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It's like therapy for your career.
Let's be honest.
Most of us know relationships matter at work.
But do we really understand how to build the kind of trust, influence and connection that turns colleagues into collaborators and contacts into champions?
And that's where today's guest comes in.
Andy Lapata is one of the world's leading experts on strategic relationships.
He's helped Fortune 500 companies, high-growth entrepreneurs and professionals in every sector rethink how they build and leverage connection.
If you've ever felt like networking was performative, or like you were doing all the right things but not building the right relationships, this episode's for you.
And what I love about this is that it allows you to be authentic and connect genuinely without feeling icky or manipulative in the process.
Because what Andy teaches isn't just about transactional networking.
It's about trust, vulnerability, and playing the long game.
So Andy, you've worked with leaders all around the world on the power of relationships, but I'd love to start with your story personally.
What pulled you into this space?
Was it some defining moment that made you realize that this was your lane?
The defining moment was quitting my job, my safe corporate job to become a freelance writer.
And my father asking me to come and help with the new business he'd launched, which happened to be a business network.
Back in 1999,
He launched it in 98.
So it wasn't any great epiphany.
I hadn't even heard the term networking at the time.
And it was really just to use different skills that I'd used in my 20s, which was cold calling to start getting local businesses involved in that network.
But what actually happened was I don't think he ever had the intention of me working part time in that business.
He always wanted to draw me in to the point that I said, that's a great idea.
He said, because it's a way of earning cash while I get some writing commissions.
And I said, great idea.
I'll get a bar bartending job as well.
And he said, you won't have time in you.
But the closest to the epiphany, it was more of an evolution than a revolution.
But I got involved in the networking groups.
I didn't even intend to go.
You know, they were at seven o'clock in the morning.
I don't do seven o'clock in the morning.
I didn't.
But, you know, I then got dragged along.
And then I got more and more involved.
And then I realized that we were setting up these meetings and giving the agenda, but no one really knew what to do.
So I developed training for our members.
And initially the training was the how to, you know, how do you give a 60 second presentation?
How do you deliver a longer presentation?
How do you network?
Um, but then I realized that people didn't understand why they were there in the first place.
You know, my, my good friend, Susan, Susan Rowan, came up with a phrase many years ago how to work a room but the trouble with a lot of networking training historically is that people taught how to work a room but never why you were in there in the first place so i brought in the strategy training and and that was that was how i got involved in this in the first place incredible i i love this story because as we see necessity is the mother of invention it wasn't your plan but you found yourself in a position where there was a necessity you filled it and now this is where your career is taking you it's so fascinating and i i really love that realization not even fully understanding why you're in the room and i think a lot of times people can relate to that but especially as it relates to building business relationships we do the things that other people tell us to do.
And it's like, we don't understand the difference between the tactic, a strategy and a goal.
And so we just go in and make these little tactical moves.
We say okay, somebody told me I should have a firm handshake, give a card and say who I am in under 15 seconds.
I'll do that thing without a clear understanding of where it fits within a larger strategy and what the ultimate goal is.
So just settling down and understanding intentionality, the intentionality behind all of these business relationships or relationships in general.
It sounds like that's a really strong place to start where a lot of people often miss.
You're spot on with that.
You're absolutely right.
And to the extent that if you track the evolution from there, because that's going back 25 years ago I hardly use the word networking anymore because I very rarely teach how to work a room.
I very rarely advise my clients on which events to go to.
If they have conferences to attend, we will look at their strategy for that.
But for me, I've evolved from someone who ran networking events and show people how to make the most out of them to someone who focuses on professional relationships.
And I always said going way back that networking isn't about events.
Events are a tool in the relationship process.
But my focus has shifted very much to the other 90, or the 95 that takes place outside of those organized events.
And we've been even less strategic or tactical about how we engage with colleagues at work, how we identify key stakeholders, what we do to nurture those relationships that aren't relevant to us right now but we may need some day.
And how we just change that whole approach to, let's face it, the most valuable resource any of us have in our careers and treat it with the respect it deserves, that network that you build up over many years in the workplace and deal with it strategically, without making anyone feel networked by you, maintaining that authenticity and the humanity and the connection, the vulnerability, if you like as well, while still saying okay, who do I need to be talking to?
Why would they help me?
And do they know what I need?
Okay.
So, so let's break this down Andy, because we I really want to emphasize this, because this is a paradigm shifting reality.
So what you said was the networking aspect of it.
What we traditionally identify as networking is just 1 of the larger game which is business relationships, which is the other 99.
So when we talk about people are being too tactical, not strategic enough or understanding their goal or purpose when it comes to networking, That is a real problem.
But I think a bigger problem is that we don't even have the knowledge base to be tactical in business relationships, because I don't even think people have a concept of business relationships in a real sense.
So we need to pull this all the way back.
So listeners, you're going to be happy to know we're not going to talk about networking anymore at all, apparently in this interview, because there's something so much more powerful that we, that people, don't talk enough about, which is business relationships.
So let's just start off with this, and i think a good place to start is drawing the distinction between a business relationship and a personal relationship, Because a lot of times we can say, all right, when I think about relationships, I think about the personal side.
