Here's a question I have for you. If you are not willing to invest in yourself in general, let alone during hard times. Why would you be surprised when others are not willing to invest in you? And I ask you this question because so many of you are really sharp, talented people, but you get in your own way. You overthink things. You make yourself busier than you need to. You fall into this trap of thinking it's not the right time and it's not good enough and you're not ready and that's a lot of the stuff that will hold you back. This is what our live events and our coaching are made for to help you overcome this. Whether it's our apprenticeship program, which focuses on how to have better hard conversations, how to negotiate, how to manage through conflict, how to do things that every coach and every leader is going to have to do, but do it better, or our speaker school, where you can become a more confident, clear speaker. These are things that give you immediate return on investment. They're things that help you earn more in your career. They're things that help you deal with the inevitable power dynamics that you're going to deal with. And there tends to be this kind of miss this misattribution of, oh, are these things only for people who struggle to communicate? Absolutely not. These are programs for people who know they don't want to leave any stone unturned in terms of self developmentdevelopment, professional development, development in all aspects. So if that's you and you value investing in yourself and you want others to invest in you, whether that's to pay you to come speak around the world or whether that's just to value your work and see the true inside it provides, then get to artofcoaching.com slash events. Right now, we have interest-free payment plans.

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are also a lot of fun to take part in They're interactive you get around a wide range of individuals and we would love to see you there

So go to artofcoaching.com slash events artofcoaching.com slash events. That's artofcoaching.com slash events right now Welcome to the Art of Coaching Podcast. I'm Brett Bartholomew and at a young age, poor communication nearly caused me my life. Now I help others navigate the great area of social interaction, power dynamics, and communication so they can become more adaptable leaders regardless of their profession, age, or situation. This podcast is for everybody who is fascinated with solving people problems. So if you're the no nonsense type who appreciates frank conversations, advise you can put to use immediately and learning how others navigate the messy realities of leadership, you're in the right place. I'm glad that you're joining us. Let's dive in. Okay, let's hit the ground running. Today we we are going to talk about how you can essentially win people over in a certain context. Now, we've had a lot of podcasts on how to be more persuasive in an ethical sense, how to understand people's motives, their drives. We've gone over a lot of different influence tactics. And remember, shameless plug, it's one thing to listen to these things, it's one thing to read about them, to actually practice them or build the skill of how to use them most effectively requires you to do it in real time. This is why we run our apprenticeship workshop, which is for leaders and coaches and anybody who wants to be more effective at getting more out of people. And also for you to understand your own blind spots when it comes to building buy-in in an ethical way, building lasting trust, those two are synonymous, and making sure that you understand how people, including those that you lead and that you coach, make decisions because that's how we waste less time and get more done. So if you want hands-on practice in guidance, in negotiation, persuasion, managing hard conversations, make sure to check out our apprenticeship workshops or get to our one-to-one mentoring opportunities, which you can find at artofcoaching.com slash mentoring. Okay, I'm going to paint the picture. From a mentoring standpoint, I am working with a client. We've also done a lot of in-services with clients who are now dealing with NIL. For those of you that are not in the sporting world, NIL is name, image, and likeness. And essentially, this is all the news you've been hearing about or may have heard about, about how collegiate athletes in the United States are getting paid. In some instances, vast sums of money now, right? Being in this NIL era has definitely changed the power dynamics and just how to coach and lead in the collegiate environment. Teams have large coffers, institutions rather, a budget that they can use to recruit their athletes, they get all new kinds of sponsorship deals, they can get stipends, they can get paid vast sums of money to essentially go to a university. In this case, one of our clients, and in many cases, many of them are saying, but what can we do now? Essentially, if it comes down to us and another school. And this one client in particular said, we are very strong in terms of the technique and our development. However, this athlete has a family member that goes to another school and then another client had said, another school can offer them more money. So what do we do when we have to battle against where a family member might go to school or there's other, you know, they can get more money at another school. We need differentiators. We need to understand how they think because it can't always just come down to playing time and academics and money. Some of them, that's not gonna move the needle. And I said, well, the one thing we all have to remember, and it doesn't matter whether you're dealing with athletes or trying to convince a member of your team to stay in a certain job or whatever, is people don't make logical decisions, purely logical decisions. We are not purely rational. Now, human beings are rationalizing, right? We will bring in logic to a degree, but by and large, we use our emotions. We make emotional decisions that we later justify with logic. And so we're not really persuading minds. We're persuading their instinct, their gut. So today we're gonna talk through what actually drives people to choose one option over another and how you might be missing the mark. Okay, another fundamental principle within that and probably the first one you have to remember anytime you deal with human beings. And this is something I will tell my son as well. People hate uncertainty, right, we are wired for survival, not innately curiosity. People are curious for sure, but for us, uncertainty equals threat. So when faced with two roughly equal options, we're gonna pick the one that just makes more sense to us. It's simpler, it's clearer, it's more predictable, even if it's objectively worse. Right? So in recruiting, if another school feels more organized or responsive or something's more emotionally coherent, it just makes sense to you, they're going to win. And sales are hiring. If your process or the job posting feels confusing or inconsistent, you're going to lose before

