Colin Gautrey

Are You Gambling on Agreement?

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Like me, I am sure you have been in a meeting presenting your ideas and seeking agreement to proceed. Gaining buy-in is a key job requirement of middle to senior-level people. If people say no, I am sure you have plenty of ideas about what to do next ― especially if you have been reading my work for a while. But, what do you do if they say yes? Most people will gratefully accept that little word and swing into implementation mode, or patiently wait for them to do what they have just agreed to do. Put another way, they will take a gamble that yes meant yes and not no or maybe. I know that you know yes often doesn’t mean yes. Is that what you do? Initially, the relief of gaining agreement hides the gamble. Suspicions that they are not quite with you can be squashed out by the fear of losing agreement. Trying to check that they really mean yes is somehow seen as being foolhardy. Worry about Read More

The Risks and Rewards of Exposing Your Agenda

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When influencing, it really helps if you can be open about your personal agenda. Initially, this may strike you as being naïve, and in some cases, it can be. Yet, overall, if you can do this, you will benefit. To my way of thinking, the key to exposing your agenda (or sharing if you prefer) is to do an appropriate risk/reward assessment based on its importance to you. The more important, the more thorough your analysis needs to be. In reality, you are already doing this at a subconscious level; however, if you want to avoid unfortunate accidents, use the following ideas about risks and rewards to inform your decision making.

Personal Agenda Sharing Risks

  1. The opposition may Read More

Expanding Social Capital and Creating Political Capital

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Having political capital allows you to get things done. Yet it is only possible to have political capital if you have first invested in building a solid foundation of social capital. Interestingly, although many people have this base of social capital, not many develop it into the sort of influence that only political capital can achieve. Given my recent dire Early Warning: A Political Storm is Brewing, it is critical that you take action on this as soon as possible. Below I will explore how these ideas work together and then move swiftly onto sharing some thoughts on how you can bolster your social capital and develop it into the much more valuable political capital.

Social Capital

At its simplest level, social capital is the quantity and quality of your relationships. The potential usefulness of your social capital depends very much on who these relationships are with. You will be right to think that Read More

Would Your Team Choose You as Their Leader?

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While reviewing a book proposal a few weeks ago, it struck me that here was another great missive working on the assumption that people get to choose their leader. It was suggesting that what you need to do to be a great leader is figure out why your followers are following you. Nice idea, but, certainly in the world at work, most of those decisions are taken by a higher authority. Followers just have to put up with it, unless they are in the rare and cherished position of being able to simply walk. And, don’t delude yourself that because you recruited said followers, they chose you. Most often, new hires choose the job, not the person holding the leadership position. Of course, that you are a brilliant and inspiring individual must have counted somewhere in the decision, but was probably not the critical factor. As you develop your ability to lead, and help others learn how to lead, here is a great question to stimulate Read More

New Job? Quickly Learn How to Be Influential

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Fantastic, you've got a new job! Now, quick as you can, you need to establish your influence. Unless you can be influential from the start, there is a risk you may have to recover and gradually build it later. The best time to make a great impression is right now as you start moving in the new job. Influential people don't just arrive ― they make it happen. When I am coaching someone in this position, these are the typical areas I will challenge them on...

1. Who are the powerful individuals around your new job?

This can be focused Read More

Decoding and Resolving Personality Conflicts

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When we were doing the original research which led to the creation of the Influence Profile back in 2005, I don't think we realised just how powerful it was going to be in helping people to understand personality conflicts. Not only does it explain why personality clashes occur, it also provides a practical way of exploring how you can avoid conflict altogether. The curious thing is that it is not the difference in personality which causes the problem. Personality clashes are unlikely to occur if…
  1. You understand the personality difference.
  2. You accept their right to be different.
  3. You can find a way to work with the difference.
The majority of the solution can be found Read More

Are You an Ethical Influencer? 21 Questions

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It is very rare that I meet an unethical influencer ― thankfully! However, there are many I meet whom I wonder about. They operate on the fringes of integrity, in my view. Trouble is, as I have explained elsewhere, integrity means different things to different people. Right and wrong quickly descend into “it depends”. And this is a growing dilemma given the global diversity so many of us now live with. When I am training people about influence, perhaps conveniently, I often dodge the ethical question. Partly due to the wide divergence of opinion, but mainly because I want people to take responsibility for their own actions ― at the end of the day people on my training workshops have to live with their own conscience. Yet, I do have an increasingly clear personal notion of Read More

How to Develop Genuine Gravitas

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Can you spot a fake? When it comes to gravitas, I believe that anyone with a reasonable amount of experience can easily detect when someone is pretending. They may not be able to explain why, but they will certainly get the feeling that the individual they are considering is not all that they appear to be. Gravitas and presence is a key topic within leadership development circles. Maybe you have been told you need to develop gravitas if you want to get promoted to the higher levels. Certainly, talent spotters and recruiters always have at the back of their mind, "Has this person got the gravitas required of this role?" Read More

Being Secretive and Hiding Inconvenient Truths

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"Whatever you do, don't tell them that!" "But, when they find out, it'll come back to bite us." "We'll worry about that when and if it happens. Now, go get them to agree to our plan." Sound familiar? While this is often seen as an expedient tactic, it is usually short-sighted and creates a multiple of problems upstream. However there are exceptions. My starting position is that to maximise success, you should proactively pursue open and honest communication, even with those who oppose you. This topic arose on a workshop a few weeks ago in a workshop as we were reviewing delegates experience of using my Stakeholder Influence Process (see Chapter 13 of Advocates & Enemies. When we analyse stakeholders, one of the dimensions under consideration is “agreement”. Between the positive and the negative there is what I call the grey zone, or rather those people whom you are unsure about ― you don’t quite know if they have bought into your idea or not. The general strategy is to work with those stakeholders to move them out of the grey zone; even if this is into the negative agreement space ― at least then you know what you have to deal with. However, one delegate suggested that his strategy is Read More

13 Questions to Ask Your Advocates

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Getting someone in your network to the position of Advocate can take quite a bit of hard work. Building the relationship, creating trust and demonstrating value can take months, if not years. Of course, that presupposes premeditated action — it is more likely that you just landed there by chance. And doesn’t it feel great noticing how an individual promotes “brand you” to everyone they meet? Finding out through others that “so and so” has been telling everyone how fast you deliver, or how quickly you cut through the trivia and get down to business. Even more rewarding is when they are heard to be recommending you for inclusion on exciting new projects. Because it is more likely that you happened upon your Advocates by chance, you might like to do a little re-evaluation to make sure you have the right people doing the job for you. To get your thinking off to a quick start, here are a few interview-type questions you could (but probably never will) ask of a potential Advocate… Read More

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