Welcome to Manager Tools. Today's show, Influence Through Verbal Commitments, Part 1 of 2.

In today's cast, we begin our discussion on describing how to influence others by asking for verbal commitments.

Here we go. Increasing in our consulting practice, we're talking to managers and they tell us that they have an increasing problem which is that more and more folks on their team are not reporting directly to them, right?

They don't have any role power over the person.

They're not writing their review.

They're kind of in this matrix-like environment.

So these matrix like moments are increasing. And they us well how do I influence someone in

our organization when I don't have role power over them how do I get them to do what

I need them to do right? Yeah I want to be the boss all the time. Exactly. It's

frustrating for folks. Yeah, yeah and it's true and you know it's just going

to happen more and more and more and we've got to be able to address it and in our

experience most managers don't handle it well when you know when we don't have role

power we get we we spend so much time worrying about not having role power. We don't think is what I'm doing working which I would argue with for most managers the answer is no it's not and then if it's not working, how do I change it?

Which again, because they don't know,

they don't ask themselves whether it's working

other than they know they're frustrated by it.

They're not gonna ask, how do I change it?

Right.

And there's no magic bullet, right? there's not do these five steps and you absolutely will get everybody you want to do everything you want to do right but we can increase the probability well you know yeah there is is no magic bullet, but I think when managers and

executives tell us that, well, this isn't a magic bullet, it doesn't actually work all the time.

I look at, you know, we say to them, yeah, neither does roll power, right?

You tell somebody to do something you're

...