People are driven to accomplish their goals when they’re intrinsically convinced they are doing the right thing. Convincing is getting your colleagues and your team to buy-in on your vision.

1. TECH LEADERSHIP

2. STOP EXPECTING. START CONVINCING

3. STOP EXPECTING. START CONVINCING
Where leadership does not come from:
• Compensation
• Hierarchy
• Processes
People are driven to accomplish their goals when they’re
intrinsically convinced they are doing the right thing.

4. STOP EXPECTING
• People that are not convinced have high probability of not reaching the agreed
upon goal
• People that are not convinced increase the risk of not attaining the expected
quality of the results.
• A chain of not convinced people will bring chaos and un-focused arguments.
Unfortunately, only relying on the expectations you
communicated to someone, no matter how clear you
think they were, will ultimately bring you to fail at
reaching your goals.

5. Convincing is getting your colleagues and your team to
buy-in on your vision.
START CONVINCING

6. START CONVINCING
The moment you do the extra mile, and move from
expecting to convincing, is the moment where
collaboration kicks in.
• The convincing process includes the extra step of understanding the point of view
of the other party and iterate on it by deconstructing both schemes of thinking.
• It means putting yourself at risk of being challenged, but also even convinced
by another more desirable course of action.
• Convincing is the practical way of inspiring.
• Convincing is hard. Expecting is easy. Convincing is bold, it takes guts and
courage. Expecting is lazy and puts luck in the equation of reaching your goals.

7. SOME FACTS
• Titles don’t make any decision more legitimate to be executed.
• Making a decision is but a small fraction (say, 10%) of the execution process.
Convincing is what matters most (that other 90%). Without effective convincing,
you’re making empty decisions that will lead to poor results.
• Being stuck in the ‘expecting’ approach is a great way of turning out like an
opinionated stubborn (if you’re lucky) or an as*hole. Then good luck getting people
aligned to your goals.
• The harsh truth is that an organization doesn’t have much room to go on more than
one direction. So start convincing quickly.
• Management role gives you the hiring/firing power. Leadership role expects that you
have a convincing capability.
If you are not convinced in your day-to-day, then what the hell are you
doing here??

8. WHAT EXPECTING LOOKS LIKE?
We got back from our strategic planning and from now on, everyone
needs to do a pair review in order to ship something. Effective
immediately.

9. WHAT EXPECTING LOOKS LIKE?
I just told a client that you will get back to him by email before noon
today. Please do.
We got back from our strategic planning and from now on, everyone
needs to do a pair review in order to ship something. Effective
immediately.

10. WHAT CONVINCING LOOKS LIKE?
Base from our current study 80% of the human errors that happen in
the last 3 months was caused by inattention. Everyone needs to do a
pair review in order to ship something.
One client has been waiting for 5 days for an answer, now I’m
suspecting we might lose them if we don’t act quickly. I just told him
that you will get back to him by email before noon today. This will
very much save business if you can achieve this.

11. HOW TO CONVINCE?
1) Understand the context.
2) Understand your peer and ask discovery questions, such as: What do your days look like
as of recent? What’s going on outside of work? etc. (Preferably know this at all time, so you
don’t need to ramp up in one awkward series of questions) so you can have more
compassion if something doesn’t sound right even with all the best arguments. Also find
common values to work with.
3) Drop your arguments. Try to stay factual. Be sure it’s aligned with the common goal and not
on any personal foughazi dream. You will know very fast if you have a “grip”, if not, repeat with
some alternation, until you find this “grip”. When you find it, go deeper and enjoy the ride of
synced minds.
4) In the BEST scenario, the path you want to go on will come from the mouth of the very
person you’re trying to convince. This mean you have made something very good. Sharing
clearly the problem and your vision on how to solve it. So precisely it come natural to go on
one way.
5) If your are still not able to get to a common ground, pause. Go take a walk and think about
it. Come back when you think you have found the missing piece of the puzzle. Don’t fall into
the easy expectation trap. Staying passive and expecting results is not only cowardly, but is
highly ineffective.

12. HOW TO STAY IN “THE ZONE”?
Interactions should be additive not argumentative. It’s all about momentum, the goal here is
to amplify one and another ideas and actions.
To get you an idea, it’s come from the simplest principle of improv. If someone start with: “Hey
it has a blue elephant on the background!” and you answer: “No it don’t”. It kill the flow.
Please don’t be that guy. Don’t kill the flow mate!
It’s call the: “Yes, and” principle. Always start by saying “Yes, and” and the momentum
continues, the flow stay fluid. So in the above example, I would respond: “Yes, right, I didn’t
where to put him, did you let the toilet seat up again?” and the story goes somewhere
interesting…
https://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

13. HOW TO STAY IN “THE ZONE”?

14. HOW TO STAY IN “THE ZONE”?

15. CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
• Rely on expectations and you’ll not just fail, but you’ll likely also get disappointed
and frustrated ; likely scenarios include disliking what you’re doing, the people
you’re doing it with, and the organization in general. Until eventually the relationship
will break one way or the other.
• You are the only one responsible for your mission, and your individual skills are just
a fraction of the total skills you will need to achieve your goals. The skills missing
are in your control to the extent that you master the convincing capability.
• Convincing happens all the time and on every level. Make sure you accept the
dance and enjoy partaking. If not you will look like… yes, an as*hole.
• Don’t forget. We are all on the same battle, don’t take things too
personal. If you are here now, it’s likely because you are already fucking
amazing.

16. BOTTOM LINE
I’m happy to dance with you as many time as you want. However,
expect nothing from me if you failed to convince me.

17. Questions?
July 2018
Julien Cousineau