the pitch even lands. So like, what are you doing to reduce uncertainty? Well, you know, we're telling them how much money we're going to give them. Okay, well, so is the other school. Well, we're telling them they're closer to home. Okay, maybe that might be different than the other school. But what are you doing to really reduce uncertainty in a way that matters to them? And by the way, when we talk about just how illogical people can be, I was telling a story to a client about how one athlete when I was in this setting, ended up choosing the school that I represented because they loved Harry Potter. And that campus had one of the largest live action role playing Communities for Harry Potter and fantasy other fantasy stuff compared to any other university in the United States literally like so There was playing time. There was academics. There was where there cute women on campus was all these other things But one of the biggest things that they said drew them there was this live action role playing community community. Think about that. Some of you might laugh at that, but that is something that that person was a part of their identity. It made them feel at home. And that was a bigger tug on them than anything else. But that shouldn't feel that crazy. There are certain people that will choose, oh, I love the outdoors. And I have access to the Appalachian Mountains or I love wine. And this region, even though that athlete may not be old enough, right? At some point, they will be in their university experience to go to these wine trails or these vineyards or I love the snow. It reminds me of my family back in Norway. The simplest things will make the biggest difference. So I told the coach, I'm like, do you know what musicians they like? Do they like music? Do you have a great music community? Do you have a great outdoor community? What advantages at these like raw, emotional, visceral level does your campus have? You know, what's the political climate of university is? Are they considering maybe going somewhere that's in a more politically charged part of the country, whereas your campus doesn't really get into that crime rate of the surrounding area? Right. But people want to choose, and this is the second principle, the familiar, even it over the quote unquote superior. What we talked about there is somebody could have felt

like another school wins more has more titles,

but we're also drawn to what just feels comfortable known

and emotionally safe for them.

That was the Harry Potter thing for other athletes.

It's the food reminds them of home.

So you can have the best facilities, the best offer,

but if the other option feels more like home, more familiar, more certain, you lose. So what makes your environment feel emotionally familiar to the person that you're trying to win? If you don't know, these are the things you've got to figure out because a lot of times you're recruiting them as an athlete and you need to remember you're recruiting them as a human and it's's the same for you, those of you that are hiring. You're not just trying to, you know, hire a candidate. You're hiring a human being. So do they see people who look like them, talk like them, share common interests? That becomes this kind of second family. Do they hear values and phrases that sound like their own internal dialogue? I mean, even for me, if art of coaching went kaput today, and there were different organizations looking to hire me, I would go to an organization that's more, you know, everything they do is more attuned to psychology or research about the human being. They have a deeper way of thinking about things. I need to be around other people that are as fascinated with the human mind and the principles that are meaningful in my life. And that would supersede even pay to a degree, right? So it has to be resonant. It has to be resonant. Because remember, and I'll say this as another point just because I know many of you like this. People decide for emotional reasons. That's how we anchor the podcast. They justify after that. So the real question isn't, what do they want? It's how do they want to feel? We all know how frustrating it gets when we want to learn, we want to grow, but we don't have the money to travel right now. We've read enough books and my god if we listen to another podcast we're going to lose our mind. This is exactly why we created our executive mentoring program. At Artofcoaching.com slash mentoring, you can go and you can work with any number of our 15 coaches from around the world and you can set up sessions that are done over Zoom or over the phone where you in a private space and a private session can work through a coach on anything that you're dealing with. I don't care if you have anxiety speaking in front of crowds. I don't care if you have trouble firing your staff. I don't care if you're just trying to connect with your kids. We have dealt with it all and we have a framework that can help. There's no reason to suffer in silence, every coach and every leader needs a coach and a leader themselves.

And we can do so in a budget all and we have a framework that can help. There's no reason to suffer in silence. Every coach and every

leader needs a coach and a leader themselves. And we can do so in a budget-friendly way that is

tailored to your biggest needs, frustrations, and the stuff that you just want to get off your

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