Betsy Jordyn (00:00.12)
How do you influence others to the change that you want them to make in their careers and their lives of their organizations, especially when you don't have positional authority? Well, you don't. Find out what to do instead on today's episode of the Consulting Matters podcast. And welcome to the Consulting Matters podcast. This is the show for purpose-driven consultants and coaches who are ready to own the power of what they do and position themselves for greater impact and income.
I'm your host, Betsy Jordyn, and you can find out about all the things I do to help my clients turn their expertise, their strengths, their passions into a standout brand and a thriving business that both they and their clients love on my website at www.betsydordan.com. And don't forget, Jordyn is with a Y. So let's get into what we're talking about today. So for the last couple episodes, I've been getting into the real systemic issues that make influencing our clients on the people-centered organizations and worlds that we want.
just harder than maybe we thought it was. So a couple of weeks ago, I got into the differences between stakeholder and shareholder capitalism. And last week, I had Bob Amliani on the show to share his research on the differences between progressive and classical management. So if you missed either one of those and are curious about what are the real issues that stand in our way of the people-centered work environments and the societal systems that we long for, definitely go back and listen and tune in.
But the thing is that I started to realize like after these two episodes were published that maybe I was like really bombing people out, you know, because I've been trying to give a reality check on the, what the limits are of our influence and like how to care, but not too much. So I want to wrap up this little mini series that I created with some guidance on how to find and take the winds where we can, you know, even if we can't change everything, we can change different people who are ready to move in a particular direction.
So that's what I wanna talk about today is how do you influence with care, which is a framework that I created to my approach to persuasion, which is not about pushing people into what I want them to want for themselves, but it's about persuading people to make decisions and choices that serve their best interest and the best interests of others. So again, it's not about saying, okay, I have a vision for what I want this organization to become, it's helping them be clear on what they're trying to create and what they're trying to achieve.
Betsy Jordyn (02:16.31)
and coming up with the right actions in alignment with that. So the thing about change that gets really murky is we look at these influence skills as sort of like value neutral. They aren't really value neutral all the time. A lot of it is paired with what the outcomes are that somebody's trying to influence somebody towards. Like you could have somebody who's influencing you, like maybe somebody's a narcissist and they're trying to influence you to have a distorted thinking about who you are. Like that's not necessarily like good influence. I wanna talk about the good influence.
And also thinking about like influence in terms of the world of change is like, maybe there's like some sort of initiative on high that serves the company in the short term, but might harm it in the long term. So we wanna get everybody on board, you know, to adopt this change for the betterment of the short term results rather than long term. You know, so for example, like I'm totally into the pit right now. And this show is about the inner workings of the emergency room. If you haven't seen it, it's awesome. So I'm gonna try not to give away any spoilers.
But in this particular season, there's this doctor who's trying to get everyone to use AI for their charting. And Dr. Robbie, who is played by the incredible Noah Wiley, wisely points out the downstream impacts of this initiative, where it could be a loss of staff and more overwork in the ER. So from my perspective as an influential person, I would not want to try to convince Dr. Robbie to adopt AI, but help him be more powerful in his voice to raise this legitimate concern.
But let's say there's this other doctor, you know, who's more of an auditory processor and struggles with keeping up with her charting. You know, this could be an amazing solution to her challenges. So it's like getting outside of influence is really looking at what are you influencing something and someone towards and whose best interest is on the other side. So again, influence is a powerful skill that can be used for good or bad, depending on who you're trying to convince and why and whose interest it's serving. But in the hands of a purpose-driven consultant or coach like you,
who does not have positional authority, this is where and how we get our wins. So I want you to learn some of the skills that I've learned over the years around how to influence without positional authority so that you can help your clients act on what's best for them. So the thing for my background, so just to give you a little bit of where I come from in terms of this role of influence is like, I literally have never had a role or position that I didn't create for myself or convince somebody to create. Literally,
Betsy Jordyn (04:39.828)
at Disney, like every single opportunity that I was in, even though I kind of had an official role as an internal OD consultant, I still was creating those opportunities. I mean, this is what I do in my branding. This is what I help my clients do. So for example, like the last initiative I led when I was at Disney, you know, was convincing the entire operations executive team to let go what they were doing individually to improve the guest cast and the cast leadership experience and work together. So how did I do that?
