Why isn’t this working?

Value Mountain

When we feel disrespected, or not listened to, it’s often because we’re not offering anything of value to the other person.

We can turn this around by making what we are sharing relevant to the other person.

The tool to do this is creating your Value Mountain.

___________________________________________________________

I get about 4 emails a day from random people. You probably do, too.

Things like:

• Jewellery collaborations for fashion labels.
• Software for businesses with 1,000+ employees.
• Invitations to award submissions outside of my niche.

They’re not relevant, so I usually delete them. I imagine you do, too.

All of these products have value to someone - just not me.

Research suggests we focus when something is valuable to us.

When a message is relevant, it has value. When something is valuable, we pay attention.

People are doing this to us, all the time.

They’re mentally filtering everything we say against this criteria of,?‘Is this for me? Is this relevant to my personal circumstances?’

At work, it can look like this:

1. If you have valuable information, I’m listening.
2. If not, even if you’re my boss, I’m tuning out. I just can’t help it.

This is a priority if we need someone to pay attention. And there’s something we can do about it.

A Value Mountain is a way to figure out what someone else values.

A Value Mountain is a list of things we value most at any given time.

Different to?values, which is a personal principle (e.g. integrity, honesty), a Value Mountain is a list of the things we want the most at that particular time.

What our Value Mountains all share is that they give us something.?And it’s what we pay the most attention to at work. It’s relevant to us.

Here was my Value Mountain at the start of Happiness Concierge:

1. Establish credibility.
2. Find paying clients.
3. Figure out how to pay the bills until I earn enough to pay myself.

People who could help me with my Value Mountain got my attention first.

Think of a Value Mountain like a really motivating to do list. It doesn’t define who we are, it just demonstrates what we gravitate towards and pay attention to the most.

And I should care about this why?

In business, if you sell something of value, and you offer it to someone who values that thing, they will buy it. If you try and sell it to someone who doesn’t value that thing, they’ll ignore it.

The same is true for people.

If someone sees what you offer as valuable, they’ll have more time for you.

Value = Relevance.

Value is what someone else finds relevant. Value is?objective?because of this.

This means what you think you offer, could be different to how someone else sees it.

We all work with people. And when we know what’s on someone’s Value Mountain (what they value), we can get their attention by outlining how what we offer helps them.

Your Mountain +?my Mountain = Value.

The first trick to any positive relationship is understanding what someone's priorities are.

When you figure out what your customers KPI’s are (remembering anyone who isn’t you at work is technically a customer of what you offer), it forces you to think about what someone else is getting paid to do, and why they might act the way they do to achieve that.

From that you can reverse engineer your Value Mountain matchmaking.

For example:

• If someone is a Financial Controller, it’s likely minimising risk is on their Mountain. If you know that, you could format your update to start with the risks involved and how you plan to mitigate those the next time you talk to them.
• If someone is a Researcher, they’re going to trust evidence-based statements. Practice saying sentences which qualify?upfront?your evidence-based approach. For example, instead of leading with ‘I?feel like this could be good’?(which might well be true), lead with what qualifies this fact. E.g. ‘Studies have proven that this works. So I was thinking…’
• If someone is a Marketer, it’s likely they have campaign results to achieve. If this is the case, you could ask them how they like to quantify marketing, and if they have an ethos on marketing so you can understand how they think a little more. You can ask them what marketing results are?meaningful?and if your role influences that, how they see that, so you know how to link what you do to their work.

The main thing to remember is that when you ask someone what they value most, you’re reminding people that you’re on their team.

Anyone who isn’t you is a customer of yours.

You don’t need to be a business owner to think of people as customers. If something is valuable, we invest in it (time, money, credibility). And people are no different.

If we choose to see people we work with as customers of ours, we immediately start thinking about?how to be more valuable to them.

When we think about ways to be more valuable, we can think to ourselves, ‘I have no idea what this person really values.’?And if that’s the case, that’s why the relationship isn’t (yet) achieving what it could be.

If this rings a bell, the question to ask ourselves is,?‘In my world, who are my customers? What do they value?’

How do I figure out what someone else values at work?

The key to figuring out what someone else values is by asking them and testing your assumptions.

