Leverage Relationships in Conversations, A Technique (Pt 1)

Showing how employees help you achieve goals motivates them to take action.

This post follows up the previous one in this series regarding the leveraging of compliments in conversations. There, the focus was on the person whom we addressed, the receiver. In this post, I want to shift to us, the initiator. Once we personalize our message using names and compliments, we leverage the relationship we have (and are always building) by using the message to bond us to the receiver.

So, let’s start once again with our sample sentence from the prior post:

10. Our new business model helps us deliver better service to clients because we can deliver everything through a single contact.

Previously, we personalized it with:

20. John, our new business model helps us deliver better service to clients because we can deliver everything through a single contact.

Now that we’ve bonded the message to our receiver, we need to bond it to us. Initially, we do this by changing “us” to “me”:

21. John, our new business model helps me deliver better service to clients because we can deliver everything through a single contact.

Previously, we added a compliment to example #20:

30. John, our new business model helps us deliver better service to clients because it better positions the broad knowledge base you’ve acquired.

So, let’s combine this with #21 and add another bond to us, “you to help me”:

31. John, our new business model helps me deliver better service to clients because it allows you to help me by better positioning the broad knowledge base you’ve acquired.

As we had done before, we can enhance it further using an intrinsic compliment:

41. John, our new business model helps me deliver better service to clients because it allows you to help me by better positioning your natural talent to relate to others.

One of the most powerful techniques in helping people to realize and internalize their value is to acknowledge and show how they help us. This power escalates immeasurably as they help people ranked higher and higher in the company’s organization. This is the bonding power of this technique.

Again, this works because overwhelmingly leaders, executives and managers don’t do this. However, those that do build relationships faster and stronger than we believe possible.