It really wasn't magical. Like I want to break it down in this particular episode. So what I did is I met with every single stakeholder, found out what they wanted from their perspective. I integrated all of that into a change initiative that each executive saw themselves in. Let me say it again. I met with every single one of the stakeholders, found out what they wanted from their perspective, and integrated all of that into a change initiative that each executive could see themselves in. I still remember today.
what each executive shared that contributed to the whole. You know, when I think about the work I do now as a brand messaging and positioning strategist, literally I can't think about how many times I've done interviews at the end of the process where I asked my clients like, what convinced you finally to go all in on the vision you have for your consulting or coaching business? And they all say like, it was because of you. I'm like, me, what did I do? You know, like I just helped you with the process. And they're like, it's because you helped me see this vision and believe in it. You believed in me before I believed in it.
more myself. So how did I do that? Like it's like, I get to call their ideas and I put it into a monetizable vision they were excited about. So when I think about influence, it's not influencing somebody to go somewhere that they don't want to go. It's influencing them along a path that they actually do really want to go on and giving them the courage to move forward. And so that's where those wins can be. You know, maybe you can't change the system on the whole, or maybe not alone, but you can get some wins. So I want to talk about those little wins.
by influencing with more care. And as I say, people don't care what you think should change until they know that you care. So I'm using that phrase in my own special way. Real quick before I get into my care framework, I wanna let you know that this is the last week to join the interest list for the Common Good Consulting and Coaching Consortium. So this is a potentially new cross-functional professional association for consultants and coaches working to reclaim the whole stakeholder capitalism.
Betsy Jordyn (07:03.266)
I don't know what this thing is gonna look like. I'm trying to gather the interest list so I can get a Zoom meeting together with a group of people where we can co-create this together. So if you're interested in being on this interest list and get the invite, go to my website at www.betsuJordyn.com forward slash common hyphen good. So now let's get into the content. So let's get, and actually let's get into my care model. And I'd love to get your feedback on how you feel about my care model. But the key point number one, the C in the care model is connect.
with your clients as people and peers. So you wanna influence somebody, you have to see them as a person first. You wanna create that human-human connection and actually the peer-to-peer connection. So this is the first step of change and here's why. People are complex. They are so much more than the rational thoughts. So you probably already know this, that the brain is divided into three parts and the cognitive brain that's responsible for advanced cognitive reasoning and analysis is only one part.
So that's why when you're trying to convince people of a big change and you just talk about like the cognitive part of like, here's the business case, they're not immediately saying yes, yes, because there's other parts of their brain. You know, we have our reptile brain that's responsible for our basic survival. So that might be rational, but now the reptile brain is like involved as like, my gosh, what's gonna happen here? But the real decision-makers are limbic brain, the emotional brain. So this is why simply presenting new information or rational arguments isn't sufficient to motivate people to change.
One of the things that got really clear to me about this is an amazing book, I highly recommend it, it's called A General Theory of Love, and it's by three authors, Thomas Lewis, Fari Amani, and Richard Lannan. But they brought up in this book this concept of limbic resonance, which is change happens at a deep emotional connection level where there's like this emotional connection and attunement that occurs between individuals. So it's this mutual exchange of emotional energy that creates this shared experience.
all this is like technical words that say that people change because of relationships more than new knowledge. Like it's in the context of that type of engagement. the logic from that is you as the purpose-driven consultant or coach, you you are the agent of change. You are the instrument of change. It's not your roles, not your credentials. It's not your theories. It's not your methods. It's not even your business case. It's your partnership.
Betsy Jordyn (09:24.076)
You have heard me, if you've been listening to me at all on this show, I talk a lot about partnerships and I think it's because of that. This is the container that anything goes through. And so therefore it's the partnership you create that forms the foundation for influence. And this holds true even with leaders who hold positions of status and authority. Always keeping partnership in mind will keep you from thinking like, my gosh, I have to say things in a certain way to try to influence this person because they have a lot of status.
And that's not really true. You have to see yourself as that peer. Like I'll never forget this. When I was an OD consultant back at Disney, I was relatively new in the role. And my OD team had this all day work session at, I think it was the Contemporary Resort at the time. Amazing place to do meetings. That's one of the best parts, sidebar, of working at Disney is you would do all these great meetings in the resorts and have all that experience. But anyway, I was doing that and I was also working, I was deployed to the animal kingdom and they were going through a major change project.
