Why Buy-in is Essential to Conscious Leadership and Your Career
Getting true buy-in can accelerate your work and team alignment
There’s nothing more frustrating than having a fantastic idea, but feeling helpless to implement it because of lack of internal team support. One of the major issues many professionals face in the workplace is how to get buy-in for their ideas. I’ve coached many people who have fantastic ideas, but struggle with getting the proper buy-in and enthusiasm from leadership or colleagues.
Getting buy-in is essential in and out of the workplace. We’re all different, with unique points of views and goals. So all of us have to learn how to work with others and take into consideration sometimes conflicting motivations. Especially for conscious leaders, getting buy-in from colleagues, team members, and other stakeholders is essential to the very nature of how they lead.
Here are the four conscious leadership steps I recommend for getting buy-in:
Do your homework
One of the first steps in pitching a new idea is to get feedback from other stakeholders. That may be via a memo, a phone call, or an in-person meeting. One of the keys to success I’ve learned over the years is to do your homework on who the essential stakeholders are (and whose opinion is nice to have, but not a roadblock), and their vested interest in your project’s outcome.
For example, if you’re pitching an idea that will impact a few different teammates, determine how it will affect their work and what potential objectives they may have. Also consider how the idea could actually enhance their work. If you have a colleague who thrives on brainstorming and public acknowledgement, definitely leverage that for getting them excited about the project. If another teammate tends to poke holes in ideas before saying yes, you’ll need to anticipate all their usual questions and be prepared to address them. Think holographically about a win-win outcome for every stakeholder.
Always ask for input
A fatal misstep for many nascent projects is that the progenitor didn’t seek input from others. Sometimes it’s just an innocent oversight, other times it could be a self-serving perspective. Either way, it’s wise to remember Proverbs 15:22: “Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisers they succeed.”
The initial input-givers don’t always have to be members of your team or company. You may have a mentor, or mastermind group, or trusted advisors you consult to ask for feedback on your assumptions, blind spots, and the overall strength of the idea.
Listen to understand
Most people in normal conversations focus not on truly hearing and understanding what the other person is communicating. Instead of truly listening, they are busy thinking about what they’ll say next. They are distracted making judgements, assumptions or interpretations about what they hear. They start and end a conversation from a closed mindset, without every truly trying to understand the other person’s perspective.
Any time you’re looking for buy-in, listening to understand others must be the first step. Perhaps their worldview is so narrow, they simply can’t envision the results you seek. Listening and understanding their perspective will help you overcome objections and determine how to address their concerns as part of your plan.
Build individual and group consensus
One valuable consensus-building tip is to seek individual feedback before a group considers a project together. In other words, you’ll know before the team meeting what each participant thinks about your idea because you’ve already had an individual call with each to hear their concerns and feedback. It gives you time to find allies to advocate your idea during the team meeting and time to address any concerns that arose the individual calls.
Think about the strengths of each team member and how they can help make your project a success. Include that in your proposal and make sure they’re aware of how critical their input and support will be for the project’s success.
In addition to the steps listed above, I’ll share a little coaching tip. Whenever I’m in a coaching session and I’m working with the client on clarifying and obtaining their goals, we always have to have buy-in for the client to be truly committed to their goals and action items. So I follow this four-step buy-in process, which leads the client through considering what they really want and committed to the approach they decide upon.
What do you really want?
How well is what you’re doing getting you what you really want?
What is your current approach really costing you?
If there were another way to get you the benefits of what you’re looking for with much less cost, how interested would you be in learning it?
After answering these questions, you can then have a productive conversation about a better way to achieve the results they really want. Consider adapting these questions for conversations with coworkers and leadership. Identify what they want, where you have shared vision, potential pain points, then make sure you listen to understand. With genuine buy-in, you’ll be amazed by the team alignment and results.
Work happy. Live happy. BE happy.
Meredith
Meredith’s coaching helps conscious leaders step courageously into the future of work. Contact her to develop your conscious leadership and transform your organization into the workplace of the future.
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