But now we're recognizing, all right, yes, there are true relationships on the business side, but there is somehow distinguished from the personal.
So how do we draw that line?
And you're asking a Brit this one, which is an interesting positioning.
So there's a very cultural thing at play here, which is why I say that.
Because if you walk into a room full of traditional Brits and say so, I used to when I you know one of my old training points I haven't covered for many years actually, but I used to draw a little diagram and say this is how we look at our network typically.
And on one side we've got our clients.
If we're in an outwardly facing role, we've got our colleagues at work, we've we may have suppliers, depending on the role, our professional network.
And on the other side we have our friends, our family, our cousins.
You know our, the people that you might meet at church or on the school run, you know, or I go to football a lot, so I, you know, I have my friends from there.
So we have our personal network And what a typical Brit will do is draw a big thick line down the middle and say never the twain shall meet.
And you don't mix.
Now, I think those lines have got very blurry now.
And particularly in the age of social media, where your friends will connect with you on LinkedIn.
Your business associates may friend you on Facebook or follow you on Twitter.
So Those lines have become increasingly blurry.
They were doing anyway as our lifestyles became less rigid.
You know I'm of a generation now where I've seen a change in the way we interact with each other in the workplace.
And I think there is more bleed into our personal lives from our professional.
So the British response is no, never the twain shall meet an american response, and you know this better than than i would.
Maybe actually a bit warmer.
We will mingle outside work.
I do want to know more about your personal life.
I want to know the person that that i work with um and, and so, as i say it's, it's funny.
You ask a brit that we need to be aware of those cultural sensibilities, but we need to challenge them as well, respectfully.
So I will find a room full of Brits and I'm British.
So that makes it easier for me to do so.
To say, actually, isn't this about individual relationships?
And all we're doing is we're labeling people.
You know, I can point to two members of my family and friends of mine where my relationship has got stronger because we share more in common in our professional lives and our personal lives.
Just because we are related to each other doesn't mean that we have a lot in common with each other.
But actually we found that the commonalities come in our professional lives and therefore talking about work has brought us closer together as family members.
I've had conversations in the pub with friends where we start talking about one or the other's job and suddenly see connections and we can help each other and we get pleasure from doing that.
Similarly, I've got And I've got professional contacts that have become my closest friends where I've become, I've emceed their wedding, for example.
And, you know, I've spent time at their kids birthdays and so on.
So we, I count some of my closest friends come from my professional life and I count myself very lucky.
In that I have clients where that can never happen, or certainly not certain professional relationships.
You know, if I'm working with a pharmaceutical rep, they're not going to become personal friend with a GP.
It's unethical to do that.
So you have to recognize that as well.
So when you say what's the difference between the two, the simple answer is context.
It's the context in which you meet.
It's the context in which you know each other.
Ultimately, it's two human beings, and two human beings will find commonality and bond along that commonality.
The challenge is that when we draw that big, thick dividing line, when we label people and we say you're part of this part of my life and you're part of that part of my life, and we interact with them based on that relationship and that history, we forget that they have a life beyond the life they have with us.
And they have the same challenges and fears and concerns and loves and passions and hobbies as we do.
And actually, if we can start opening up the conversation, we can find so many points of connection that are immediately apparent, based on the original context on which we connected.
Ooh, this is amazing.
And also, it's incredibly validating for me as well.
Because for me, I never really...
I found it more difficult to draw that line between the personal and professional relationships, not in terms of crossing boundaries inappropriately, but in terms of just recognizing I'm vibing with a person.
But the classical advice on this would be to keep professional distance.
But then it almost seems wrong when we find something out in common, right?
And so what I've recognized is that, for me, when it comes to building relationships, I'm thinking about it in terms of all right, We just have relationships.
I have friendships.
I have friends who I don't do any business with and I have a lot of friends that I do business with.
And usually, if I'm the way that I see it, if I'm doing it right, the people that I do business with should become some level of friends.
Like, we can have friendly interactions and everything, and we can have a portion of our conversation that is dedicated to true connection as friends.
But then we also have to respect the business purpose that brought us together.
And it allows me to create stronger relationships and make better deals and have so many more opportunities because I'm not allocating needless cognitive energy to drawing boundaries where they don't need to be drawn, just because of old school business perspectives.
But, at the same time, if you aren't able to understand the context that we find ourselves in, You might find yourself in a situation where you're making more friendly personal decisions, when it should be more business driven than others.
So how do you maximize the efficacy or the closeness of the relationship while at the same time making sure you're making the right business decisions when it's time to come to that?
Hey Andy, if you'd just give me one second, I want to say something to the person who's listening.
If someone sent this episode to you, it means that they see something powerful in you.
They believe in your potential to lead with connection, not just direction.
So here's your invitation.
Pass it on.
Think of one person in your life maybe a manager, a colleague or someone launching something new who needs to hear this.
Send it their way.
That's how good ideas spread.
And that's how communities grow.
I think that's a really great question and it's a really important one.
But I do want to pick up on one key thing that you said, because you talked about being happy to do business with friends and family.