And the GM of that particular park really needed my help for something that was going on that day. So he met me at this work session before the whole meeting started. So we were working when everybody was coming in and the leaders were coming in, my leaders were coming in as well as my peers, but my leaders were beside myself. They're like, my gosh, how did you get this high ego leader to come meet with you rather than you meeting them where they are?
And I thought that was really interesting because I never saw this leader through the lens of, he's much higher in the organization than me. I should really act in a deferential way. You I saw myself as his right hand type of person. I was coming alongside him and I saw him that I wasn't there to come alongside him and support him, but not to impress him or convince him. And I think that built that credibility because I feel like he thought of me as somebody that was a safe person who was going to give him the truth, you know, that wasn't going to
be somebody who was intimidated by him. And so I think that there's something about you bringing in this personal power into this, where you act like this peer, or not even act like you're a peer, you see yourself as a peer that creates this relationship that a client could let their hair down and be comfortable and share some of their struggles. So how do you connect with your clients before you convince them of anything is when you have a discovery meeting with a potential client, you begin with a relationship.
Betsy Jordyn (11:44.034)
you always start the meeting. Like before you jump in and say, well, let me tell you about all the ways I do my consulting and coaching or something like that. You start off with conversations about themselves. Like, where am I talking to you from if you're on a Zoom meeting? Their office holds lots of intel. Every time I went into client meetings when I was an external consultant and I'd go to a new client site and I'd be in their office, there's so much data there. Like there's pictures of their kids, there's pictures of themselves doing their hobbies, there's like awards.
You just ask about that. You start to develop the relationship. When you're closing the deal, you're paying attention to not just the agreements, but the relationships. And you're not just asking for what their expectations are of you. You're sharing your needs in the relationship. I always encourage my clients to ask for three things and some iteration when they are landing work with clients to make sure the partnership is established in that peer-to-peer way. And one thing is access to information.
especially if you're an external consultant, you need access to information data. These are the couple biggies though. You need to have an independent point of view. You ask upfront, I wanna be able to have an independent point of view. I wanna see things differently. And the permission to raise difficult issues. Like if you set this up at the beginning, now you're setting the stage that I am going to be able to be holding up a mirror to you. I'm going to be raising things that might be hard for you to hear and you're getting permission for that.
You know, if you're working in an organization, I cannot emphasize this enough, you wanna treat people as people, not titles. You know, wanna see them as a human being, you know, not for their role. You don't wanna see them as a decision maker, like, I have to get XYZ leaders on board with this change. You wanna think about them as a human being, you know, like, and what's their vested interest? What do they care about? And you wanna show up as a human being. You know, you are not your expertise. Your expertise is something you know, but you are bringing all your strengths and everything about who you are to the table.
So the reflection question I would leave you with is I want you to really consider how are you positioning with your... I want you to think about how are you positioning yourself with your clients? Have you fallen into the surrogate leadership trap, which means like, I'm an expert and I swoop in with all the answers. Or are you in the pair of hands trap where you're a service provider for hire that just simply does work for a client? Or...
Betsy Jordyn (13:56.982)
Are you showing up as a peer-to-peer strategic partner in the full power of what you do who comes along your side, your clients, to help them achieve what they want, albeit in a much better way because of your involvement, but you're coming alongside them on the journey that they are on. When you're working with a client system that you wanna influence, do you see the people that you wanna influence as people or as decision makers according to their positional authority? You know, the truth is you cannot influence from above or below.
You know, in our world as consultants and coaches, we do not have positional power. So even if we try to act like experts with all the answers, we're not, you know, we don't own any of the outcomes. Like I always like to, I like the phrase, like, it's not my monkeys, it's not my circus. Like no matter what's going on in the organization, your client's world is their monkeys, it's their circus, it's not yours. You know, so you can't really...
tell them what they need to do because you don't have any accountability over that. So you can't influence from above or at least not very well. And you really can't influence from below because you don't really have that credibility if you are just delivering whatever a client asks for. Like you haven't asked for the permission to raise difficult issues to have the independent point of view. You could only influence from a partnership position. And if you're not positioning yourself that way, your first question is to evaluate.
