Squiggly Shortcut: How to Influence People Who Disagree With You

Hi, this is Sarah from the Squiggly Careers podcast and in this shortcut I'm going to talk about how to influence people who disagree with you. And I was thinking about the best way to bring this to life and I thought it was probably through an example. So I want you to imagine I'm in a conversation with somebody who disagrees with the idea of squiggly careers. Can you imagine? But it does happen not that often anymore, but it used to happen a lot more.

And I think the start of that conversation, so when you get a sense, perhaps you're surprised by it, or perhaps you knew that it might be coming, somebody disagrees with you, often our inclination might be to keep on talking, keep on persuading. You're trying to win someone over to your way of thinking. I don't think that works that well. I think you are much better off being open to listening because through that listening, that is how you then learn more about what's getting in the way, why somebody actually really disagrees. So if someone didn't like the idea of squiggly careers, let's imagine they said, I just don't think it will work in our company or in our culture.

Rather than then trying to give them lots of reasons why it will work, I would now say, oh, that's really interesting. Like what do you think would get in the way? What has worked really well? So just listen and learn. And if in that first conversation that's all you've done, that's okay.

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