Looking for a promotion? Need help from your colleagues? Want you boss to give you additional resources for that project you are working on? You have to start by asking, but understanding how to ask will make all the difference between getting what you want and going away empty handed. How you should ask depends on what motivates the person you are asking- what I refer to as their "U Perspective" in my most recent book UP: Influence Power and othe U Perspective-The Art of Getting What You Want .
Most people simply assume that everyone is motivated in the same way that they are. Even when we recognize that someone else might see a situation differently than we do, our first instinct usually is to try to persuade them to see things our way. The U Perspective takes the opposite approach. Its effectiveness is not rooted in the ability to convince others to change their views or adopt different values. Instead, its power comes from recognizing what others already believe and want and motivating them to help you achieve your objectives based on that information. The U Perspective allows you to get what you want by working with another person’s belief system, not challenging it. To achieve this level of understanding, you need to discover how the person you are trying to influence perceives a situation and what is important to him or her -- to learn to see things through their eyes. Once you understand how they see a situation you have the ability to construct, and present options in a way that more effectively influences what they do.
We think money will motivate people to do just about anything. While that may true it takes an awful lot of money to get people to do certain things and there are some things that even a lot of money may not get certain individuals to do. More importantly, sometimes money is not the best motivator.
Computer scientists have used an understanding of what certain web users value to literally get them to do work that no one else wants to do and to do it for free. Impossible. Not if you understand the concept of the U Perspective. One of the most boring tasks I can think of is labeling images to enable online searching. This is a task computers can not yet do; so it requires viewers to look at the images and assign them key words that identify them. How much would you expect to be paid to do that work? Louis Van Ahn, a professor at Carnegie MellonUniversity, has figured out how to get people to do it for free. He simply turned it into a game. The game connects random players who log in to the website. Each is shown the same picture for which they type in keywords. When the words match they are awarded points. People return to the website frequently and have been known to play for hours.
When it comes to getting a new job, a promotion or a raise, understanding what the decision-maker cares about is critical to success. If you show how what you are asking for will further some goal they care about, you will likely get what you want. If you can help your boss or prospective boss look good or accomplish an important objective you are likely to win the new job, promotion or raise that you are seeking.
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