Getting a new business initiative approved can feel like pulling teeth. HR practitioners often hit a wall in the form of budget restraints, unrelenting leadership or a workplace culture averse to change.

In the current economic environment, this can turn into a Catch-22. In times of skills shortages, technological disruption and shifting regulatory landscapes, large-scale people initiatives are often necessary for survival, but these same issues are driving many executives to tighten their purse strings.

As a result, HR practitioners without the necessary influencing skills risk letting their best strategies remain forever as ideas on a page.

To avoid this, HR practitioners can develop the skills to speak executives’ language, cultivate advocates and develop a deep understanding of a business’s needs and pain points.

A research-backed approach to executive buy-in

When pitching for executive buy-in, an approach that combines human skills with business acumen is key. 

In an article for Harvard Business Review, professors Susan J. Ashford and James R. Detert provide a detailed breakdown of how to gain executive buy-in based on their research. 

In their research, Ashford and Detert identified the tactics of a successful “issue seller” (their name for a person seeking buy-in).

“Issue sellers who accomplish their goals, we found, look for the best ways, venues, and times to voice their ideas and concerns – using rhetorical skill, political sensitivity, and interpersonal connections to move the right leaders to action,” they write.

They break this down into seven key tactics:

1. Tailoring your pitch – this was the key success factor. They say it’s critical to become familiar with your executive’s “unique blend of goals, values and knowledge” and use these insights to customise your pitch according to who you’re speaking with.

2. Strategically frame the issue – this is the stage most HR professionals would be familiar with: building a business case. Not surprisingly, the researchers found this was more effective than moral framing (e.g. trying to convince people to ‘do the right thing’).

3. Manage your emotions – passion, they said, was proven to help in achieving buy-in, but passion can easily spill into anger and this inevitably works against issue sellers. Emotional regulation is key.

4. Choose your timing wisely – pitch ideas when there’s a groundswell from employees, when a business’ priorities are shifting (we’re in such a time right now) or when a new leader is at the helm.

5. Don’t do it alone – the researchers found having a group of people involved in seeking buy-in made it happen a lot faster, as each individual brought their own experience, relationships and social pull.

6. Tailor your approach– understand how various executives like to receive information. Do they prefer formal presentations to a casual coffee catch-up, for example? Or, does anecdotal data sourced from employees have more impact than referring to external statistics?

7. Have a solution – it seems obvious, but don’t suggest changing a process without providing what the researchers call “thoughtful fixes”. Come prepared with a well-researched solution, but be willing to make changes and seek feedback from others to ensure diversity of thought.

Read the full HBR article for further explanation, advice and examples backing up the tactics.

HR influence in action

Gaining executive buy-in requires HR to strike the right balance between human skills such as emotional intelligence with technical skills such as business acumen, says Shirley Vella CPHR, Executive Director of HR at SPV Consulting.

Based on her experiences getting HR strategies over the line, Vella offers three key tips for HR practitioners hoping to boost their influence among the executive team.

1. Speak executives’ language

For HR practitioners, the engagement, wellbeing and/or capabilities of the workforce tend to be the number-one goals of any new initiative. So, when pitching to executives, it’s often HR’s first instinct to lead with workforce benefits. 

However, it’s important for HR to put themselves in executives’ shoes and demonstrate that costs and business context have been prioritised in the strategy, says Vella.

“In my experience, executives really want to do good things for the employees, but, at the end of the day, the business needs to be sustained,” she says. 

“You need to understand your audience. If they’re looking at the bottom line, then you talk about the bottom line. Look at the ROI and what’s in it for the business.”

To get this right, it’s essential for HR to upskill themselves in the fundamentals of finance, she says, such as the right way to do a cost-benefit analysis or return on investment forecast.

“HR is fundamentally about people, but it also requires a strong focus on the profitability of the business. So you need to have that business acumen.”

“In my experience, executives really want to do good things for the staff, but, at the end of the day, the business needs to be sustained.” – Shirley Vella, Executive Director of Human Resources, SPV Consulting

Vella recalls an instance where she put these skills into practice to get executives at a previous organisation on board with a new HR information system (HRIS). 

“The company had never done it before. And they [looked at] the subscription fees and implementation fees first and asked, ‘What’s good about it?’

“The first thing I did was [demonstrate] the ROI of having the system – for example, [pointing out that] leave management and performance management could all be done through the system, so it’s saving a lot of HR time [to be reinvested into more high-value work]. Also, regulatory compliance is all set up in the system, so, for example, if an employee had an expired or invalid license, the system comes up with an alert, which reduces the risk to them. So we’re using those points and converting them into dollar signs.”