Are you in one of those two traps? And if so, why? And do you wanna get out of it? And how are you gonna get out of it? So the first part of the care model is to connect. Connect human to human, peer to peer. Now let's get to the A. The A is ask great questions and mirror their responses. When you ask great questions, you're doing it to get beyond the surface level information or simplistic answers to really understand deeply
what a client really wants and make them feel seen, heard, understood. If your goal with influence isn't just to get clients to do whatever you want them to do, but help them make decisions and choices to support the best interests of themselves and the realm that they are responsible for, it requires both of you getting really, really clear on what they want and how that might be different from what they actually really need. So this requires you to ask great questions and more importantly,
Betsy Jordyn (16:11.394)
deeply listen to their responses. So you may have heard me talk about my framing and empathy framework in the context of discovery meetings and pivoting clients from wants to needs back in episode 132. And you also might've heard me get into strategic listening with Rick Bameljay in episode 130. If you're really interested in this whole process, I would encourage you to listen to both of those episodes. Rick Bameljay has amazing insight into strategic listening and he's building it as a leadership competency. It's amazing. He's brilliant.
I definitely encourage you to go back and listen to that. But I want you to think about your experiences. I want you to put yourself in a place where you are in a place of confusion or crossroads and a change. And you met somebody who not only asked you really, really good questions around what you were trying to achieve or what the issues were, but really mirrored back what you said in a way that made you feel seen and understood. I want you to really picture that. And I want you to picture the trust that was built from that place that allowed them later on
to make recommendations of actions that you needed to take and how much more you trusted them. Somebody just gives you like, hey, you should do X, Y, and Z, but they don't really take the time to really understand what you want, where you're at, what's important, and they didn't mirror it back to you. Why would you listen to that advice? There's no context. But if you deeply listen to what they want, and you keep giving advice, I think that this is why there's the parts of my process where it's really difficult with the brand positioning. But I think my clients trust me.
because I never forget what they put on their form from the very first discovery meeting and from our first initial conversations and we identified their goal. Like, I don't forget their goal. And so when they're at that in-between place, like, can I really do this? It's like, remember you said you wanted this? This is in alignment with that. And they're like, okay, yeah, I got that. So it's really building that framework of trust because you are the person who holds up for them.
you know, the vision that they have for themselves, like, and you believe it for them until they can believe it for themselves. Like, that's really what the word mentor means. The mentor comes from the word mine. And that's what a mentor is, is somebody who holds the vision for the person that they're helping until they could believe it for themselves. So I think it's interesting. This is just, you know, I like etymology. If you've been listening to my podcast at all, you always hear me talk about etymology of words. find it interesting.
Betsy Jordyn (18:30.296)
But I think that specifically as it relates to this, the word cure and curious share the same root, which is kira, which means care. They all kind of come together, that the cure and curiosity and care are the solution. If you really wanna influence somebody, you have to understand them. Also, if you've been listening to the podcast, you've probably seen me use my framing and empathy work all the time. So my guests often say that I bring out the best in them. And I think it's probably because I have this skill.
So it's this skill that helped me win over that senior team I mentioned about Disney. And also like as an external consultant, like whenever I went into a new client system, I always met with all the executives individually and I would use this framing and empathy framework. And I think this is why they would say like, my gosh, like Betsy really understands us, even though I didn't really understand the business, there's no way I could just from that. But because I mirrored it back, I built that trust. So here's how it works. I'm gonna give you all my tips on the framing and empathy.
So first you begin with open-ended questions about what's going on. So you might ask a question like, Tommy, what's going on in your career, your life, your business, your organization, whatever it is that is the relevant context for why you're having the conversation. And then when you get to a pause, what you say is, what I heard you say is you mirrored back what you heard them say. You ask them, did I get it right? And then you ask, is there more? And you keep doing this over and over again until what I would say is the mental popcorn stops popping. So you just keep going through this iteration.
Tell me what's going on in your career. Like, oh, well, you I'm a leader and I really wanna leave my corporate job and start my own business, you but I'm really scared. And it's like, oh, well, what I heard you say is that you're a leader who really wants to start your own business, but you're really scared. Did I get that right? You know, yes. Is there more? Yeah. And I know I have a unique combination of skills and I'm not quite sure how it translates to a business model. So then I would do the same thing. It's like, oh, so what I heard you say is...
