I really enjoyed this article from Chai. It's interesting I've been using the LMDTFY method without knowing it had this acronym. During my recent years, I moved from asking for permission to leading with intent, and now defaulting to action.
By the way, I loved so much the "Turn the Ship Around!" book, that I immediately had to write about the essence of it: "Emancipate Your Team: Leadership Through Intent, Not Control"
Great guest post! Full of insights. I like the last one a lot - thinking about communications on a higher level is a fantastic skill that I see many leaders have mastered. Engineering serendipity is great, as long as the benefit is mutual, I feel. 😄
Nice article. As an engineer, I've found the Nemawashi method to be effective for introducing procedural technical or procedural changes. So many engineers believe that you can just toss a new thing into the organization, and that people will start using it. The reality is that changes are most effective when individuals see the benefits, and often times people won't even look at something unless another person is personally showing it to them.
It's nice to finally have a name for it. It's funny though: I've always thought of it as tending seedlings rather than uprooting a tree. I wonder what that says about my own psychology or about a difference in cultural perspective?
Nice article authors, enjoyed. Negotiations is a horizontal soft skill and usable by every kind of a manager. Whether a procurement manager or a team lead - tech or non tech.
Amazing post, thank you very much. I knew some of these, but the Nemawashi is completely new to me as a methodology. I like how it makes you care about your peers interest first before you can bring what you have on your mind second. It's powerful.
I actually used Nemawashi without knowing the term, but I love that Japanese name, I think it's a super useful concept. Especially if you actually mean it and don't do it in a 'sleazy' way.
A very pleasant read! I would have added a section on ethics, to make it even stronger.
Whenever a friend or colleague brings up the topic of influencing techniques, I often think about the ethical implications involved.
Let's take a moment to unpack.
Competitiveness can be stigmatised. Proactivity can be considered obnoxious.
Influence techniques are excellent tools to have. However, it's crucial to monitor the exchange of value.
Leaving too low a value for the others in an interaction, who are not as deft in interpersonal dynamics, proactivity and influencing skills, will be seen as manipulative and unfair.
We can say, well, everyone is responsible for their own growth.
How about values that bind us together? If you are religiously inclined, you may still allow yourself to learn the influence techniques, as these will give you the choice to stimulate and help others learn, where otherwise there will be no choice, value, or opportunity.
Without a guiding value hierarchy, whether religious or not, using social engineering tools risks turning me into a Machiavellian narcissistic vampire.
I believe that it's something that is impossible to 'change' in someone by reading an article. By the time we work in tech, our values are already formulated. Those who want to abuse the advice will do it no matter what, and most will not need the caveats and our common sense will guide us to not 'screw' people.
Those values can change of course, but it's a longer process.
That's a great addition, thank you. I took it for granted, and in hindsight even if I didn't write anything about it I could have changed a couple of parts :)
Indeed, values have their own pace of development. I'll point out that with powerful instruments, we also have temptation and awareness to worry about.
We are prone to temptation. Influencing techniques are very powerful; they work. Power tempts. Having awareness allows us to apply our values. I intended my post as a word of caution: while learning, the practitioner may get positive results and be tempted to overuse in the wrong (by their own values) way, as well as use awkwardly and get labelled manipulative.
I mean, here is a challenge to the practitioner of the "decoy price attributioon" – just go and confess to your boss who just approved the project proposal budget that you used the value-enhancing fake cost option to steer them to another option.
Perhaps set your story straight while doing these techniques. To go back to the example - "Hey, getting the budget is very competitive, so I used some fictionary context to show the unique value perspective in comparison to all other proposal's you may have seen."
If the practitioner cannot find a straight story that fits their values, perhaps they should not use the technique, as it is actually manipulative in that context.
And then, if someone needs to be combative, being in a special criminal or difficult-to-survive situation with a lot of bad value actors around, by all means, use powerful tools to survive. In the book Influence by Cialdini, he had been embedded with the local mafia to learn some of the methods of influence :D for his PhD thesis. Interesting stuff.
So the dilemma about a job offer being pulled actually happened to me. The CEO didn't think I would be committed enough because I was an advisor to an unrelated startup, so they pulled it.
I reached out to the hiring manager and sadly, they got stonewalled internally. I'd love to know what others would have done in the hiring manager's position.
I really enjoyed this article from Chai. It's interesting I've been using the LMDTFY method without knowing it had this acronym. During my recent years, I moved from asking for permission to leading with intent, and now defaulting to action.
