Convincing

I think I have some skill in convincing people to do this things I want.
But with this skill, there is always a risk that I ignore what other people's views are.  It's like riding roughshod over people, but those people feel ok about it!  Is that still a bad thing?

I read a book "Raise the Bar" which talks about the fact that ANY interaction has an emotional component to it.  In that sense, there is always some feeling to any discussion.  And the aim of any discussion with staff (positive or negative) is to make them more engaged, more energised and more motivated than the start of the conversation.  I think that is good advice.  It is very easy to berate people, especially as the boss when whatever you say people listen more than once.

So today, convincing one more my staff that he should cut his labour costs was tough.  I think I ended up pushing through with a certain cost number.  What I think was good was that I offered some specific areas for him to focus on in order to hit that cost number and used past history to manage this expectation.  The "you've done it before, you can do it again!" has worked on many occasions!