I think there are lines and I think everyone needs to understand where those lines are for themselves and to to make that decision from an educated standpoint.
So we need to be cognizant of all of the risks that can take place.
So for example, I, I am very reluctant to do direct business with close friends and family now.
And that's because I've been burned more than once from doing so.
One example was a family member relatively close family member who many years ago asked me what I could do for his business.
Now, this came at a time where our business was struggling.
We needed work.
So any doubts I had were overridden by And I I drove over to him half hour drive.
I sat in a meeting with him for an hour.
I drove back.
So I've taken two hours out of my day.
I then spent however long I spent on a proposal, let's say another two or three hours.
He's got a half day of my time and I sent him a proposal.
He never, ever responded to it.
He never even acknowledged it.
He has never mentioned it since.
I don't talk to him because I felt so disrespected.
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So you have that risk that if you have an established personal relationship and enter into a direct business relationship with them and things don't go well the right way for whatever reason, that is bound to impact your personal relationship.
I've seen it back in my parents' lives when I was a kid, where I've seen them have blazing rows with a business partner and not talk to them again.
And they were socializing with them a lot.
Maybe it's something that runs in our family.
I don't know.
But I'm pretty convinced that it runs elsewhere as well.
I have seen this on multiple occasions in different environments.
So that's when you're transitioning from personal relationship into professional and expecting to be able to maintain the personal alongside.
If you do, you need to set clear ground rules up front and you need to be aware of the dangers and communicate about them openly so you can raise a red flag quickly.
So my personal choice would be not to do business directly with friend or family.
But will I refer them or will I accept a referral from them?
Absolutely.
But do I honor that referral even more than I would?
And any referral that comes my way, I treat it, you know, with absolute care.
But if it comes from close friends and family, I'm communicating with them all the time, especially if it goes wrong.
It's really really important point.
You know, we can shy away from that communication, but we need to be able to have that conversation.
I have friends who are strong referrers of mine and When we go out and socialize I will acknowledge what's happening.
But I keep that conversation short so that we're not making our social life about work.
So I mentioned earlier how I went into business with my father and my dad and I we didn't have a lot in common.
We had a strong relationship and certainly by his final years, we were very close.
But we had our issues previously, and a lot of that came from we were very different people.
We had very different interests.
And what brought us close actually was working together despite blazing rows in the early days.
Really strong, fiery fights.
But it was really interesting because we didn't have much else in common.
That's what we talked about at home as well.
And when we had family dinners and my nieces were little at the time.
You know, my nieces are women in their 20s now, but they were, you know, five or six, whatever it might be back then.
The business was called BRE.
And when we had big family dinners and my nieces were there, they would go.
BRE alert, BRE alert.
Stop us talking about work.
And I think you do need to be cognizant of where those lines lie and set the ground rules.
When someone is a professional contact and becomes a close personal friend, I think it's slightly easier.
But again, you still the same rules apply.
I never reach out.
You know, Facebook will suggest clients of mine to me because the algorithms say that I communicate with them through email LinkedIn, whatever it might be.
I never send them a friend request, but if they send me one then I'll accept, because I have a simple rule is not to do anything in my life in one area of my life that would embarrass me in another.
So there shouldn't be anything on my Facebook in my personal life that would cost me work or embarrass me in a professional context.
Um, maybe some of my political views might put some people off, but if they're put off because I have a different political perspective, then maybe I shouldn't be working with them anyway.
You know, we should be embracing that.
You know, and I have friends and professional contacts who have very different political perspectives than me, but we stay friends.
We might veer away from certain conversations, but it's how you couch it.
I have, ended friendships because I just do not like the person I see online.
So that's a whole different conversation.
But I think my answer is that you have to be aware of the challenges, aware of the pitfalls and manage the relationship accordingly.
This is powerful.
And I think this is a great transition point to the more operational side of this, because we've spoken a bit more philosophically about this and now we can be really tangible with it.
Because when we talk about an expert in relationships.
You know you're an expert in relationships when you have created a relationship matrix.
So can you tell us a little bit about that and how that framework helps people move from passive to intentional in their business relationships?
Yeah, so the relationship matrix is really the culmination of the work I've done, certainly over the last 26 years, but particularly over the last six years or so.
So in 2019, it's quite funny how this happened.
And if you ever do an episode on creativity and I'm sure you probably have then this can go into your creativity bank.
Because if you speak to many creativity experts, they'll talk about the power of the subconscious and giving it the freedom to come up with ideas.
So you know how, if you're trying to write a book, you sit and stare at a blank screen.
You'll struggle, go for a walk and suddenly a whole chapter will come rattling through your head.
Um, so so in 2019, i got frustrated with trying to change how people perceive networking and i i put my hands up in surrender.
I am not going to change the perception of networking out there and the word to move away from events and towards the the the the, the broader conversation that we've been talking about.
And so I rebranded and I talked about professional relationship strategy rather than networking strategy, which is how I had previously been positioning myself.
Now, my intention was that nothing that I taught would change.
It was just a different marketing positioning.
But something strange happened.
So I wrote a blog.
