#22 🎯 How to influence people
I was asked recently, "how do you influence people?" and my answer is pretty simple.
In general, I've observed two main ways to influence people: (1) through fear or (2) through helping them hit their goals.
While (1) is certainly a path I've seen people take, it's simply not sustainable. Nobody wants to follow a leader who influences them with fear (e.g. if you don't do this, something bad will happen).
IMO influencing through (2) is the most sustainable solution. To get people excited, you need to UNDERSTAND WHAT THEY WANT. Get to know them and their goals. Once you know what someone wants, you can frame the ask in a mutually beneficial way.
Understanding people is a pre-req for influencing them. If people feel that you will help them reach their own goals, not only will they feel better about working with you, but the quality of their contribution will be higher as a result.
At Facebook, anyone looking to influence someone else needs to look no further than one's ambitions for the half. If you know what someone needs to accomplish in order to set themselves up for a better rating or promo, and you can help them get there by working together, they'll be extremely open to exploring your idea.
To summarize: effective leadership is about motivating people to follow you because it's the most direct path to hitting their own goals.
Fun Travel Stuff
Carole and I drove down to Southern California with George last weekend for the long Memorial Day holiday and spent a couple days near Solvang and a couple days in Los Angeles. One highlight from Solvang was a visit to an OstrichLand and another from LA was our touristy 6 mile loop hike up to the Hollywood sign.
Learning #1: Ostriches are insanely aggressive, have terrifying dinosaur feet and are way taller than I expected.
Learning #2: George doesn’t like ostriches.
Thinking ahead to this summer, we booked our flights to France and I’m hoping I’ll be able to enter the country without any problems due to COVID restrictions (I’m arriving a week after Carole). We’ll see how it goes!🤞