In my experimental self-training about influencing people and organizations, I came to the very basic conclusion that it is all about one thing: emotions. In general, the three basic ones I have been able to work most with are: sadness, happiness and anger.
Sadness has been a way to catch people’s attention about health & safety and local development issues. Showing a video about people at harm who can represent one’s loved ones, or a grim picture of a community in shambles (no basic services (sewage, water supply, garbage collection), low level of education, high corruption of local politicians, high crime rate, etc. ) are very powerful calls for action.
Happiness helps me make the people around me more motivated and productive. Playing a fun song such as Felicidade by Marcelo Jeneci or Happy by Pharrell Williams before starting a meeting makes people raise their eye brows and call me crazy, but it puts a smile on their face and sets a positive tone. Saying “Good Morning” in an exaggerated tone with a huge smile on my face, makes my colleague grin and reply in the same ridiculous manner but then we both stay grinning for the next few minutes.
Anger is something I have been specializing in lately. This one is quite challenging because it needs to be done professionally and respectfully. Plus in Brazilian culture one is with constant fear of offending someone as direct criticism is not a commonplace practice. I have been achieving this through a complex manipulating network. I have gotten to know many people in the organization and found out their personal challenges and overall biases and started to play with those. One topic I picked up was limited option for women in leadership positions. Trying to talk to men about this normally generated uninterested, skeptical expressions, and being dismissed as a “feminist”. My counter-reaction was calling them “machista” and naming them as part of the problem. This always ended up in a big debate which I kept feeding for weeks with sending additional information provoking the points I was trying to make. Overtime, I have found them using my points in their speeches and even proceeding to promote my ideas. With the women in the equation I have been doing different things: I have highlighted the fact that they don’t get promoted, while make colleagues who are less capable do, I have told them of cases of sexual harrassment or discrimination against colleagues who are pregnant. And the best highlight of this effort happened today. There was a meeting of various directors and I ran into a female one and casually told her: “wow, lots of guys going in and out of this conference room. Are you the only female director present?”. She looked around sadly and signed: “hmm, I guess I am”. “Well, just fyi”, I continued with a smile on my face. “There are some guys around here that say that we don’t need diversity programs because there are already enough women in this building, including yourself.” Oh, my, hell broke loose after that…
These are just some interesting examples I experimented with lately. They have been working like a charm. Of course, tailoring to one person at a time. Now the challenge is to figure out how to do it on a larger scale.?
Grobetrotter 