You're a leader, you wanna start your own business, but you're afraid, and you feel like you have a unique combination of skills that you're not quite sure on a package. Did I get that right? Is there more? Keep doing this over and over again until I get the whole picture of what's going on. I mirror back to them what I heard them say, and then the relief washes over. This happens all the time. And you do this until you feel like, their lizard brain has calmed down. They feel heard. Now you can move into a different direction.
Betsy Jordyn (20:49.592)
but the first begins with you wanna get all of this information out. And so the question I would leave you with is if you can in your next client conversation, ask more curiosity driven types of questions versus like jumping to solution. And just think about like, what would it look like to let that mental popcorn stop popping before you respond and do that active listening. And again, I would highly encourage you to go back to the episode I did with Rick Balmuljay.
who has a really great model to help you do this even better. I know I have blogs out there too about the Framing and Empathy framework. There's a lot to this, but this is a great power skill. Or you could just observe how I do even my podcasts. You can hear me doing this over and over again, or my clients feel really hurt. So that's the A. The R in the framework is Reframe Perspective. What I mean by this is,
organizing all those thoughts and ideas into logical categories, and then putting a label on what you're seeing overall. So this is what I mean by the framing part. So you put a little frame around all those ideas. And so let me explain what I mean by this by telling you how I used to teach my daughters how to clean their rooms. So when their rooms are an absolute mess, what we would do is we would take everything that was like not in place and just throw it into a big pile in the center of the room. So this is what you did in the asking good questions part, know, threw it all in the room.
Then what we would do is start sorting the items into categories. Books, hang up clothes, dresser clothes, and then the dresser clothes went into the subsets like socks and shirts and stuff like that. Dolls, know, everything went into those categories. So this is what you do when you have all of the mental popcorn. You throw it all into the room and then you start organizing it. So what you do is then you say, oh, well, what I hear you saying is it sounds like you're dealing with three different issues. You know, so maybe you're working with an organization.
and they go through like a whole laundry list of tons of things that they're dealing with. It's like, well, you know, this leader and this leader are at odds with one another. we have like, you know, this organ, this department's doing this. And now there's like, everybody's handling leadership differently. And you know, they have this laundry list of things. And so then you're like, well, what I'm hearing you say is you're actually dealing with three issues, duplication of effort, silos, and inconsistent behaviors. You know, so you get the issues into these categories.
Betsy Jordyn (23:10.904)
but you don't stop there. You introduce what I would call the strategic frame. And so what you might say is like, well, it sounds like what you're trying to do is you're trying to grow your organization to the next level and your leadership and operating practices aren't keeping up. Or maybe something like, your growth is outpacing your leadership and operating practices. know, like whatever it is, you put the frame around it and you kind of put the label that makes sense out of all of these things that says, this is really what's going on. And so then whatever this frame is, it becomes the goal.
Like what they're trying to do is kind of the flip of whatever the strategic frame of the problem is, is like, well, we want to match our leadership and operating practices to the level of growth we are aspiring to. It's like, okay, so now the engagement has like focus, you now the work you're doing has focus. And then everything underneath it becomes a part of it. So all of those three categories now become maybe the objectives of what you're trying to accomplish. And maybe like all of those other specific things, you know, are the pain points that you're going to flip into value.
You know, but it's the strategic frame that keeps you and everybody else in the organization focused. Like using that example from the Disney experience that I had, you know, what we decided to do was create a label for it is our whole thing is to improve the guest and the cast engagement. That became the label. Everything underneath it fit into that label. And that was what we were trying to do. So the business case, everything that we were focused on.
all of the different behaviors, everything that we came up with came out of that particular goal. So when you have that clarity of like strategic frame around the goal, that is what brings everybody together. know, like when everybody's in the symptom level, like everybody's gonna be fighting with one another. But if you can say, you know what, our organization is growing at a rate that exceeds our current leadership and operating practices and we simply need to mature them to this level, that makes more sense.
