Relationships Eat Facts For Breakfast!
How are you using facts to persuade?
How important are relationships and shared stories to you?
Why are these two questions important?,
James Clear recently wrote an article Why Facts Don’t Change Minds where he stated “Facts don’t change minds, friendship does.” For us this points to the power of building relationships with our teams, families and business prospects. Nurturing shared stories helps produce desired behaviours and decisions more effectively than laying out the facts. Humans have an innate desire to belong. Powerful stories are ones in which they see themselves as major contributors. We gravitate in our social media feeds and daily activities to those who share our stories.
What are you doing to build relationships and share stories with those who matter to your business and your life? One Alberta business wanted to instill certain core behaviours with their team members. They began with a visionary core story of how the business could be an engine for happiness. They then told stories about the 10 behaviours that supported that story. They did not stop there. They encouraged their team to share their own stories and celebrated the expected behaviours. This lead to a successful cultural and operational transformation.
How is this relevant to you? Relationships are built through conversations. The most effective conversations are ones where you listen more than talk. In building new relationships and repairing existing relationships, encourage the other to tell meaningful stories. Listen for common ground on which to build the relationship. Ask questions for context and meaning. Tell your related story. We call this a “Conversation for Background of Relatedness”. This type of conversation is something we learned many years ago and now seem to do naturally so it is helpful to reflect and share it with you.
Whether it is aligning your team with expected behaviours or having more successful sales conversations, connect with us for an initial conversation.