It's still on my website and on my LinkedIn called Shifting Position about the change I had in mind.
And I talked about it.
So I'm now subconsciously training my subconscious in what this change means.
And then there was one particular night where I was due to deliver a full day's training the next day for GlaxoSmithKline.
And it wasn't a training session that was particularly stressful.
Every training course you want to deliver your best, but it wasn't particularly stressing me out.
I knew what I was going to deliver.
I was comfortable with it, but it was a sleepless night.
I actually put the sleepless night down as much to facing the M25 motorway during rush hour to get there for nine o'clock in the morning as anything else.
It was a lot more than two junctions.
But it was a it was a sleepless night nonetheless.
But here's what happened.
I was lying in bed and suddenly this model came to mind.
I can't remember what came first, but I think it was the seven stages of professional relationship.
And I ran into my office and I got a post-it note and I wrote seven stages of professional relationship.
Recognized no like trust supporter advocate friend.
It has never changed.
From that, couldn't get to sleep, run in here, write on a post-it note, go back to bed.
I then tried to get back to sleep.
Okay, that's out of my head now.
I can go back to sleep, but I couldn't.
And then I had to jump up again and write down the three I's.
This is how people can help us.
They can be influencers, introducers, sources of information, insight, and ideas.
Now that has changed because one of my clients, again at GSK, funnily enough, um said what about implementers?
And i went you know what?
You're right, and it starts with an eye.
So that's okay.
Um, so it's now the four eyes, and then there was another model i can't quite remember what that one was, but but the seven stages and the four eyes just came out fully formed, or pretty much fully formed, other than that one change.
I went to deliver my workshop the next day with gsk and i got to this certain point in the training where i said You have a choice here.
You can either have what I was planning and what I've been teaching for a while.
And I know really well, or you can have the model that sprang to my mind at two o'clock this morning and I couldn't get out of my head.
And what do you think they all opted for?
Everyone wants.
So so, so I.
So I introduced the seven stages and at that point the three eyes to them, and they responded really positively.
Those two models have become. the foundation stone, if you like, of the work that I do.
And at some point and I can't actually tell you when this point was I developed something that used the seven stages of professional relationship and the four eyes to help people plot out the key relationships they needed around an important objective.
I had heard over the years of stakeholder mapping and I thought this must be stakeholder mapping.
I Googled stakeholder mapping and I said, yes, this is stakeholder mapping.
So I was reinventing the wheel, but I was doing it from the perspective of what I teach.
So that was the relationship matrix in its early form.
So the relationship matrix is very simple.
You pick a key objective.
A lot of the people we're working with at the moment with a digital version of the relationship matrix which we're developing and just bringing to market for some selected clients at the moment.
We're focusing on talent development.
I designed it with sales people in mind.
But, as you probably know from the work that you do, salespeople are not the world's best at using technology to maintain records.
So we need some development before it will be sales team ready.
Let's put it that way.
I introduced it at two different sales referral workshops in both cases the groups loved it they had half an hour an hour to play with it early stages of development and they were this is brilliant can we have it when can we use this and i said it's yours you can use it and not one of them from any of the group either of the groups ever logged in again because that's unfortunately behavior you will typically find in sales teams so you need to put in certain things to draw them back into it and that's not there yet So we focused on talent development.
So let's take a couple of examples from each world.
So from a career development angle, you might say, if someone's in an accountancy or a law firm and they want to make partner in five years.
Well, what do I need to achieve to make partner in five years?
So you could have your overarching matrix, which is my goal is to make partner in five years.
Who are my stakeholder groups to get there?
So I may have a stakeholder group, which is the existing partners.
I may have a stakeholder group, which is the L&D team, learning and development team at our firm.
I may have a stakeholder group, that is, our key clients, who are going to be very influential, and so on and so forth.
You'll name your key groups.
Classic stakeholder mapping.
Within each of those stakeholder groups.
You will then put in the names of everyone you know or you know of.
And you will put them in based on the seven stages of professional relationship.
So if I was to say I'm going to add Kwame to my matrix, I'm going to say well, how does Kwame see our relationship?
It doesn't matter how I see my relationship with you.
If I want your help, it matters how you see the relationship with me.
So just a reminder, because I went through it quite quickly.
We're saying we've added in an eighth stage, which is Kwame doesn't know me, to Kwame recognizes me or knows me and what I do.
Kwame likes me, Kwame trusts me, is a supporter.
And a supporter is someone who, if I needed your help, I could pick up the phone and ask for it.
And you would say, of course, I'll help you.
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To an advocate, an advocate, I don't need to pick up the phone.
You know, if you're in a meeting and someone has a need and it's about professional relationships, you'll say I know who you need to talk to, Andy Lopata, and you'll start advocating on my behalf.
I don't even need to know that meeting is taking place.
And then you've got personal friendship, which we've discussed may or may not be appropriate.
It's not our goal.
The sweet spot is supporter or advocate.
So you put that person into your matrix based on how strong the relationship is.
Then you go into the individual record and say OK, given my objective is making partner within five years, how can Kwame help me?
And we look at those four eyes and each of those four eyes gets scored out of five.