2. Divide and conquer

When cultivating the ability to influence executives, it’s important for HR to remember that each executive will have their own unique language and priorities.

“When you’re trying to get executive buy-in, use a divide and conquer [model],” says Vella. “Try to map your stakeholders first.”

For example, when she pitched the HRIS mentioned above to her company’s executive team, she first made a list of the leadership team members and determined who was the most computer-savvy and systems-focused, and approached them first to demonstrate the benefits.

“If you get their buy-in first, then they will become your advocates, and they will spread the word.”

Once initial advocates are onboard, leverage their support to influence other executives, she says. Many executives will be more convinced of an initiative’s benefits if they hear about them from more than one source, and this can create a positive knock-on effect that lends momentum to your proposal.

3. Start small

As well as building advocates within the executive team, Vella says that the greatest advocates for launching or sustaining HR initiatives are often the employees participating in them. 

Similarly to executives, employees are often more swayed by word of mouth than by formal presentations from the HR team.

For this reason, Vella suggests launching every important initiative through a pilot program in an area of the organisation where it’s likely to have the most impact.

“Whoever you pilot with will become your advocates too,” she says.

She offers the example of a lunch and learn initiative she recently launched in her current role.

“Everyone was fairly sceptical at first,” she says. “First of all, I [convinced] the executives to buy in, but they couldn’t force staff to go. So the next step was [convincing] the frontline managers, who are always busy. I personally went to them and said, ‘Come for five minutes, and if you don’t like it, you can leave.’

“Some of them who never wanted to join [in the first place] just came in to have a look, and  ended up  staying for the entire hour. The positive feedback was enormous and, slowly, they started to talk about [rolling] this out to other teams as well.”

By using these strategies to cultivate advocates among both the executive team and the broader workforce, HR can ensure their ideas translate into meaningful change.

A version of this article was originally published in June 2020, and has been updated with fresh insights from Shirley Vella CPHR.

Want to learn more about effective leadership and management? Sign up for AHRI’s short course to understand your leadership style and learn how to create key performance indicators.

The post HR’s guide to getting executive buy-in appeared first on HRM online.

It’s believed that much of Apple’s success came from Steve Jobs’s team being able to persuade him to rethink his position on certain matters. 

For years, Jobs said Apple would never make a phone. That was the hill he was willing to die on. Eventually, after some coaxing and careful handling of Jobs’s ego, he agreed to try. However, his next restriction was that there were to be no apps on the phone. It took another year of strategic persuasion before he relented. 

Within nine months, the App Store had exceeded a billion downloads. A decade later, the iPhone had generated more than $1 trillion in revenue. 

That’s the thing about being a masterful persuader: it’s rarely a quick win. But it’s a critical business skill to hone, especially for HR, as employers start reimagining work for the future.

What holds us back from influencing others? 

Many people think that to get an idea over the line with a naysayer, they just need to push harder, says Jonah Berger, Associate Professor of Marketing at the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania and author of The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone’s Mind. 

“Often we push, pressure and cajole and then nothing happens,” says Berger. 

“We often think if we just add more facts, figures and information that people will come around [to the idea]. But sometimes the more we push people, the more they dig in their heels and do the exact opposite of what we wanted them to do.” 

Instead, think like a chemist, says Berger. “There’s a special set of substances in chemistry that make change happen faster and easier. These substances don’t add [higher] temperatures or more pressure, like things often do in chemistry. They identify obstacles and remove them. And the same thing is true for great catalysts in the business world. 

“Instead of saying, ‘What could we do to make that person change?’, they take a different approach and ask, ‘Why haven’t they changed already? What’s stopping them?’” 

Sometimes they just haven’t got all the information they need, he says, but usually it’s more than that. 

“Imagine you’ve parked your car on a hill. You put your key in the ignition, step your foot on the pedal, but the car doesn’t move forward. Some people might think, ‘It just needs another pump of gas,’ so you push harder, but you don’t see that you’ve got the hand brake on. No matter how much you step on the gas, the car isn’t moving.” 

HR needs to be on the lookout for other people’s hand brakes.

For example, maybe you’ve got a CEO who doesn’t like being told what to do. Instead of orating at them until you’re blue in the face, think about how you can tweak your messaging so it might seem like it was their own idea. 

Prompting productive responses 

“Speakers in the midst of trying to convince others – especially if passionately – can fall into the trap of emotionally reacting versus thoughtfully responding,” says Joel Schwartzberg, a leadership communications coach and author of Get to the Point! Sharpen Your Message and Make Your Words Matter. 

“A reaction is sudden and emotional, like anger, sadness or embarrassment. A response is measured and considered, like a solution, a suggestion or a counterproposal, which is much more productive.” 

