Ideas to your activities.
When anyone who has faced a rival at work with formal or informal power are fighting you, you may find it impossible to accomplish - or get credit for- any meaningful work. And even if you have the upper hand, an antagonic relationship inevitably casts a cloud over you and your team, sapping energy, stymieing progress, and distracting group members from their goals.
Here you have a method, called the 3 Rs, for efficiently turning your adversaries into allies.
(Considering psichology of the brain, the sociology of relationships and the psichology of influence).
Research shows that trust is based on both reason and emotion. If the emotional orientation toward a person is negative -typically because of a percieved threat- the reason will be twisted to alaign with those negative feeling. This is why feuds can stalemate trust: new facys and arguments, no matter how credible ad logical, may be seen as ploys to dupe the other side. This effect is not jus psychological; it is physiological. In this situation, the emotional brain must be managed before adversaries can understand evidence and be persuaded.
REDIRECTION: Step 1 is to redirect your rival´s negative emotion so that they are channeled away from you. For instance, we accept flattery even if we recognize it as such. Another tactic is to introduce a discussion of things you and your rival have in common.
RECIPROCITY: The essential principal here is to give before you ask: fairtrade. You don't establish a relationship; you carry out a transaction.
RATIONALITY: Establishes the expectations of the fledgling relationship you have built using the previous steps so that your efforts do not come off as dishonest or as ineffective pandering. Rationality is like offering medicine after a spoon ful of sugar: it ensures that you are getting the benefit of the shifted negative emotion, and any growingpossitive ones, which would otherwise diffuse over time.
I took some ideas from Brian Uzzi (professor of leadership and organizational change in Northwestern's Kellogs School of Management) and Shannon Dunlap (journalist and writer based in New York City).
