Getting my sailing license first involved passing four theoretical written exams. Throughout all four of them I did not set foot on a boat. Then, all that was left was the practical test. The sailing school had arranged for me and three other students to take the test together. We spent five days, seven hours per day training at sea, practicing sailing drills with our teacher David, a 70-year old with the energy of a teenager, and the tan of a kid whose mom hasn’t taught him the importance of sun block.
During those five days, David ran us through as many scenarios as possible to get us ready for the deciding day. Much of his teachings had to do with the way he wanted us to conduct ourselves during the test itself. The way it works, on the sixth day, the tester comes on to the boat and asks each of us, one at a time, to act as captains and run certain drills. During these drills, the other three students have to act as crew. We were all being measured both while we were acting as captains as well as when we just followed orders.
I’ll never forget one of David’s lessons during that fifth day of training. He ran us through the following scenario. Let’s say during the test it was our time to act as crew and we’re given an order from the student who’s currently ‘playing’ captain. What should we do if we know that order to be wrong? If we talk back and claim the order is wrong we’ll put the captain, who’s got all the focus on them, in an uncomfortable situation. It might lose them the test. Alternatively, carrying out the order would also fail them as you know the order is wrong and therefore might be harmful to the successful outcome of the sailing maneuver. Yup, quite the dilemma.
David’s solution to this scenario was most elegant - find a way to signal the mistake to the captain while carrying out the order. Let’s say for example the order in question was to tighten up one of the sails (almost all orders on a sailing boat are to either loosen or tighten the sails). You’re told to tighten it, but you are certain it is not needed, and worse, it’ll be detrimental to the rest of the drill. In such a case, your best course of action would be to tighten the sail just a tiny bit, significantly less than you would if given an order you agreed with.
By doing that, you have 1/ followed the order you were given, 2/ caused minimal damage to the drill carried out, and most importantly 3/ managed to signal the captain that you believe the order to be wrong without saying it out loud in front of the tester.
Influencing others.
Have you ever encountered someone making a mistake? Of course you have. And if you ever tried correcting someone then you know it doesn’t always go smoothly. I believe telling someone they’re wrong is no different than trying to get someone to change their behavior. And finding an elegant way to do either requires strategic thought. Some may have a natural talent for it, but we can all get better at it. Influencing others is something we all do both at work and at home.
As a product manager I get to exercise (and hopefully develop) various skills, both hard and soft. Hard skills, which some refer to as technical skills, include creating a product roadmap or product strategy, writing technical specs, and the ability to effectively use PM technologies for project management or A/B testing, for example. Soft skills include skills like leadership, prioritization, and the ability to achieve alignment by influencing stakeholders.
Achieving alignment is easy when everyone’s in agreement. Yet exercising influence, as a skill, is especially critical whenever there is a difference of opinions. Then, achieving alignment requires changing people’s minds or behavior. The ability to influence others is not unique to product managers, and not even unique to the workplace. Influence is mostly about knowing how to manage relationships.
Getting someone to change their minds requires getting them to see things differently. No one gets up in the morning wanting to be wrong. We all like to believe we’re right, making it quite emotional for some people facing the need to change. So it is crucial that we learn how to change people’s minds in an elegant way. I like to consider elegance in this context both from the perspective of the person doing the influencing (hopefully doing so with grace and simplicity), and of the person being influenced (who gets to change their minds in, what they’ll perceive, a dignified manner). Just like in the sailing example, putting people’s mistakes right in their face is rarely effective.
Only recently I was searching for an elegant way to influence the behavior of a new engineering manager who joined our org. It was their third week on the team and there was already no escaping a rather annoying habit of theirs - whenever they wanted to reach out to anyone in the org they would just call them using a Slack Huddle. If you haven’t used Slack before, it is a workplace messaging platform, yet starting an impromptu Huddle with someone is equal to calling them on the phone. Many agreed (and complained to me about the fact) that those calls were disruptive and went against the standard culture we established. To prioritize deep focus work time, we would either schedule meetings ahead of time, or reach out to people via text. Calling someone without notice made sense only if it was an urgent matter. Some colleagues considered talking to that person, asking them to stop, but ended up saying nothing due to the seniority gap. Nobody wanted to be the one to openly call out that person on their behavior.
I opted for a different approach, and advised others to do the same. Whenever I got a surprising call pop up on my screen, I would immediately text that person and ask them: “what’s up? Urgent?” 100% of the time they’ll respond saying that it wasn’t urgent and either text their ask, or agree to schedule a time to talk later. With time, they realized their behavior was not in line with the rest of the org’s culture and changed their habit on their own. There was no need for an intervention, no need for a discussion. No one had to risk being an a**hole to the new manager, and the manager was not put in a position to lose face in front of their colleagues. How could you not love elegance?
Knowing when to let go.
Considering the diversity in people’s personal histories, and how they affect our perception of the world, it is a miracle that we’re able to have any successful relationships. I think the most important piece of knowing how to change people’s minds is knowing when their minds are not worth changing. Some mistakes are not important enough to be corrected.
For those of us who believe themselves to have justice running through our veins, and simply must always correct everyone, there’s even an analytical justification. Whenever we correct someone or try to get them to change their minds we must consider the risk-reward ratio. Is there a benefit to having that person learn their mistake? What is the cost/risk involved?
Perhaps the prime example of such mistakes are grammatical errors. For a while now I’ve been trying to avoid correcting people’s language. I used to think I was doing people a favor by letting them know whenever they use a wrong word or mispronounce something, but I came to realize that most people simply don’t care, and worse still, many are annoyed (and even offended) when corrected.
We all come to this world with the hopes of making some difference, which often involves influencing others. No one wants to be a passive observer. Elegant influence doesn’t have to be synonymous with manipulation, but rather could be effectively realized through kindness, focus, and positivity.
Nice examples on an important topic. In fact, given its importance, it's crazy there isn't more focus given to this, even in basic education. Coming from my experience in my primary relationship and in parenting, both of which span almost 30 years, I created unnecessary suffering for all of us by not understanding that people often change their minds slowly. Sometimes r..e..a..l..l..y slowly! The same is true for me too. So many points of feedback I've received from my wife has taken years to sink in. My wife could have thought, "man, this guy's never going to change" - but in actuality change often just takes time. Because we're not just changing our mind, we're rewiring an entire physiological, flesh and bone, habit. Of course some things are simpler and more immediate than that, but some are not.