You can’t influence everyone you need to. You need help. You need influencers.
Early last year I wrote an article about developing your change agents. In it I explained that developing a community of change agents is a hugely effective way of multiplying your impact many times over. In the risk space they are often referred to as risk champions.
The formula I gave you for developing them into a strong and influential community was to collaborate with them, challenge them and, create with them links to integrate risk-based decision making into day-to-day business.
However, despite your best efforts, the community you develop will still face what you have faced. Perceptions of risk management as a compliance activity. Or something to be done for the comfort of the regulator, board or audit and risk committee. Not something valuable to support the business.
While collaborating, challenging and creating with the group will help break down many of these perceptions, they need a perception breaker for whenever they meet with misconceptions.
When I train communities of practice-like risk champions, I develop in them the art of persuasion using my Pathfinder Model which follows these four steps:
- Stand in the shoes of others to understand them.
- Paint pictures for clarity.
- Tell stories to create connection.
- Make them believe through credibility.
If you would like to read more on the Pathfinder Model, here is Chapter 1 of my book Persuasive Advising: How to Turn Red Tape into Blue Ribbon. Or you can buy the book here.
If you want to provide training for some of your change agents, enrol them in the next Persuasive Adviser Program running on 6 and 7 November. It’s a great investment for the multiplier effect it will have for you. Smarter still would be to join them in the program so you can help lead their development while picking up a tip or three. Trust me, I am still learning how to influence better. It is a never-ending journey, with or without AI! There I got AI into this blog haha!