You know, and then you help the organization see like, we're at this level, here's all the stuff that we need to do. Or you could look at it from the same perspective as like maybe from a coaching standpoint. You know, a lot of times we're brought into client situations where they are in between life stages, you know, like, well, so they're probably at maybe at a leadership level and they're ready to go on an executive level, but their behaviors are not matching to executive level leadership. So you need to level that up, or maybe they've been a great
Betsy Jordyn (25:33.588)
individual contributor or technical expert. Now they hit this level of leadership. Well, now we need to match their leadership behaviors to match whatever it is that they've gotten to. So when you put the strategic frame, it's like, well, that's basically what we're trying to do. Everybody relaxes, it's clearer. But the other thing about getting to this strategic frame or reframing perspective is it also helps provide clarity to you and to your client around like, what is the right thing?
that is needed in order to get them to this particular outcome. So this is what's the hardest thing for all consultants and coaches to do is to step away from your expertise and evaluate, I the right match for what this client is looking for? Because you wanna step away from, I want this client to adopt this methodology. I want them to adopt this perspective. I want them to adopt this approach to X, Y, and Z, whatever it is that we wanna sell, or even what they're asking for.
because your goal is to help them achieve their goal and the expertise, the way that you are thinking about it or your methodology may or may not be relevant. So the only way that you can guarantee results is if three conditions are met. If your expertise is relevant, meaning you have the right expertise for the goal and for the problem. You know, this whole effort of working together is timely, meaning that there's enough pain for the client to dedicate their time and other people's time to solving this. And as importantly, your approach is a fit.
You know, your values match, your approach matches. Like you're not for everybody, I'm not for everybody. You know, if somebody instantly wants to go out and get more clients like tomorrow, like I'm not that person. You know, I could help you in a couple of weeks, you know, to achieve the clients because I want to take a more strategic approach, but I'm much more interested in your long-term sustainable success. You know, so that's kind of where I fit. You know, when you think about what you're trying to do and your approach to leadership, especially, or your approach to your client work, whatever it is that you're doing,
you wanna make sure that it's a fit for the clients that you're working with. So this is where I was talking about in the last couple of weeks, is that we need to be more aware of what we're up against. Because if you're a people centered consultant or coach and legit your client only wants to double their revenue for the sake of shareholder wealth, this is where you will find this out. And you don't wanna push them to want what you want. You wanna let them want what they want. And you could decide, where do I fit into this or don't I fit into this? But without getting that,
Betsy Jordyn (27:56.62)
reframe and that clarity and what they're going after, you really can't make that decision. And so then you might get into the work because you've been pushing for it and it's like, yeah, got some lip service kind of buy-in to something or another, they signed up, but the approach is not a match. You're gonna be banging your head up against the wall, you're gonna feel like a failure, they're gonna feel annoyed with you, and the whole thing won't deliver the results. So you really wanna take that beat and make sure, you know, is my expertise relevant? Is this timely? Is this a fit?
So bottom line again, how do you reframe effectively? Is you wanna organize scattered concerns into clear categories, connect the dots between like all of these different systems and get it into those categories, and then put a strategic frame around it that makes sense of the chaos and shows them the bigger picture. So just in terms of application and reflection for you, think about a recent client conversation. Where are you starting to notice the themes? And how can you become more effective at framing an empathy?
so that you can get these organization to the thoughts that brings clarity to what the situation is at hand, clarity on the potential of the partnership, what can you do around that? All right, so we got our C, we got the A, we got the R, now we're gonna get to the E. And the E is encouraging right actions. And right actions are basically what aligns with what your client wants, what they need, what's in the best interest of themselves, and the realm that they're responsible for. And gives them the courage to go after.
you know, making this happen. But it's not about what I want. You know, you don't want to encourage right actions just for like me as a consultant or coach. I want you to want this, but it's not just what they want either. It's what's in the best interest of themselves in the realm that they're responsible for. Like that's our ethics as people centered consultants and coaches is we want them to make decisions that benefit everybody. And here's the other thing that we need to be paying attention to is that the real reason why most change fails
We all know this, most of the change efforts that we've been a part of fail in some ways. And it's not because of lack of ineffective change plans or even lack of buy-in. I personally think it's just the nature of change. We live in this world that's constantly changing with brains that are literally wired to resist it. Like there's nothing that our brains hate more. And even if people say, I love change, they don't, you know, like, or actually they love change that maybe they initiate, but nobody likes things being changed upon them either, you know, so.