So how much of an influencer is that person?
Are they an implementer?
Are they involved in making that decision or putting things into action?
How much of an introducer is that person potentially?
Are they well connected and trusted by other people?
And are they a source of information, insight and ideas?
So are they a potential mentor or just someone who can give you some key intelligence, give you the lay of the land?
You know this is what the budgets are going to be next year and what they're looking for in partners, for example.
And then I fill out my matrix with all of that information, all these individual people, based on what my relationship is like from their perspective and how they can help me towards this objective.
And then I can look at that matrix and I can divide it into three.
There's a group of people there who, by looking at the matrix, I know they could help me and I can see exactly what they could do for me.
And they would help me because they're a supporter, advocate or friend.
Are they giving me that specific help?
If they're not, probably it's because I'm not asking for it.
I'm not communicating effectively enough.
How can I change that?
Let's look to the middle of the matrix.
Here we have people who could help me and we can see how they can help us.
But is the relationship really strong enough yet?
Or do I need to invest more in the relationship before asking for something?
And if so, what do I need to do next?
And then there's the outlier, that extra category that don't knows.
You might have someone there who's a high implementer, high influencer, but you don't know them.
Well, let's look for our introducers on the matrix who can introduce me.
So suddenly we can be strategic about our professional relationships around a solid objective.
But then when we engage with people, they don't have to see all of this work in the background.
We're just authentic when we engage with them.
But we know we've got an end goal And that might make some people feel a bit uncomfortable, but we've got to be adults about this.
We're building professional relationships because we're in the same space and we could help each other.
And it's about helping each other, not helping ourselves.
So we have to be willing to invest in them as much as they are in us, but never as a quid pro quo, never keeping score.
I might help you, but you may help someone else.
And that person may help someone else in turn.
And that person helped me.
We invest in our network as a whole, not in individuals.
And then the return can come back from a different direction.
That removes that manipulation, that transactional nature.
But we can still be adult about the fact that this is a professional network.
And would we be having this conversation if we weren't in the same job?
If you are, then they're a personal friend and that's great.
But be adult about it beyond that.
But you just don't have to make people feel manipulated by you.
Because you don't manipulate them.
Right.
I'm so glad that you mentioned that point too, because when it comes to communicating strategically or having relationships with some kind of strategic purpose, that comes up a lot.
The concern about manipulation and you handle that perfectly.
I agree 100 percent.
And you could also see how understanding the relationship matrix speaks to one of the challenges that I know your clients have been talking about a lot.
And I've seen come up more frequently in the last couple of years as well with my negotiation trainings is how to influence without authority.
Because we have these situations where we want to have an impact on other people.
We want to change minds, beliefs, change the behaviors of people.
But you don't have the authority to just look at the person and say, hey, do this.
Right.
And so can you create a clear nexus between the relationship matrix and the way that you go about building business relationships and how these leaders within organizations can influence without authority.
Yeah, absolutely.
And the two are really closely intertwined.
I mean, one of my four eyes is influencers.
But there's a story I tell in a lot of my presentations and it goes back to one of my early jobs in my early 20s where I was a civil servant.
I worked for the Benefits Agency, part of the welfare in the UK.
And my job was people would apply for grants or loans from something called social funds.
So if, particularly if you're on benefit and you want to buy a new oven, new cooker, you need a new bed.
If you're on welfare, you can't afford that out of your weekly payment and you can't get a bank loan and you can't get credit.
So you go to the welfare agency, the benefits agency in the uk, and you ask for a loan and it's deducted from your benefits by the very nature of being public money.
You typically aren't going to get as much as you ask for.
And my job was to decide, do you qualify?
Is this a high enough priority and do we have budget for it?
And what can I afford to give you?
What's reasonable?
What can I afford to give you?
And people would typically not be very happy with my decisions.
And they would if they were in the office, they could ask for a review in the office.
And we had a reception team who would take their request for a review and hear them out and they would decide whether they qualified for a review.
If they qualified for a review, one of my team would go down and interview them and then they would see whether I would need to get involved.
Now, you probably don't need me to tell you at this stage that we wanted to avoid reviews.
You know, it sucks up your time.
It was very confrontational, very difficult if you're an empath at all, because you talk about people in difficult circumstances and your hands are often very tied by rules, regulations and budgets.
There weren't many upsides, unless you really found out something new and you could award something you previously didn't feel able to.
And we were dependent on that reception team to protect us from reviews.
That would be a waste of time.
20 years after I left that job, I caught up, initially through Facebook, with one of my best friends from those days.
And we'd lost touch after I left the job.
I'd gone traveling around the world.
And she was the reception supervisor.
And I remember sitting with her having a drink in London.
And she said do you know, my team always used to go to bat for you.
I don't know if that's a very english phrase, go to bat, but they would always support my decisions.
She said if someone asked for a review, unless there was a really clear reason why there should be a review, they would always support your decisions, but they didn't do that for your colleagues.
Wow, now here was the difference.
When my colleagues, many of whom had been in that job longer than I had been alive at that stage and were quite cynical and going through the motions and were actually a number of them were quite cynical towards the claimants as well.