Most leaders will be far more responsive to a solution-driven pitch. A key psychological tip to ensure they make a decision is to offer them a choice, says Berger. 

“Often when we give people one option – when we email people and say, ‘We should do this’ – people push back. They think of all the reasons why they don’t want to do the thing you’ve suggested,” says Berger. 

“By some estimates, even when the new thing is 2.6 times better, people still tend to stick with the status quo.” – Jonah Berger, Author and Associate Professor of Marketing, Wharton Business School

Great change agents give people options. 

“They’ll say, ‘I think we should do X or Y. Which one do you think is better?’ By giving people options, it deactivates their antipersuasion radar. Instead of focusing on what they don’t like, we’ve given them a new job – to focus on which option they like better. This makes them more likely to pick one of the options at the end of the interaction.” 

Similar to this, Berger says people often have more success when they phrase something as a question instead of a statement. Instead of saying, ‘We need to increase the diversity of our leadership team,’ you might say, ‘What could we gain if we made our leadership team more diverse?’

“The more [people] feel like we’re pushing them, the more they feel like we’re usurping their autonomy and their ability to make a volitional choice. But there are very few things people enjoy more than giving their opinion.” 

It also encourages commitment to the cause. 

“If we ask someone, ‘What would we gain if we would increase our funding for the D&I program?’ then that encourages commitment to the conclusion, because they might say, ‘I think D&I is important for these reasons.’ It becomes harder for them to say ‘no’ later because they’ve already put a stake in the ground. Not because we told them it was important, but because they decided it was.” 

Choose your words wisely 

Another potential barrier to change is status quo bias, says Berger. 

“Anytime we’re trying to get people to do something, they’re often making a choice between an old and new way of doing things. That by itself isn’t necessarily a bias. Maybe the status quo is better. But even when the new thing is better people stick with the familiar. In fact, by some estimates, even when the new thing is 2.6 times better, people still tend to stick with the status quo. 

“New things require more effort. Think about when you go to the grocery store, for example. When you buy milk, you probably buy it in the same size and brand.” 

If you’ve pulled off someone’s parking brake and convinced them to try a new approach, next you need to think about what to say. 

“Good persuasion techniques go back to Aristotle, the father of persuasion,” says Schwartzberg. “He recommended including elements of ethos [expressions that establish credibility and trust], pathos [details that trigger an emotional response] and logos [the application of logic and reasoning] in every argument. Using all three will elevate the persuasive power of a pitch as effectively in 2023 as it did in 335 BC.” 

And the words you choose matter, he says. 

“When audiences hear your words, they make subconscious assumptions. For example, they’ll think you took more action if you ‘enabled’ a result versus ‘allowed’ it. And they’ll understand that you prevailed over a challenge if you say you ‘overcame’ it versus ‘addressed’ it.”

He also suggests using “attention magnets”. 

“These are short, often generic phrases that signal to the audience that something important is about to be shared. It’s the verbal equivalent of a flashing neon sign.” 

These include phrases like: 

• We’ve covered a lot, but here’s the thing… 
• If you only take away one idea today, it should be that we need to commit to our people as much as we do to our profit. 
• To take advantage of this rare opportunity, here’s what I recommend… 

“Using phrases like ‘I recommend’ and ‘I suggest’ is useful for leaders, who should be making clear points and proposals, not just sharing information or data.” 

Attention magnets are powerful, he says, “but if you overuse them, their strength will wane. Reserve that engagement firepower for your most important lines and points.”

He also recommends choosing attention magnets that sound like you. 

“Say each one aloud and pick the ones that feel natural to your style and vocabulary.” 

Does persuasion come down to data or storytelling?

HR professionals are forever being told to back up everything they say with data. While Schwartzberg agrees data is effective, he also recommends customising your persuasive approach to the person you’re speaking to. 

“Emotional pulls and intellectual pulls don’t have to be either/or. Speakers can use both in a single speech,” he says. 

“But ultimately, you want to choose the tactic that best serves your goal: persuading the other person, who may respond differently to a compelling story than to a data point, for example.” 

These skills won’t just serve you well as an HR professional, says Berger. They’ll help you as an employee, parent, spouse and friend. 

“We all have people in our personal and professional lives that we want to move in a certain direction, but too often we think that pushing is the right way to go. What’s much more effective is getting people to want to change. And we do that by removing the barriers that get in their way.”

This article is from the March 2023 edition of HRM Magazine.

Learn how to write clearly, succinctly and persuasively to capture the attention of your intended business audience with AHRI’s short course in professional writing skills.

The post How to make your communication more persuasive appeared first on HRM online.