Making them feel

As I've described in my last few posts, if I want to influence or lead others, I've got to appeal to their feelings even more than their logic.  But how do I appeal to their feelings?  Here are a few things that have worked for me and/or I've read about.

• Connect to them personally.  If we form a bond, they are more likely to empathize with my needs and concerns and make the decisions that I hope they will make.  Recently, I've been working on a new habit.  The people who control the resources I need to achieve most of my goals are the "plant managers"--the people in charge of manufacturing sites.  In the past, I've talked to them mostly when I wanted something.  Lately, I've tried to make sure I reach out to them when I don't need anything.  It feels so much less stressful than when every interaction we have is a negotiation.
• Express how I feel about what I want.  A lawyer wrote a great book about how to get the jury to agree with you.  One of his principles is that, when you really believe in your case, you should expose your feelings honestly and clearly.  The jury may empathize.  (The book I'm talking about is How to Argue & Win Every Time: At Home, At Work, In Court, Everywhere,)
• Ask them what THEY want, and try to give it to them.  Sometimes I'm told to form a team to achieve a certain goal.  But then, even if it is a COMPANY goal, the other people probably feel like it's MY goal.  I was the one who was given the project.  I'm the one who's going to get a pat on the back if it is successful.  Even if the project is good for the company as a whole, their boss is emphasizing other priorities.  It feels to them like a project that will benefit ME much more than THEM.  So I'm trying to explicitly find out what THEY might get out of the project.  For example, there is a new project to revive one of our information systems.  For our initial meetings, I plan to have every person describe what is the best thing they might hope to get from the project.  I hope to be surprised, to learn about goals that they have that never occurred to me.  I hope to find ways to meet these goals because doing so will engage their emotions and win their commitment.
• Gain trust by responding to their requests, their criticisms, and their input.  I almost relish those times when others criticize my projects publicly because, if I respect their feedback, work to understand their point of view, and then address their needs, I gain their trust and their commitment to make the work succeed.
• Get them involved sooner in planning.  I'm often terrible with this, wanting to create a fully defined strategy and proposal before I get others to "build on the plan".  I'm hesitant to approach others with a vague objective and no idea of how to get there.  It feels too rough, too unpolished, almost embarrassing to share with others when the plan is this messy and murky.  But I need to get over this.  If I approach others as soon as the business need has been defined, long before we have a clue about how to reach the goal, I'm more likely to get my peers to feel like "partners", like joint owners of the strategy that unfolds.