I was still young and idealist, willing to see the best in everyone.
They'd gone past that phase.
They would go down to reception and they would dump their review on a pile and walk out again.
They wouldn't really engage in conversation down there.
They were doing their hours and getting out of the office as quickly as they could.
I'd go down to reception and I'd chat.
I'd go to lunch, long lunches with the reception team.
I got on well with them and they supported me.
Now, I didn't know what I was doing.
There was nothing strategic about this.
I'd never heard the word networking.
I just hated my job and I didn't particularly like my colleagues or my team.
So I preferred the company, the reception team, and keep away from this cynical bunch that I work with.
But here's the thing.
They supported me, that reception team, because they liked me.
And it got me thinking about this.
You know I've worked with so many companies of all sizes where silos are a challenge, where people expect their colleagues on other teams in their organisation to help them because they're part of the same organisation.
Surely they have common goals and they get frustrated when that support isn't forthcoming, not realising that those people have got their own priorities and their own targets to work towards.
And, based on the story I just shared with you, I figured there's three reasons why colleagues help each other in an organisation.
And number one is because we're told to do something.
Number two is because there's something in it for us, and number three is because we like that person.
The first two are intrinsic motivators.
We're doing it for ourselves and once we get what we need we'll stop.
The third is extrinsically motivated.
We're doing it for that other person.
We enjoy seeing them succeed, because we like them.
Therefore, we will go the extra mile for So.
This goes back to your question about how you influence without authority.
Surely the root of it is in the relationships you build.
If you build strong relationships with people who are in a position to influence on your behalf, then they will do that for you because they like you, because they want to do so.
When I do work on influence without authority, we look at the psychology of influence and we look at what stops us from influencing other people, whether it's imposter syndrome, whether it's being more introverted and not speaking up as much, not finding our voice, whether it's more external factors like misaligned goals and misaligned communication between different parts of an organisation.
So we'll look at that and we'll talk about the power of being curious and having the right conversations and the different um, the different elements of trust that you need to be aware of bringing in.
You know, anyone who's read the trusted advisor by david meister and colleagues will know the trust equation and we talk about that and my own model of the three elements of trust personal, product or service and brand trust.
We look at all of that but ultimately what it boils down to is Do people like you?
Do they want to listen to you?
Do they want to advocate an influence on your behalf?
And I have a model of real influence where the R in real influence.
We all love an acronym, don't we?
I've been avoiding acronyms for years and now I've got two purely for this topic of influence without authority.
But the R is how they respond to you and the respect they have for you and they build for you.
So does your name come up in conversation when you're not even in the room?
Do people sound out your opinion because it is respected?
The E is the emotions you stir in people, how they feel when they engage with you.
And that goes very much to that story I shared.
Do they want to help you because they like you?
The A is, does your conversation, do your ideas, do your directions lead to action?
Do people take action as a result?
And then the really interesting one for me is the L, because I think, when it comes to influence, we maybe underrate the L more than anything else.
And that's loyalty.
And ultimately, will the social capital you have invested in your relationship with them carry more weight than the message itself?
In other words, will they talk about you positively, weigh up your ideas, do things because it's you asking or you saying it, rather than wait to hear the message itself and respond purely on its merits?
So that respect, that that emotion, that action and that loyalty, that's what leads to influence and that's all tied in with professional relationships Unbelievable.
This is great.
And I think for some people, as they heard this, they might have been shocked at the three reasons where we have either they're told to or something in it for them, or we like them.
It's almost too simple.
And then I think if they flip it and apply it to themselves, it will become very clear that it works right.
You do things because you're told to do it, or you do things because it benefits you, or you just like the person.
That's how humans operate.
And when we simplify it, I think that gives us a little bit more of a sense of agency, as it relates to doing this where we feel like there's more within our control than we initially recognized.
Because a lot of times when you feel as though hey, I need to get something done, I need to persuade people, but I don't have the power or authority to do it,
And I feel like I'm not being heard.
We focus on that emotional aspect and how bad we're feeling and how hard it is to do it.
And it's hard to activate that strategic part of the brain.
But with this, you've given us a simple way to approach it, which makes it really, really doable.
I think this also helps us to segue into a tough question that is actually baked within your model.
I think the answer is within the model is understanding the distinction between persuasion and influence.
Because we have these conversations?
We talk about negotiation persuasion influence, all of these types of terms and we use them interchangeably.
But I think we're now at the point where we can recognize that distinguishing between these concepts can be very enlightening, as it relates to the strategic approach that we use.
So focusing on influence versus persuasion, how would you describe the difference?
Just before I do that, I just want to call back to what you just said.
And that is that most of the models I use are simple.
And there's two reasons for that.
One is a very practical one, and that is, if I give you a complicated convoluted detailed, nuanced answer, people won't remember it and they'll fall asleep halfway through.
And the second is that it simply works.
And it's easy to call to mind at important moments when you need it and put it up.
So I deliberately keep my model simple.
Maybe there's a third, and that's just that I'm simple myself.
But we'll go with the first two.
