The Gentle Art of Buy-In, with Simon Dowling - MS013

Meeting Strategist - Conversations on Leadership & Communication

You can have the best idea in the world. But if you can’t get people to work with you, it will remain just that – a great idea. Simon Dowling is one of Australia’s leading thinkers on leadership, team dynamics and collaboration – and the author of ‘Work With Me: How to Get People to Buy Into Your Ideas’.

In our free-flowing conversation, Simon talks in great detail about the strategies, tactics and mindsets you need to get people to rally behind your ideas. We also discuss where most people including Simon (and me) go wrong, why you should embrace the black hole, how you can train your own buy-in muscle and what you can do to ensure that support for your ideas actually leads to change.

Here are some of the episode’s highlights with timestamps:

• 0:49 – Reflecting on the time when one of Simon’s clients found out about his double life

• 18:32 – The three questions to ask yourself when preparing for a (buy-in) conversation

• 22:27 – Influence by decree vs. influence through win me

• 37:56 – Negotiating with your kids

• 58:21 – The process of building buy-in: it starts with you

• 1:13:17 – Why you should shrink the change

For more information and links related to this episode, please go to the full show notes at www.meetingstrategist.org/simon-dowling

About this podcast

Welcome to Meeting Strategist. On this podcast, Marcel van de Hoef interviews professionals and thinkers from the worlds of investment, business and arts about their approach to business conversations. You'll hear inspiring stories about impactful meetings, while also learning about the strategies, tactics and mindsets these guests rely on to make meetings more constructive.

Marcel is an Amsterdam-based communication advisor and trainer and the curator of the Meeting Strategist blog. His mission is to help senior professionals think more strategically about meetings, ask better questions, improve their listening skills and have more meaningful conversations in business and life. Learn more and stay up to date at meetingstrategist.org