G. Richard Shell - The Art of Woo: Using Strategic Persuasion to Sell Your Ideas

Woo?

Whats Woo?

Were glad you asked.

Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton, in their best-selling book Now, Discover Your Strengths, tell us that woo is a talent for W inning O thers O ver. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Barbara Broccoli and her half brother Michael Wilson, part-owners of the James Bond movie franchise, wooed business tycoon Sir Richard Branson to be a partner in their latest James Bond film. On that same day, according to other news reports, President Hu of China arrived in India to woo officials there on his plans for regional cooperation, and the Central Kenya Initiative was formed to woo voters in that African region. Meanwhile, officials from a small southern city traveled to Las Vegas, Nevada, to woo shopping center developers into locating a mall in their city, and a major British university introduced a new program to woo corporate recruiters to its campus. Around the world, in places too numerous to name, people were wooing their bosses, town councils, colleagues, and spouses to adopt their latest plans to improve lives and solve difficult problems.

So what is Woo? It is relationship-based persuasion, a strategic process for getting peoples attention, pitching your ideas, and obtaining approval for your plans and projects. It is, in short, one of the most important skills in the repertoire of any entrepreneur, employee, or professional manager whose work requires them to rely on influence and persuasion rather than coercion and force.

Woo. Simple to say. Hard to do.

A manager we know once lobbied for a bigger-than-normal raise by sending his boss a detailed e-mail listing all his recent accomplishments. The boss circulated the e-mail to the senior staff and asked for comments. One of the executives copied on the e-mail was offended by what he saw. It appeared to him that the manager was taking the credit for a major project that the executive thought he should get the credit for. A flurry of e-mails followed. Long story short: our friend did not get his raise. Instead, he was fired for not being a team player.

He lost his job because he ignored the ever-present danger of office politics and forgot that idea-selling campaigns begin with relationships, not e-mails. Lacking tone and context, e-mail messages are easy to misinterpret. You cannot control who will see them, and they are never deleted. If you want to get people on your side, go meet with them face-to-face and see firsthand how they react to your ideas. Then use e-mail later, after they are already on your team.

Woo is about people, not saving time.

Woo and You

Woo starts with a look in the mirror. If you do not know your own goals, biases, emotions, and preferences, you cannot hope to see your audience clearly. With this self-awareness as a foundation, you gain the perspective needed to focus on the people you are trying to persuade. If you look up the word woo in the dictionary, you will find that the first definition relates to romantic courtship, as in Charles wooed Victoria, hoping she would marry him. Indeed, the root of the word persuasion is Suada, a Roman goddess who attended Venus, the goddess of romantic love. You persuade others that you love them by showing that you care deeply about their interests and needs. You demonstrate in unique, personal ways that you get who they are, how they are unique, and why that uniqueness attracts you.

But woo also has a more general meaning as we saw in the news stories about everyone from James Bonds Barbara Broccoli to Chinas President Hu. That meaning is seeking favor and support. Once again, woo carries a connotation of focusing on othersthe people being wooed.

The best books on management also emphasize this value. The fifth of Stephen Coveys seven habits of highly effective people is: Seek first to understand, then to be understood. By understanding your audiences, Covey argues, you have a better chance of being understood by them. And, as we noted above, Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton actually use the word woo in Now, Discover Your Strengths to describe one of thirty-four personality themes that people use to succeed at work. They define woo as a special talent for establishing rapport quickly and easily with strangers by finding some area of common interest so that you can strike up a conversation. Their definition of woo is much narrower than ours, but it points in the same direction.

This all sounds fine. But what is the art of Woo?

The art comes in the balance you strike, each time you persuade, between what we call the self-oriented perspective emphasizing your own credibility, point of view, and level of commitment, and the other-oriented perspective that focuses on your audiences needs, perceptions, and feelings. On the one hand, you have your own passions and perspectives. On the other hand, your audiences may not be able to hear you unless you speak in terms they can understand and in ways that make your message attractive to them. How should you balance your own need for authenticity with your audiences need for a tailor-made message?

Two problems make this balance especially hard to strike in many organizational settings. The first is familiarity. People often have personal knowledge of (and, on occasion, animosity toward) those they work with. Such familiarity breeds lazy habits when it comes to persuasion. The second problem is formality. People fall into the trap of thinking that all they need to know about those they are trying to persuade are their job titles. They forget that persuasion involves personalities as well as positions. These assumptions prompt idea sellers to make careless moves, and this carelessness is what generally gets them into trouble.