Here are 5 ways you could do that at work:

• Clarifying the top questions they have in a meeting.?Instead of reeling off what you want to talk about just pause before starting to ask, "What are the top questions you are hoping to get answered today?" Be open if you can’t answer those. It’s better to be open (save everyone's time) than ramble away while they wonder when you’ll get to their question.
• Use an ‘either/or’ statement.?When receiving a request, ask what way they’d find it the most useful and for what purpose (so you’re seeing what they value and why). As an example, a Research Assistant might ask whether their research is more?relevant?as a list of potential industries to look at, or if one particular industry is more useful. If a deep dive list is more valuable, ask them why that is so you can tailor your research. And if that is the case, in what format, and so on.
• Ask for a specific piece of feedback.?For example, instead of "what feedback do you have" get really specific so they know what to give you feedback on. This could look like, "What is the #1 thing I can do, or give you, that will make your life easier at work?". Or, "What is your preference for how I provide information to you?"
• Ask the most valuable asset we can create first.?For example, a Project Manager might ask what is more valuable to a client: a timeline, a scope, or a reverse brief before assigning more time to a project. And if that is the case, delivered in what format, by what time, for what stakeholder, and so on.
• Find a problem to make go away. In?last week's email?I talked about the Motivational Triad (avoid pain, seek pleasure, exert as little effort as possible). Try finding a problem that you could potentially solve (that you might already do in your role anyways). For example, "If there is one thing that I could make go away, in the scope of my role, that would make your life easier at work, what would it be?"

As a personal example,?when I book a client for our?workplace training, I bake their Value Mountain into my sales process.

That looks like, "Sounds great, and by the way, why us? Why now? When we celebrate a year from now on how well the training has gone, what will you hope we toast to?"

It tells me?why?they’ve chosen us, what they?really hope?we will help them with and the?unique value?they see us providing. I don’t need to wait for a survey hoping they’ll say what they got out of it. I can be proactive to understand:?am I fulfilling their expectations (and by the way, what are those?)?

I’m really asking this:?Why me? Why this? Why now??And,?help me see what you value so I can focus my energy on delivering it.

It’s a way of looking at delivering what I already offer, but framed in someone else's scoresheet.

When we ask for someone's expectations upfront, it makes our job meeting them easier.

For example, using the above scenario on booking a client for our training: I either deliver what they value in their eyes, or I don’t. If I don’t, I can work on improving that over time by again, baking those questions into my post delivery process.

I could do this, by asking, "If you expected, or hoped for something different, what would that be? What could it look like if we did it all over again and you got exactly what you wanted?"

It’s a really direct way of lowering the risk by getting expectations upfront. Explicit and early - a great rule for any relationship requiring some form of result.

If you’re not getting traction with someone at work?

If you’re not getting traction it?could?be because your Value Mountains are different. What you currently offer?isn’t relevant or clear to them?(yet!).

There are things we can do about that.

When we're not a Value Mountain match, we have choices:

• Be explicit with the benefit so they see what you see.?Outline how what you offer is?relevant to them.?Share what you are offering them with how it will benefit them, and give them a lesser pain, or less work. Sentence starters include, ‘here’s how this makes your life easier’, or ‘here’s the benefit I see this adding to you.’
• Bend a little bit on how you deliver to make things?relevant to them.?This might include re-addressing our relevancy and working harder on our messaging to make it explicit?what’s in it for them.?It could look like choosing another priority to talk to that person about and finding someone else who shares your Mountain. Someone else who cares about the same things as you.
• Outline a problem that moves your value up their mountain.?This can look like outlining the cost to the person on not addressing your priority. For example, a deadline where your value becomes top of their Mountain, is always a helpful reminder. For Happiness Concierge, we often help clients spend budget before it expires, for example, so there’s a Mountain match.
• If bending isn’t working, put grumbles aside. It’s time to think about what needs to change. We can’t change other people, and we can’t change a system or structure overnight. If it’s a personality/value mismatch and you are unwilling to bend to make it work another way, it’s time to look at a change.
• Move onto where there is a match?(the adage that not every client/person is for you and vice versa!). This could look like finding a new client, a new job or a new mentor. The decision can be made using this framework of thinking.

As you can see it’s about being intentional. In?last week's newsletter?I talked about training ourselves to be strategic to weigh up how something could be a win. This skill is another tool we can use to learn strategic thinking.

We teach a course on this for workplaces,?learn more?to bring it to your team.

__________________________________________________________________________

Something to ponder this week.

What does your Value Mountain look like?

What could be on your #1 stakeholder’s Value Mountain?

Could you find a way to make what you want benefit their Value Mountain?

What’s in it for them? Your value, when it matches theirs.

__________________________________________________________________________

Did this strike a chord? Imagine how life-changing having your team complete their stakeholders' Value Mountains would be. Learn how in our?Stakeholder Engagement Training.

Go well,

Rachel and the team at Happiness Concierge.