How To Get People To Listen To Your Ideas

So you’ve got this incredible, mind blowing, revolutionary, one-of-a-kind, spectacular idea at work. It’s gonna change everything. Now all you have to do is get in front of the people who can make a decision on it, and it’ll be off to the races.

Well, that’s easier said than done.

Robert V. Keteyian works in the space of “interpersonal communication consulting.” He’s been an advisor to many within the Human Resources space for years, and his work has been featured on Fast Company (among numerous other places.)

Predominantly, he’s concerned with how you get people to listen to you. This seems like a fairly basic idea, right? You get that through authority within a hierarchy, or through being a nice person, or through having great ideas of your own.

Right?

Well, it’s not entirely that simple -- but if you think about it, especially in the modern era of competing projects and social media and truly global business, actually finding the right formula for getting people to actively listen to you (to understand and respond, or even put an idea into action) might be the most important aspect of day-to-day business.

After all, you can have 100 great ideas -- but if you can’t get a person to listen to them, it’s a little bit of a “tree falls in the forest” situation for you.

Here’s how Keteyian looks at the idea of courting active listening:

The above graphic refers to the four cornerstone elements an individual needs to get others to listen to them:

• Authority
• Empathy
• Collegiality
• Education

Some have made the argument that business silos have existed since the early 1500s, if not earlier. As such, communication at work (and convincing others in different areas of the worth of your proposal) is an extremely imperfect science.

Still, this is a framework, and it’s an important framework for the core of what we do at Vocoli. After all, we can design great software or interfaces that your company can implement and use, but if people don’t know how to get others to actively listen to their idea, the software itself won’t mean much except another land of misfit ideas.

That’s why we need to approach challenges from two perspectives:

• Make sure the technical needs of your organization are met through a platform and process
• Help your organization and its people understand how to best arrive at ideas and communicate with other stakeholders and collaborators

Authority

In most workplaces (not all), this is the most important aspect of the four categories. People traditionally follow authority (that’s the definition of hierarchy) and an authoritative position can entitle you to a good deal of decision-making ability.

(There are concerns around this model too, which Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has brought up.)

Authority is even important in hiring. Yes, organizations may well look at your education deeply, but past a certain point they likely want to know that you have knowledge and context around your career arc. That’s one aspect which can provide you the authority being spoken of here.

Keteyian talks about “leading the process” when working with a client (internal or external) and stresses over-communicating (for example, reaching out even when there isn’t new information) as a way to develop authority.

It’s important to take the second major area into account because authority without empathy can sometimes come off as abrasive.

(We all know those people.)

Empathy

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you have a base understanding of what “empathy” is. In this context it refers a little bit to humility and a little bit to establishing a personal relationship with the person you’re trying to influence; keeping it professional, but letting them understand you share some of the same concerns and are willing to permit some confidences being entrusted to you.

Authority and empathy is an important match, because if you can show yourself as someone that has knowledge and understanding of an issue (authority) but also is highly relatable and willing to compromise (empathy), that typically endears you to a lot of people within your organization.

Collegiality

This is similar to empathy, yet the base definition of collegiality involves sharing responsibility among a group of colleagues. When you talk about that in this context, you mean collaboration and -- most importantly -- shared purpose.

Let’s say you go through the Vocoli software and propose an idea, “We should have reduced-price gym memberships at our company.”. You need to have some authority on the topic, backed with research options for different gyms, look at whether it would give the organization a break on their health insurance costs, and research what competitors and other local businesses have done.

You also need to have some empathy. Perhaps it’s near the financial quarter end and key stakeholders aren’t able to look at the idea right away, so when submitting the idea, it’s best to emphasize you understand that.

And now, here comes the collegiality: define a shared purpose. Why would this idea matter for the broader organization’s goals? What does everyone stand to gain? How does it align with mission statements or stated priorities?

In this way, you’ve taken something specific -- “cheaper gym memberships” -- and made it universal, so that everyone feels a connection to it. That’s the essence of collegiality.

Education

People can think about this narrowly (i.e. “Where did this person go to college?”) but in the context of getting others to listen to you, its closest relationship is “authority.” Education mostly means having experience and background about a specific situation that you can call on.

As Keteyian himself notes:

My son Noah once had a client who worried about a news story that might reflect poorly on the company. The client’s company leaders thought it best to counter the story in a specific, aggressive way.

However, although Noah was sympathetic because of the negative story, he knew the approach would have violated the overall communications strategy that was in place.

In this situation he demonstrated empathy, but more so education by articulating the overall strategy, how and why it was conceived, past incidents that were similar, and other successful responses.

Providing this education at the time to the client allowed the company to make a joint decision about how best to respond--a response that spoke to the overall strategic objections of the company and didn’t overreact to the negative press.

Putting It Together

There are numerous reasons why people ultimately listen to ideas/pitches at work. They can range from “a supervisor was looking at their e-mail at that exact moment” to relationships built up over years. This four-pronged approach is an effective way to think about it.

If you approach any new concept along the lines of knowledge (authority), caring for others involved (empathy), willingness to establish a shared vision (collegiality) and background context (education), you’ll likely be more successful at getting others to listen to you than most.