Hi there Andrew Barrett here from safetyontap.com. In this quick video I’m going to share my tips on how to engage the toughest of opponents.

We’ve all come across them before – the people we complain about, the people we avoid, the people we clash with, the people giving us grief and the people we sometimes call names.

Tough opponents are the people who do just that – oppose something, sometimes anything, and they are tough to budge from what they know – the status quo.

We can’t win them all over, so sometimes they aren’t worth investing time in. But often we need these people for change, to come on board, because of their position of influence, or maybe because of the negative side effects of their stance.

That’s when you need to engage.
First I want to explain what I mean by engage, let’s use a few analogies. You want to come together as one, like engagement between a couple.

You want to connect, as in engaging the gears in a car.

And you want to engage attention – be worth listening to, like a really engaging YouTube video host.

So how do we engage? I have one simple, and seriously powerful way for you to engage with those tough opponents.

Genuinely try and understand them.

Shut your mouth and listen, learn about them as a person, as a worker, as a leader, as a crochet fanatic, as a avid canary breeder.

Ask genuine and open questions to try and understand their perspective, their experience, their problems and their ideas.

When you engage a person by trying to understand them, you show you are interested in them and what they have to say.

And it will open them up, and a bunch of new possibilities you’ve never even thought of. You’ll find as you keep trying to better understand them, they will incrementally be more open to understanding you.

If you like these kinds of ideas, find them helpful, and want to accelerate your own professional growth and effectiveness, I want you to be part of Safety on Tap Connected, the place where leaders like you hang out.

Find out more at safetyontap.com/connected