But you know, I deliberately keep those models like that because I think I'm a great believer that the world's not black and white.
I'm a big fan of nuance and understanding nuance.
And I'm sure that if you take those three reasons we help each other, you could expand it to 33.
If you take the seven stages of professional relationships, you could take it to 777.
But that's not going to work for people.
So we have to boil these things down into stuff that resonates and then people can apply day to day.
And that's what I try to do with those models.
Now, in answer to your question.
About the difference between persuasion and influence.
I think it's a really interesting one.
And I'm going to be really open here.
I mean, I've talked about influence at a high level for a while.
I've been doing a deeper dive into influence, particularly influence without authority, recently because I've been asked to write specific workshops on that topic.
So that's where I've developed new models on the topic and I'm going deeper and deeper.
Influence versus persuasion hasn't come up so far to that, but I find it a fascinating question.
And my, my gut reaction, my instinctive reaction I would be interested in your take on this is I feel that persuasion is direct.
Now again going back to what I just said.
I'm simplifying this and I know you can persuade through influence as well.
So I'm going in very pure form here.
Persuasion is direct.
Influence is indirect.
Persuasion is me saying, Kwame, you need to change your behavior.
You need to buy this product for me.
You need to pay this price.
And here are the reasons why I am persuading you around to my point of view.
So a politician would go to the doorstep, knock on the door and persuade the voter that their view is right.
A politician indirectly would influence through the media.
They would influence through influencers, through general conversation now, through an intermediary.
And so if you take a negotiation as an example, if I'm sat in a negotiation with you, I try and persuade you.
When you walk out of that room and you talk to people you trust, I want them to influence on my behalf.
So that's the distinction for me.
Influence is direct.
Persuasion is indirect.
With the caveat you can persuade through influence.
I'm sure as I dig more deeply into this, more will open up for me.
But as a simple level, for me, that works.
How does that sound to you?
I think that's brilliant.
And I think it is clear.
So people understand the distinction in an operationally sound type of way.
Because a lot of times, if we were to go deeper into the distinctions, it might be an intellectually stimulating conversation that might not have much utility beyond this conversation between us.
Because if you think back to the old school perspective, like back to the Aristotle days, when you think about persuasion, it's just the ability to get somebody to do something that they wouldn't have done had you not asked them.
Without the conversation, it wouldn't have occurred.
So you're right.
It's very direct.
There's a very clear goal that we're trying to drive towards.
But influence is kind of – it's almost more like vibes.
You could influence people without even wanting to influence them.
You usually don't persuade accidentally.
It's an intentional type of thing.
But influence is – it's vibes, it's energy, it's momentum, and it is often –
You can steer it and direct it, but it's not often within your complete control because there are so many factors that are a little bit intangible.
But, understanding the way that it works, you can operationalize it in a meaningful way, like the relationship matrix to – I'm thinking about all of the – we're at 1500-plus episodes.
Yeah.
I'm struggling to think of a better way to operationalize influence than this matrix, because you can actually see it, map it out and move things, mobilize things in a meaningful way.
The majority of what we talk about on this podcast is persuasion.
But I think the combination of two that's the most potent form of changing behavior and changing mind.
So I love how we've been able to operationalize both with this approach.
And to me, it goes back again to how I responded to your previous point.
We keep it simple.
You know, just we keep it simple and then people understand it and can follow it.
Amazing.
Cool.
OK, last thing, Andy, we have these listener questions that we read off.
And it's a cool way to get people a bit more engaged and have some pattern breaking here.
So I'll just read it off.
And one of our teammates will sub in her voice for mine.
But I'll just read it off to you, and we'll see how this goes.
Okay.
All right, Andy.
So here is a dilemma from a listener, and I'd love to get your take.
I'm in a new leadership role at a company that's very siloed.
Everyone is protective of their turf. and cross-team collaboration is rare.
I know I need allies, but people don't seem open, and I don't want to come off as fake or political.
How do I build real relationships in a place that doesn't seem to value them?
There are a number of different ways I could come at this and there are some obvious tactics that many people will try, with varying degrees of success, trying to engage with those key stakeholders outside of a transactional, office-based environment.
I'm a big fan of addressing the elephant in the room, not trying to hide what you're trying to achieve and say look, we need to work better together.
Could we go for a coffee and discuss it?
But there's a step I would suggest beforehand.
And this is going to be my answer.
I'd say there are a number of ways I could approach it.
I want to share this particular approach.
And that is to write a letter.
Now, you weren't expecting that.
And you're probably not going to expect the next part of this, because the letter you're going to write is not to the person that you want to engage with or influence.
It's from them to you.
So I want you to write a letter from that person to you to talk about what they are trying to achieve, what their priorities are, how they see you.
Under what terms they would happily engage with you, what makes them reticent to do so?
Once you've done that and you've started to try and understand their perspective, and you can build into that.
By the way, what's their preferred communication style?
You know, are they likely to respond to an email or a WhatsApp or a phone call, or a coffee or whatever it might be.
What's their preferred language, communication language?
Do they want to hear stories?
Do they want to see data?
You do your homework first to understand their perspective and their preferences.
