The Art of Influence: Empowering Developers' Team Collaboration

I'm liran glikman and i have about seven minutes to share the rest of the talk. So, the reason I say this is because, newsflash, guys, you are all influencers. You are all influencers already in your teams and in your companies. We all influence the people. But if we learn how to master this skill, you can really achieve what you want. And why do you work? Why do you do what you do? Because you want to maybe get promoted, right? You want to succeed? You want to have a sense of belonging? You want to enjoy? You spend so much time at work? And if you will learn how to communicate better and how to influence for this matter, you will definitely get all of these and more.

So, a bit about me. I am liran glikman. As you can see, I'm doing a lot of stuff that I have built the specialty of networking and personal branding and business development in the past decade and more. I work with tech companies and I basically help the teams to communicate better and I also teach startups, help them to expand globally. I'm an advisor to the United Nations Committee. But what you really have to know about me is that I love yoga and whiskey. Which one of you love yoga? Raise your hands. Good. And whiskey? Only Irish. I mean, sorry, Scottish. Sorry. Only the Scottish. Good. Belvini. Fantastic. So that's what you need to know about myself.

So, guys, collaboration is a key to communication in any successful software development cycle. And you all know, right, what gets in the way of the collaboration could be different perspectives of your teams or the people that you work with, different roles that everybody's saying something else and can get you confused, communication styles. Some people are more technical, more emotional, more just don't speak. And priorities. What your priorities is not always your colleagues' priorities which these ones and more make a lot of troubles when it comes to getting things done.

Now, challenging situation can be and I'm sure you've experienced these and more. You know that you have the right way, you know that this is how things should be done, but you struggle to get your team to buy into it. Some challenges that you probably experience are a discussion devolved into a never-ending cycle of debates and disagreements. These are kind of the hard cases, I would say. Feeling like time is being wasted because you couldn't reach an agreement. Right? Like time, resources, energy. And cross-functional teams. Working with different teams from the company also can lead to disagreement and miscommunication. So what do you do? Let me tell you.

This is where you should bring your influencer superpowers out there because effective collaboration requires more than just technical skills. I'm sure you're great at what you're doing, but obviously we all know that we need to know how to connect better with our peers, how to share ideas clearly and compellingly, how to navigate the complex dynamics of teams' interactions and nobody actually teaches us this and that's the most important thing. Have you ever, like, when you went to university, did you get, like, collaboration, like, classes? Okay. Did you get communication, how to work with teams? So these are a few. Most people usually don't get it. And that's why, sorry, we suck at it mostly. So I want to shift your thinking from an old thinking to a growth thinking. Old thinking means that we're good at what we're doing. Everybody knows and everybody sees it, but no, people don't know and people don't see it. And when I'm talking about growth thinking is how you can stand out, how you can raise your knowledge and voice when needed in order to share your stand in the team. So I'm going to give you a quick three strong influence techniques that will help you to harness people, get decision faster and position your brand better to get shit done. I hope I can say get shit done here. So the influence tool number one is, so some of the common frustration would be when others don't respond in a timely manner and not cooperating with you. So my best tip for you here is use the influence booster, be likable. And being likable starts way before you start your actual meeting. So it's about building relationship with people in advance. And by the way, when you build good relationship with your peers from other teams as well, you increase your chances to get to influence others by 200% because we want to listen more to people that we like and know. So what is the action that you can take? Just invest time in building relationship with teams, with your team, with different teams, with different people in the company. Make sure to even grab a coffee with one person you don't know a week, and I promise you this will increase your influence, your knowledge and your ability to even enjoy in your company. So I want to give you like my Smalltalk formula if you want to approach, again, new people in the company. So Smalltalk has three different stages. First impression starts in the first two seconds, so about 30 seconds to one minute when you meet someone new in the company and you want to interact with them. The body of the conversation should be about connection and the end should be about continuity. So the first impression is about smiling, introducing yourself where you work in the company and talk about positive topics. Don't talk about negative because you want to build a good relationship and start it in a good note. The body of the conversation is about connection and how do you do it? Common Grounds is the best connector ever because when we see people that remind us of ourselves, it's actually connected. This is our primal brain and I want to give you a tip on how to connect with people in Common Ground. The four P's. Talk with people about either passions, places, people and present. What happens right now? So passions like trips, sports, kids, places is where you work, where you studied and so on.

People you know or admire and present, what's happening right now. And don't forget, when you finish your Smalltalk with new people, just make sure to give them a hook. What do they expect? You will send them an email. You will share with them an article. You will set a time to meet for a coffee. So first impression, connection is about Common Ground and also finding interest in others and state their names, remember their names and make sure to set the hook for the next meeting. So this likeability will get you closer to people and will help you to influence them or to them want to listen to you in hard times.

The second tool comes when some of the common frustration would be when all your suggestions are not being accepted and you feel like a limbo in a never-ending discussion. I'm sure it happens to many of you here. So my tip to you here would be to use the social proof method which means that we are more likely to be influenced by the actions and behaviors of successful others or successful projects. So the action you can take here to build your authority and knowledge through either when there are some conflicts, highlight example of successful projects to back your case, maybe bring a case study from other companies or leading figures in the world that back a certain approach and also a good thing is to join forces with people in your team that have the same idea and make sure to go through it together.

My third and last one is actually for the brave developers only. Some of the frustration that can come to you in order to use this tool is when the feeling in the team is not fun and supportive and it reaches a boiling point. And many times we just don't talk about it. We say, okay, well, we'll just let it go but it goes in and it just makes the situation really uncomfortable and the relationship uncomfortable. So my tools for you would be to raise that red flag. Be the person to raise the red flag. Now it's not always easy to be the one to break, you know, like break the scene and make sure everybody are meeting, but I want to ask you to ask the team to openly discuss the situation, be the one to give them the permission to share, raise their struggles and their frustration and clean the table. This will put you in such a great position of the person who solved it all, but also it will help the team to develop better.

The art of influence isn't about manipulation, guys. We had seven minutes. So it's very short, but it's not about manipulation. I want to make sure that you understand. It's really about building trust. It's really about building understanding within the team and collective empowerment of the team so you can achieve your own goal and the company's goal. And you have the power to set the tone in your team, guys. So I want you to think about it. I don't want you to be the rotten apple, the one who takes the team down. I don't want you to be the regular apple that people don't see or don't really, you know, like don't really matter. I want you to be the confetti. I want you to stand out. I want you to shine. I want you to make a difference for the team and make people feel better and make people take good actions. So I want you guys to be the confetti next time you're coming to your meetings. And thank you so much.