What do you do if your colleagues are not receptive to your ideas?

Recently I have learned about Tim Bakers 4 strategies of Influence and I found the model wonderful. It helped me to understand the ways in which we need to influence our work colleagues or teams. I find myself understanding my influence style and creating a strategy for my audience on how I want to present my ideas. Straight up it works.

To gain acceptance for your ideas with unreceptive colleagues, diversify your approach. Build rapport, align ideas with shared goals, and offer support. Tailor presentations to resonate with their perspectives, involve them early, and showcase ideas through small-scale implementations. Emphasize collaboration, stay patient, and persistently advocate. These strategies can enhance acceptance and foster a supportive environment for new ideas.

Know Your Audience Understand your colleagues' backgrounds, priorities, and concerns. Tailor your approach to resonate with their perspectives and values. Without knowing these basic aspects of your audience it is highly impossible to be able to connect with them in a direct manner.

Use Evidence and Logic Present your ideas with clear, data-driven evidence and logical reasoning. Show how your proposals address specific challenges or opportunities, and emphasize the potential benefits for the team or organization. In today's modern, scientific and logic driven world even a nursery student asks for a logic and reasoning to be able to convince him/her to doing a correct thing. The credibility of a thought is directly dependent on its being an apt solution backed by facts.

Data removes the emotion out of the conversation. It will force your team, leaders and yourself to assess the process/problem/idea objectively. Remembering to focus on interrogating the data not the emotions the information is evoking.

Listen and Empathize Actively listen to your colleagues' feedback and concerns. Empathize with their perspectives, acknowledging their valid points and demonstrating your willingness to collaborate and find common ground. It shows our keen and genuine interests in understanding their viewpoints and taking into considerations for future implementations wherever possible.

Apart from the all above factors I believe the following few below mentioned points would be great in achieving a more coherent relationship while presenting own ideas and expecting acceptance of the same: 1. Build Relationships Strengthen your relationships with your colleagues. Engage in casual conversations, show interest in their work, and find common ground. Building rapport can make them more open to your ideas. 2. Be Patient and Persistent Changing minds takes time. Stay patient and persistent in promoting your ideas, while remaining open to adjustments based on feedback.

It has been my experience that people are most supportive of ideas they take an active role in developing. Your role is to set out the problem or issue, seek input and possible solutions, and then add yours to the list. The most likely thought out scenario will be the one you are prepared to present (the more complete the better). However if you can then bolt on some of their ideas to your desired outcome you are likely to win the team over, as their Input has been considered and embraced within the scope of your plans.