That will start to give you your answer about how you then approach them.
Because any other tactical tool I or anyone else can share with you before you do that work is generic.
Once you've done your homework and seen it from the perspective of each individual you need to engage with, then you adapt your behavior according to what you've learned.
And it's going to be assumption.
It will be trial and error, but it's all trial and error.
And this is going to be much more educated trial and error than it would be otherwise.
That's so good.
Yeah.
And you did catch me off guard with that answer.
I think it's brilliant though.
It's almost like a forced empathy exercise to see things from their perspective.
And it changes the way that you approach it, because a lot of times we engage in egocentric persuasion where we say, all right, I'm going to figure out what I want and persuade people on my terms.
What do I want and what would persuade me if I were in their situation?
But instead, if we use empathetic persuasion, actually see it from their perspective, then we can be a lot more persuasive because we can be more precise with what it is that it would take to actually move them.
And so here we're starting that empathy, that empathetic approach a lot earlier before the conversation even begins.
So I really love that exercise.
And then what you need to do is maintain the empathic approach once you're in the conversation.
So curiosity doesn't stop at the homework.
You carry that curiosity and the listening into the conversation.
So if you are, if they're talking and you find yourself seeking to interrupt because you're ready to talk, stop and listen.
And before we go, here's one final bonus question from our producer Simone, because he always makes us think deeper.
I come from South America.
And I think relationships there are very different.
So I remember when I worked back then, I worked in a furniture enterprise.
We've been having issues with a supplier.
So my boss said, OK, let's organize a football match with them.
So we went to play football and then everything was perfect.
We started working better, better and better.
And the relationships were better, you know.
So I don't know why and correct me if I'm wrong, but in South America or that's how I feel it.
We work with people, but we choose to work with that people for the person that is behind the professional.
It's a great observation and I completely agree with you.
It's a great example of the cultural disparities.
So I remember I spoke in Milan a number of years ago and I was telling that I was sharing that model of networks where you've got the personal on one side and the professional on the other.
And the Brits draw the thick dividing line between the two.
And everyone looked different amazed, and then burst out laughing and and they said that doesn't make any sense.
In italy, the business is the family, the family is the business things.
The latin, the latin mentality, the latin approach is much more gregarious, much more open, much more communal is probably the word i'm looking for.
I think community lies at the heart of this and i think that that's a trait that runs rich in in south america.
I have clients in south america, in Italy and Spain, so that those Latin countries you, you definitely get that sense.
I love the story about the, the football match.
By the way, I can see the way some of my friends play football.
That could do an untold damage to long-term relationships, but you have to.
I guess it's leaving it all on the pitch and it goes to.
There's another sporting point here and that goes to In golf.
I don't know if either of you have ever played golf, but in golf you have the concept of the 19th hole.
And the 19th hole is where you do business.
It's the bar.
18 holes on a golf course.
You do not talk business on a golf course.
So many years ago, in that networking business that my dad brought me into, by this stage I was managing director and there was someone who wanted to sell to me and he kept trying to get time in my diary.
I wasn't interested in what he was offering so I wouldn't even give him half an hour in my diary.
And then he said to me, do you play golf?
And I said yes, and he said I'm a member of Hadleywood Golf Club.
Now, Hadleywood Golf Club is a very exclusive private golf club just north of London with a wonderful story about it that might not be suitable for this podcast.
I might have to tell you off air it's a wonderful story, but anyway.
So being a completely brazen and take what's coming my way,
I went, yeah, I'll join you for a round there.
He invited me for a round.
So instead of half an hour in my diary, he got four hours.
I'm not a fast golfer.
And I met him on the tee.
And this was quite interesting because he brought a friend along who has nothing to do with his business.
And that sort of surprised me because I thought, oh, he wants to talk about business.
And We teed off and we played our 18 holes of golf and we didn't talk business at all.
Now it would have been really hard for him to talk business with me, because most of my time was spent in the trees, in the water, nowhere near the fairway where his ball was landing.
But at the end, we got to the end of the round.
Now, this is just north of London.
Around London, for those that don't know, we have a motorway called the M25.
And like any big city with an orbital motorway, after four o'clock, Definitely.
In the afternoon, it becomes slow.
And I had to drive around the M25 to get home.
So it's now half past three, four o'clock.
And I'm thinking I want to get on the M25.
I've only got to go two junctions, but that two junctions can take a lot of time once you hit rush hour.
And he said, do you want to grab a quick drink?
Well, I need to get moving fairly soon.
He said, let's grab one drink.
And of course, I needed to give him one drink.
He got three referrals from me in half an hour.
So it's about knowing when as well, when to do things.
You know, if you're playing in that football match you're not talking about the challenges between the two cultures, the two firms.
You know, while you're battling it out in the penalty area or jostling for a corner,
You're just playing the game.
But then you go to the bar afterwards, you have a drink together and these things might come up.
Actually, in that case, you probably still wouldn't.
But when you go back to the office, you can have that conversation in a different way.
And that's where that comes into play.
That's cool.
That's such a great story.
Such a great story.
Nice work.
Great question, Simone.
Awesome answer.
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