How to Gain Support Across Departments

Establishing cross-functional teamwork probably has at heart the intention to unite people to service the bigger purpose and to actively work towards enhancing the bigger organisational goals.

Often in organisations we find that work process flow horizontally through many departments, but that teams are for practical and specialisation purposes established functionally. Think about the customer outcome of “Customer Statements”. The end result is a piece of paper that goes to the customer monthly. The content thereof was influenced by multiple departments such as the Trade, grain handling, marketing, creditors and finance – could be more departments.

As the Head of the Department that compiles the statements, you need to improve the quality, the on time issuing and the accuracy of statements. In order to do that successfully you will be highly inter-dependant on all the other role-players to support your strategy, to adopt your proposed processes/changes and to change their work processes to ensure accuracy, speed of delivery and quality inputs early in the value chain.
How do you do that? What is it about leaders and the way they communicate that facilitate this type of support and influence?

Click here to view a video on What Makes Employees Happy at Work.

Consider the following guidelines:

Be Credible

Does your reputation precede you? If it is a good reputation, you want it to. If not, you may wind up a pauper in the realm that has trust as its coin. You will have to ask yourself some harsh questions, if you wish to discover how ethically you influence, how well your reputation services you and how much loyalty you’ve inspired as a manager.

If you have integrity, others will trust you. Without that trust, it is difficult to influence and lead people. Some of your colleagues will not give their trust until you have earned it. Others will give it more willingly, but if they ever have reason to take it back, may never give it to you again.

Activity - Self Reflection

Value Differences

According to Stephen Covey, in his book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, valuing differences make up the essence of creating synergy. This includes valuing the mental, emotional and psychological differences between people. The key to valuing those differences is to realize that all people do not see the world the way you do.

According to Covey: “The person who is truly effective has the humility and reverence to recognize his own perceptual limitations and to appreciate the rich resources available through interactions with the minds and hearts of other human beings. That person values the differences because those differences add to his knowledge, to his understanding of reality. When we are left to our own experiences we often suffer from a shortage of data.”

Covey further indicates that we have been conditioned to see the world in a specific way. Unless we value the differences in perceptions, unless we value each other and give credence to the possibility that we could both be right we will always be limited by our own conditioning.

Listening and valuing difference in perspectives will open up a whole new world of possibilities – enhancing creative and qualitative decision-making.

Leaders that can influence says: “Great, you see it differently, help me to see what you see.”

Leaders do not crowd around people that agree with them. They look for people with a different perspective, a difference in opinion. By doing so they increase their awareness, they expand their knowledge and wisdom, they affirm others, they give others psychological air, they create an environment conducive for synergy

How open are you for differences?

Seek Synergy

What is synergy? Synergy is when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It means that the relationship which the parts have to each other is a part in and of itself. It is in fact the most catalytic, the most empowering, the most unifying and the most exciting part! (Covey).

Leaders, in seeking to influence others, apply the principle of synergy. You will simply open your mind and heart to new possibilities, new alternatives, new options. It may seem as if this would lead to you casting aside your goal or purpose, but you’ll find that in the process you would in fact fulfil your goal.

You have to depart with the firm belief that all the parties involved will gain more insight and that the excitement of mutual learning and insight will create a new and powerful momentum toward more and more insight, learning and growth.

Synergy means that 1+1 may end up equalling 18 or 8 or 1 900. Because of your openness and intent to share and learn from others in pursuing your goals people will trust you. The high trust produces solutions better than any originally proposed ideas and all parties will know that. Apart from the guaranteed better outcome the process would also have produced team spirit (across teams and functions), sense of excitement and achievement and energy and fun!

Connect to The Frame Of Reference Of Your Peers

We’ve discussed this at length in Learning Unit 1. In order to influence people, they must experience that you have heard and understood them. It is only once they felt heard that people will open up to your influence.

In addition to applying the principles of “connecting to the frame of reference” we also want to provide you with some insights on connecting to your peers by knowing their personality styles.

If you are attempting to influence a person, determine what sort of person you are dealing with and communicate in a manner relevant to their preferred style.

Dialogue Techniques

Great ideas do not mean a lot without turning them into organisational realities. In order to do so, you need to persuade others that the ideas deserve the time, money and energy required for implementation. You can win funds and influence people by practicing some of the following techniques offered by Dr Caroselli in her book Influence with Integrity:

Anticipating - Influential leaders must anticipate what the potential reactions of decision makers could be to your proposal or ideas. Carefully consider ALL potential reactions/responses and carefully construct the responses you would give to these.

Paraphrasing – We’ve dealt with this technique in Learning Unit 1. People may some times launch what you experience to be a verbal attack on your proposal. This often is the case because of their lack of understanding. Learn the skill to paraphrase such statements. This would mean that you will rephrase the question or the statement in a positive light as you repeat it for the others to hear or think about it. (Simultaneously it gives you an opportunity to collect your thoughts and prepare a response). An example could be: “If we do this, we’ll be going so far out on a limb that we’re likely to topple into oblivion”, You may rephrase: “Warren is wondering (it soften it!) about the risks. IT’S not as risky as it seems. The very worst that could happen is...”

Converting comments to questions – A variation on paraphrasing is to offer a mild challenge by asking a question in response to a statement made by someone in you audience. Example: “We’ve tried that four years ago and it mailed”. Your response: “Did it really fail? Or was it put on hold because...”

Citing a higher authority – This technique entails that you recall/ make reference to a previous initiative by a higher authority. So, if you make a radical/creative proposal you may wish to refer to the memo the CEO has sent out months ago urging employees to think out of the box. You may also refer to a corporate drive that was published greatly e.g. “customer is king” – arguing for example that if this is true why would there not be support for an initiative that enhances customer service, etc.

Asking what constitutes satisfaction – You’ve made your proposal and people are asking questions and making statements about it. You sense an adversarial tone. Ask the most adversarial person questions on what would satisfy them. “What would you like me to say?” or “What would lead you to declare this a workable solution?” or “What would you do if you were in my shoes?” This technique works best if the arguments against are not logically or factually grounded, but adversarial as indicated.

Cite precedents – Half the battle could be won by citing as many precedents as you could possibly gather. Find examples from the past or in other organisations and ensure that you have your facts listed.