The Real Challenge to Getting Buy-In (Case Study)

😤 “She was dismissive of me in a meeting I led. She thinks she’s smarter than me,” a client vented today in a coaching session.

My client is a newly hired team lead, assigned a hiring budget and project mandate.

When I ask her why she needs the buy-in of the person who’d been dismissive, she says, “That’s how I’ll know I can do this.”

But wait, I tell her.

“What if your capacity to complete this project (something she’s done before elsewhere) is NEVER diminished by how others respond?

👉🏼 “What if your capacity is a constant, no matter who misunderstands you?”

Here’s what we uncovered.

Regardless of how expertly my client communicates her process to stakeholders, some will invariably misunderstand or selectively listen or resist any kind of change

Not because she’s doing something wrong, but because that’s human behavior.

So instead of defining the absence of human behavior (no one ever pushing back) as the arbiter of her capacity, I invited my client to EXPECT more human behavior as she proceeds to move forward.

Human behavior, let’s all face it, can be annoying and can make things hard.

“So what if you expected and anticipated the annoying and the hard?” I said.

According to my client, things being hard and annoying is not a problem. Actually, it makes doing the project even more worthwhile.

With this new reframe, the dismissive person became a non-issue, just another colleague to interact with.

But now with more clarity of purpose.

I help smart women managers neutralize office politics (aka the annoying and the hard) so they can make new strides in their careers as leaders who get the job done.

Book your free consultation today, because tomorrow is the day you make the hard and annoying a non-issue for you.