Are you a marketer or missionary?

I often get asked why it can be hard to advance a strategy or agenda in the workplace.  How do you get people behind your idea? I think it's helpful to ask, how are you practicing the art of persuasion now: as a marketer or a missionary?

Marketers identify people’s values and tie their product, cause or agenda to those values. Missionaries identify people’s values and try to change them. It’s a heck of a lot easier to be a marketer than a missionary in the workplace.

That’s because other people want to preserve their fundamental mental framework and the sense of self and autonomy it provides, so they interpret any information coming from you according to that framework.  If how you position your agenda doesn’t fit with how they view the world or their personal values, people plug their ears.  They ignore the message or assume the source of the message is wrong.

Sometimes, if the message comes from someone they trust, people may adjust their beliefs and integrate the idea into their existing set of values. But the underlying values don’t change. Watch a political debate with friends who are on opposite sides of the spectrum and you’ll see what I mean.  Whatever reaction they have is shoehorned into their existing value set and view of the world.   

Here's what we have to remember in the workplace.  Anything we communicate will get twisted according to the mind it enters. Our ideology is simply not as powerful as people’s mental machinations. As marketers or persuaders or anyone with an agenda, we have to accept people for who they are and work within the framework they have.

That doesn't mean throwing away our own values or resorting to manipulation.  It means finding the common ground between what we are trying to accomplish and why someone else should personally care about it.  From their perspective, not our own.  We have to show how our agenda is a way for others to get what they always wanted.  In the words of my old mentor Sharyn Sutton, don't tell someone to value your cause.  Show how your cause relates to their values.

 You don't need to change who people are or how they think.  You just need to change what they do.  That's a job for a marketer, not a missionary


Source: Katya Andresen, Cricket Media