Betsy Jordyn (30:19.202)
There's this whole dynamic, but underneath it, I think this is what's going on, is that there's this universal fear of the unknown. That's what triggers that resistance. But I also think that there's this letting go what got you here to get you to where you want to go. So in other words, what got you here won't get you there, as Marshall Goldsmith would say, but we know and trust what got us here. And that's what the challenge is. So when I think about all the transformations I've supported over the years,
All of them had to do with people going to new phases in their careers, lives, leadership, organizations that required them to reshape how they're operating today, which is hard to give up because you know that this delivered results. Like I remember when I was at that crossroads where I was trying to decide between, I go all in on the brand messaging I do today? Or do I kind of stay in some sort of version of my consulting business? And that was a really hard decision. That was much harder than even me leaving my internal consulting job for external.
because what it required is I had to give up consulting, which is everything that I knew about how to make money. And I had to jump into this unknown world of this B2C business and how do I make money as a brand messaging and positioning person, which is a very different type of career if you think about it, you know, compared to consulting. And so that took me a long time and a lot of money and I tried for years holding onto both of them. And your clients are gonna be in that same place. Like you're gonna hold onto these practices that we
have outgrown for a long time because they work for so long and then they stop and then you're like, what do I do now? You know, I think about the timeshare company that I worked with that was really, it was a global enterprise. There was more than 10,000 employees. They were all over the world, but they still wanted to operate like this scrappy startup, you know, the scrappy approach to sales. It was really hard for them to give up this like entrepreneurial approach, you know, or the clients that I work with, you know, who want these sustainably profitable businesses, but they want to
get there by landing clients just like they did when they landed jobs at promotions, just through networking and that type of thing. But that doesn't work because when you're landing a job, you get one job and that kind of lasts you for a while. When you're in a consulting world, you need lots of clients. It's just not sustainable. So you need to adopt your different ways of getting opportunities and generating income. That's where the challenge is. I got to reshape what I've done. So even right now on a very personal level,
Betsy Jordyn (32:43.798)
Same deal, like we wanna cling to whatever's in the past, because it's what we know and everything feels like a loss. Like right now, I've been, for the past year or so, I've been transitioning from being a busy single parent to empty nesting, you know, and finding a life, you know, just like my life and the center of my life that's not my kids. Like that's super weird, you know. So with each change, even if it's like a positive change, there's always this loss in the unknown. So to influence clients to take action,
Whatever you do in terms of the actions that you recommend, you need to make a roadmap that integrates this reality. You need to include both the tactical and the emotional elements of change that address it. So what I mean by that is I'm not suggesting that you need to put a change process together. So let's say you're saying, I wanna implement this change and I want employees to adopt it. So you need to do more messaging, more message points to get employees to buy in. That's not how it works. Like I can't tell you.
how frustrating it is sometimes when I've been a consultant and leaders are like, well, can't we just like give more employees more messages just to get them to buy in? No, you can't. You need to create a process where it gives them a voice that's heard. know, like people will buy in to stuff that they naturally have a voice in. If you did not include people in the front end, they're not going to involve, they're not going to be excited about it. You know, if you don't ask for opinions, like I was using the example of the pit.
You know, if they wanted to improve efficiency of the ER, they should probably have asked Dr. Robbie what he suggested about improving the ER before they take an initiative to put AI in and make everybody do it. You like you want to really get those voices heard, you know, and you need to create room and breathing room for the resistance that will naturally emerge when you're dealing with change. This is why when I tried to offer VIP days for my brand positioning and messaging, it didn't work.
because I didn't give room for the emotional resistance that absolutely 100 % will show up at different points to settle down so that the strategic clarity can emerge. So here's what you do to reduce the fear of the unknown in what you recommend with clients. You wanna make sure everything's in a step-by-step way. So the way that you replace this fear of the unknown is to give clarity and this is where the step-by-step plan comes in. Break things down into manageable pieces, like show them the path forward.
Betsy Jordyn (35:03.65)
This is the brilliance I would say from the Story Brand process is the Story Brand suggests that you are, you know, you are the, I think they call it the mentor with the plan or something like that. You whoever you are with the plan, you know, you are bringing the plan. And the reason why the plan works is it reduces the fear of the unknown. That's why a lot of times when your clients are trying to go from here to there, you know, I suggest to my clients, put a success solution in your proposal because that gives them an idea of like, this is how I do it.