By the way, I loved so much the "Turn the Ship Around!" book, that I immediately had to write about the essence of it: "Emancipate Your Team: Leadership Through Intent, Not Control"
I absolutely loved that book too! There are some stories there I still remember (read it a few years ago).
Great guest post! Full of insights. I like the last one a lot - thinking about communications on a higher level is a fantastic skill that I see many leaders have mastered. Engineering serendipity is great, as long as the benefit is mutual, I feel. 😄
I also really liked the last one! It was unexpected, and a great technique :)
Nice article. As an engineer, I've found the Nemawashi method to be effective for introducing procedural technical or procedural changes. So many engineers believe that you can just toss a new thing into the organization, and that people will start using it. The reality is that changes are most effective when individuals see the benefits, and often times people won't even look at something unless another person is personally showing it to them.
It's nice to finally have a name for it. It's funny though: I've always thought of it as tending seedlings rather than uprooting a tree. I wonder what that says about my own psychology or about a difference in cultural perspective?
Nice article authors, enjoyed. Negotiations is a horizontal soft skill and usable by every kind of a manager. Whether a procurement manager or a team lead - tech or non tech.
Great post! I personally use the nemawashi method quite often, since it’s usually the easiest approach to move big projects forward.
But other methods are not as familiar to me. Will definitely try them out :)
I think I was the LMDTFY the most often, but after the guest article I'll probably be more mindful of the others :)
Amazing post, thank you very much. I knew some of these, but the Nemawashi is completely new to me as a methodology. I like how it makes you care about your peers interest first before you can bring what you have on your mind second. It's powerful.
I actually used Nemawashi without knowing the term, but I love that Japanese name, I think it's a super useful concept. Especially if you actually mean it and don't do it in a 'sleazy' way.
A very pleasant read! I would have added a section on ethics, to make it even stronger.
Whenever a friend or colleague brings up the topic of influencing techniques, I often think about the ethical implications involved.
Let's take a moment to unpack.
Competitiveness can be stigmatised. Proactivity can be considered obnoxious.
Influence techniques are excellent tools to have. However, it's crucial to monitor the exchange of value.
Leaving too low a value for the others in an interaction, who are not as deft in interpersonal dynamics, proactivity and influencing skills, will be seen as manipulative and unfair.
We can say, well, everyone is responsible for their own growth.
How about values that bind us together? If you are religiously inclined, you may still allow yourself to learn the influence techniques, as these will give you the choice to stimulate and help others learn, where otherwise there will be no choice, value, or opportunity.
Without a guiding value hierarchy, whether religious or not, using social engineering tools risks turning me into a Machiavellian narcissistic vampire.
I believe that it's something that is impossible to 'change' in someone by reading an article. By the time we work in tech, our values are already formulated. Those who want to abuse the advice will do it no matter what, and most will not need the caveats and our common sense will guide us to not 'screw' people.
Those values can change of course, but it's a longer process.
That's a great addition, thank you. I took it for granted, and in hindsight even if I didn't write anything about it I could have changed a couple of parts :)
Indeed, values have their own pace of development. I'll point out that with powerful instruments, we also have temptation and awareness to worry about.
We are prone to temptation. Influencing techniques are very powerful; they work. Power tempts. Having awareness allows us to apply our values. I intended my post as a word of caution: while learning, the practitioner may get positive results and be tempted to overuse in the wrong (by their own values) way, as well as use awkwardly and get labelled manipulative.
I mean, here is a challenge to the practitioner of the "decoy price attributioon" – just go and confess to your boss who just approved the project proposal budget that you used the value-enhancing fake cost option to steer them to another option.
Perhaps set your story straight while doing these techniques. To go back to the example - "Hey, getting the budget is very competitive, so I used some fictionary context to show the unique value perspective in comparison to all other proposal's you may have seen."
If the practitioner cannot find a straight story that fits their values, perhaps they should not use the technique, as it is actually manipulative in that context.
And then, if someone needs to be combative, being in a special criminal or difficult-to-survive situation with a lot of bad value actors around, by all means, use powerful tools to survive. In the book Influence by Cialdini, he had been embedded with the local mafia to learn some of the methods of influence :D for his PhD thesis. Interesting stuff.
So the dilemma about a job offer being pulled actually happened to me. The CEO didn't think I would be committed enough because I was an advisor to an unrelated startup, so they pulled it.
I reached out to the hiring manager and sadly, they got stonewalled internally. I'd love to know what others would have done in the hiring manager's position.