alive: An Intimate Conversation About Suicide Prevention.

He appears frequently as a human psychology and behavior subject-area expert across all media, including news outlets ABC, NBC, CBS, and BBC News, as well as CNN, Today, Oprah, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, Harvard Business Review, Business Insider, Fast Company, Huffington Post, and Westwood One.

JOHN ULLMEN, PH.D., is an acclaimed executive coach whose clients include dozens of leading international firms. He oversees MotivationRules.com, conducts popular feedback-based seminars on influence in organizations, and teaches at the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

Read an Excerpt

INTRODUCTION

Are you frustrated because you fail to get people to buy into your great ideas, can’t close the deal on tough sales, or constantly hit the wall when you try to influence people?

If so, you’re not alone. As executive coaches, we know that it’s harder than ever to influence people because the old rules of per-suasion no longer work.

Today, we live in a postselling and postpushing world. As people grow more aware of manipulative tactics, their guard goes up. The

Internet, television advertising, and wall-to-wall marketing have made us cynical about deceptive tricks and hard-sell approaches.

Your customers, your coworkers, and even your kids can all recog-nize “pushy” influence . . . and when you use it, they’ll push back twice as hard.

Yet most of the books and business school courses that teach persuasion skills emphasize manipulative tactics and techniques.

They conceive of influence as something that you “do” to some-one else to get your way. And they focus on short-term gains rather than long-term consequences.

We call this outdated strategy disconnected influence. It’s a short-sighted strategy that sometimes creates momentary “buy-in” but often at the expense of your relationships and reputation. And it keeps you from making the deep, transformational connections that lead to great outcomes in your career and in your life.

To influence people in powerful ways that can change your future a you need to move from disconnected to connected influence.

When you make this transition, you’ll set the stage for strong, sus-tained influence by becoming the kind of person other people are eager to follow. These people won’t just agree to support you.

They’ll line up to champion your causes, and they’ll have your back whenever you need their help.

In this book, we’ve distilled the elements of connected influence into a simple four-step model for becoming wildly successful by being both influential and “influenceable.” We’ve helped thousands of people master these four steps—and in the process, we’ve em-powered them to save their companies, increase their sales, achieve business goals they thought were impossible, and take their personal relationships to an entirely new level.

But this book isn’t just about our own experiences. In addition a we’ve interviewed more than one hundred remarkable influencers who are putting these same steps into action in their own lives.

These people are using their powers of persuasion to change the world every day. They head international corporations, raise millions for charities, help kids with cancer, and work to save the planet. They personify success, and their stories illustrate the astonishing power of connected influence.

As you read these stories, here is what we want you to remember:

No matter who you are and where you are in life, you can do what these people have done. In fact, the most powerful lesson the stories in this book illustrate is that anyone can positively influence anyone else, regardless of their differences in experience, status a age, income, or power. The people we talked with didn’t start out with powerful connections, but they knew how to earn these connections and how to solidify and expand them. Their message is that there is no need—ever—to set limits in your influence potential. When you master the steps we outline in this book, you can influence anyone a even someone who “has it all.”

This book won’t tell you what you can accomplish by tricking people, manipulating them, or stepping on them. Instead, it will teach you how to be the kind of influencer that you and the people in your life want you to be. That’s because as you build deeper rela-tionships, you’ll drive stronger results. And when you approach rela-tionships by thinking about giving rather than getting, and about adding value before seeking value, you’ll be amazed at the return you see on your investment.

When you put the ideas in this book to work in your own life a you’ll learn what all the masters of influence in this book know.

Connected infl uence pays off—and it pays forward. Connected in-fluence multiplies, and as it multiplies, it leads to amazing outcomes.

Here's to yours.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

Foreword by Keith Ferrazzi ix

Introduction 1

SECTION 1 The Problem: Why Are You Struggling to Influence People? 5

1 The Dangers of “Disconnect” 7

2 Four Traps That “Disconnect” You 18

3 The Four Steps to Connecting and Influencing 33

SECTION 2 STEP #1 Go for Great Outcomes 41

4 The First “R”: Go for a Great Result 43

5 The Second “R”: Go for a Great Reputation 52

6 The Third “R”: Go for Great Relationships 66

SECTION 3 STEP #2 Listen Past Your Blind Spot 81

7 To Discover Their There, Listen to the Music 83

8 Master Level-Four Listening 91

9 To Influence, Be Influenceable 107

SECTION 4 STEP #3 Engage Them in Their There 119

10 Use the Three Gets of Engage 121

11 Push Their Buttons— Positively 135

12 Engage Across Cultures 144

SECTION 5 STEP #4 When You’ve Done Enough . . . Do More 155

13 Do More Before, During, and After 157

14 Do More in All Three Value Channels 171

15 Ask Other People to Do More 183

SECTION 6 Taking Real Influence to the Next Level 191

16 Let Adversity Lead You to Great Outcomes 193

17 Influence by Getting Out of the Way 203

18 Influence Positively After You’ve Made Big Mistakes 210

19 Let Gratitude Magnify Your Influence 219

SECTION 7 Putting It All Together 227

20 Case Study #1—A Fuzzy Rescue 229

21 Case Study #2—Everything Matters 234

22 Case Study #3—Poised for Life 237

23 Case Study #4—Taming a Temperamental Group 241

Epilogue 245

Acknowledgments 247

Index 251

About the Authors 259

Editorial Reviews

"[Real Influence] offers a full course banquet of fresh ideas for the price of a modest dinner." —Inland Empire Business Journal

From the Publisher