Generating Buy-In

By Shari Lifland

In the words of the Rolling Stones, "You can't always get what you want." That's true, but as a leader, you'll greatly improve your odds if you adopt strategies described in Mark S. Walton's new book "Generating Buy-In: Mastering the Language of Leadership" (AMACOM 2004). Walton, who advises senior managers and sales and marketing executives at many of the world's leading companies, writes that people in the workplace and marketplace "are much more likely to do what you want if it leads to a future they want."

The key, according to his research, is to determine what your audience wants and then to communicate a targeted "strategic story" that projects a positive future outcome fulfilling those needs. Finally, call your target audience to action--ask them for a specific commitment or first step toward the action you want.

Walton's book illustrates these buy-in strategies through extensive case studies and interviews that reveal how world-class executives (Jack Welch), political leaders (Ronald Reagan) and organizations (Intel) have used the language of buy-in to win over their target audiences.

Formerly Chief White House and Senior Correspondent for CNN, Walton is founder and Chairman of the Center for Leadership Communication, an executive development organization whose clients include Dow Chemical Company, GlaxoSmithKline, General
Electric, Toyota Motor Sales and the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps.

Shari Lifland interviewed Mark Walton to gain further insight into "Generating Buy-In: Mastering the Language of Leadership."

AMA: In the introduction to "Generating Buy-In" you write, "Other people's buy-in has always been enormously important. But in today's world, it has become the most valuable asset of all." Why is buy-in such a key competency right now?

Mark S. Walton: Because, in the 21st Century, the dynamics of power, authority and credibility have radically changed. The workplace and marketplace have been democraticized--people have the freedom to make their own decisions about whom to follow and what to buy, as never before in history.

Look at today's companies: they're literally "free agent nations." Command-and-control management and unquestioned loyalty are ideas whose time has come and gone. In the new organizational world, "there's nothing you can force people to do." Dow Chemical CEO Bill Stavropolous puts it this way: "Now, people have to believe, and they have to believe in you."

This new marketplace is a free-for-all, moving in Internet time. Companies, competitors and offerings glom together in an undifferentiated blur. Investors, customers and clients click, scan, blink and decide. Never have they had more options or fewer clear incentives to send their business your way.

So today, other people's buy-in--their understanding, commitment, support and positive action--is everything. And the ability to generate it, to influence people's thoughts and feelings, has emerged as the #1 leadership skill in business and, in fact, everywhere.

AMA: A two-part question: first, how do you determine what your target audience wants? Second, what if it conflicts with what you want?

Walton: Ask and listen, very carefully. Understanding your target audience is what underlies successful advertising, marketing and political campaigns of every stripe. Whether these campaigns employ simple personal interviews or sophisticated technologies to read a focus group's brain waves, all use "asking and listening" methodologies to determine what turns people on. Then, they leverage that intelligence to communicate the right bright tomorrow to a particular target market or demographic group.

For a leader or manager seeking buy-in inside an organization, this translates into consistently visiting with and listening to people. Don Keough, President Emeritus of Coca-Cola, told me: "Every morning when I was in Atlanta I would go to the coffee shop and sit down at a different table with anybody who happened to be there. By the time I got back to the office I knew two or three things that were happening in the company that led me to make another phone call. People would say, 'How do you know these things?' I ran the business by moving around. You've got to have peripheral hearing."

To address the second part of your question, if you can't or don't want to provide other people with what they want, you won't successfully generate their buy-in. It's as straightforward as that. Why should they follow you, or buy from you, if they don't see a positive future for themselves in doing so? So, the secret to winning them over is to show them how what you want will give them what they want.

AMA: Which part of your buy-in methodology do people usually find most difficult?

Walton: First, a note of clarification. The "language of buy-in," the telling of strategic stories that I write about in Generating Buy-In and teach to executives, is not my methodology. This is no "new, new idea" or sales and management fad. It dates back at least, to the beginning of recorded time. Successful leaders throughout history have been masterful strategic story-tellers.

What's new today is that the most savvy executives, in every field, have come to recognize that using strategic stories is a very smart "best practice" when communicating with employees, customers, investors and the general public, in good times and bad.

Most executives I work with find learning about and using strategic stories quite straightforward, even simple. This "language of buy-in," writes Harvard's Bill Ury (co-author of Getting to Yes) in his Foreword to Generating Buy-In, is "common sense, uncommonly practiced." Once you learn about and begin practicing it, it comes quite naturally.

AMA: In your book, you illustrate strategies for "Generating Buy-In" with real-life examples of some of the most charismatic communicators of our time-Winston Churchill, Ronald Reagan, Jack Welch. How important is personal charisma to gaining successful buy-in?

Walton: There is no denying the power of presenting yourself in an articulate, energetic and compelling way when seeking buy-in, whether leading, managing, marketing, politicking or selling an idea, product or service.

That said, today's target audiences, both in the workplace or marketplace, are extremely sophisticated. We've all been trained by television, especially, to sniff out the difference between "the real thing" and phony charisma--orchestrated hand gestures, eye movements, tone of voice, etc. On the bottom line, what we're looking for is real credibility and the answer to one central question: if we follow, vote for or buy from you, what's in it for us? How will you make our future bright? He or she who best answers that question is likely to win the most support, to generate the most buy-in, in today's world.

Click here to read a sample chapter from "Generating Buy-In"

Author Bio: Mark S. Walton is Chairman of the Center for Leadership Communication, an executive development organization based in California and at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. The Center provides executive programs in 21st Century communication strategies and skills to leaders, managers and sales and marketing executives at many of the world's most admired organizations. He is professor of leadership in the U.S. Navy's Advanced Management Program, teaches at UNC's Senior Executive Institute, and speaks frequently at corporate meetings and conferences. He can be contacted by phone at (919) 969-7100 or through his Center's website, www.leadercommunication.com

If you want to increase your leadership effectiveness, consider these AMA seminars:

• The Voice of Leadership: How Leaders Inspire, Influence and Achieve Results
  
• AMA's Advanced Leadership Program