You know, and then illustrate that with examples of others who made a successful similar change. Like tell the stories. You know, the whole point of testimonials for your website is not about you. It's not about saying how great you are. It's about showing to your future clients what's possible for them in the stories of your past clients. So your goal of your testimonial is to paint a picture of what is possible for them. So that's why you want to tell their transformation journey in your testimonial.
So you don't want your testimonials to say, my gosh, Betsy was so great. She was so good at listening and she was really there for me and she was really invested in my success. Like you wanna be able to say, I was profitable faster because I invested in Betsy first. At the beginning I was really struggling. I knew I had a unique combination of skills and she helped me package it and as a result I've been able to fast track my growth or something like that. Like that tells the narrative. When you think about what you wanna convey with your testimonials and your case studies,
you are not the hero of that story, your clients are. And you wanna do this to inspire your future clients of what's possible for them. And then plan in advance for the resistance that will come. You need to get really good, especially in our world, for resistance. Like you need to know the sneaky ways that resistance will show up and you need to know how to handle it. So for example, there's gonna be predictable ones that you're gonna see. Like one of my favorites is,
the flight into health, know, like they call you, you have all these conversations, then like magically, you know, within like a week or so, it's like, you know, all those problems that we had have magically gone away. That's probably resistance. Or they might push you for credentials, like, you know, something, you know, like, tell me, tell me more, tell me more, tell me more, like nothing's enough, you know, or they'll act like confused or they will have superficial compliance. That's the hardest resistance to see is they'll seem like they're bad.
Betsy Jordyn (37:28.504)
but then they go off after the meeting and they do something otherwise. So you wanna know how to handle the resistance. You wanna be able to name the elephants in the room. You wanna give space for the objections. You need to understand the difference between objections and resistance. Objections are great, you know, cause you could deal with them and be prepared for it. So bottom line, roadmaps are awesome. They replace the fear of the unknown with clarity. Case studies or success stories inspire people, you know, to what's possible, you know, and...
Grow your skills and resistance. It's a great skill to have in general. So the question I would ask you is just take a look at what you typically recommend for clients. What is your approach? Maybe at the proposal process or maybe you're involved in the client and you're trying to get everybody to get an agreement on how they're gonna work together. What are you doing to anticipate the resistance and how can you bake it into the process? Like for me having the step-by-step approach,
and actually asking questions like, well, where do you think you might struggle with some fear here? Or how can we plan in advance for it? Where are employees going to struggle with this? How can we involve them at this particular point in time? Just think about it from that standpoint. So that's the care model. Love to get your feedback. Reach out to me let me know, what do you think? Maybe it's brilliant. Maybe it's like, this is like nothing. This is not that great of a model. Love your feedback on it.
But to influence, need to care, still not too much, but still care. So the C, connect on a human to human, a peer to peer level. A, ask great questions and deeply listen to the response. R is to reframe and elevate perspectives so they can see what the goal is and what we're going after. And E, encourage right actions that serves everybody's best interests. So after the last couple episodes about stakeholder versus shareholder capitalism and progressive versus classical management,
Maybe you want a way feeling like you can't change the whole system. Maybe you can, maybe you can't, but you can influence some wins and care is hopefully how you can do it. So again, my goal is to give you some support to get those wins. So here's what you can do next. Practice care with your next client. Just pick one of the elements and focus on doing it exceptionally well in your next conversation. If you really want to get to the power skill on this, it's the framing and empathy. So I definitely encourage you to go back and listen to some of those episodes that I have on that.
Betsy Jordyn (39:51.082)
If you are interested in helping support changing the system, this is your last week to get on the interest list. So head on over to my website at www.betsyJordyn.com forward slash common good or common hyphen good and get on the interest list. And for sure, if you need help positioning yourself for greater influence with clients, head on over to my website as well to look at my VIP programs or better yet book a call with me. I'd love to help you position yourself as that strategic partner, as that peer.
with your clients so that you could have that greater influence, impact, income. So that is it for today's episode. If this landed for you, please hit subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. Send it to a consultant or coach friend who needs to hear it. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It will help more people find the show. And until next time, thanks so much for listening.
