The Power of Influence | Shawn King | TEDxDalhousieU

so if my memory serves me correctly and I'll be the first to admit that it often doesn't I was probably about 15 or so years old and I was standing in line at a grocery store with some friends and we were having uh some fun at uh the expense of my parents and we were reviewing all of the the cliche things or at least they were then I don't know if they are anymore the cliche things that parents would say to all of us uh as we were growing up you know um I'm not worried

about everyone else's kids I'm worried about you um do as I say not as I do was another one that I really loved and my favorite was because I said so so we were all laughing about those things and and and and then I started thinking about other things that they said to me that really weren't funny they were things that that I I continue to think about today um and I have no idea if if they even know that those things stuck with me and these things were don't be late you know like respect

your time enough and other people's time enough to be on time um oh there's no notes on the screen that's awesome what was the other one do what you said you were going to do if you're talking to people and you say you're going to do something for them you do it so these things stuck with me my whole life I still I'm standing here now talking about them but I have no idea why they stuck I don't remember any real concerted effort from my mother and my father to sort of you know pinpoint that

all the time they just stuck and now I'm the father of an 18-year-old son who's here you're welcome for for that sorry and and I I think about it myself I think you know what could I be saying to him that might stick and the problem is I think I I think I think about it too much like I I'm trying to be conscious of it what could I be saying that he'll talk about maybe someday at a TED talk or is it better to not know is it better to just kind of go through

it and and think what you say and believe what you think and all of that and hope hope that uh something sticks I don't know if that's true or not but what I do know is that when it comes to an adult life and and being in business I think it does help to know and be aware of the influence that you can have and particularly because that influence and the way that you choose to control Dynamics can actually affect the outcome of any scenario that you might be in so the first time that I

noticed this I was very young I I I think it was 18 or 19 I was working my first job at an agency and I was a production artist so a production artist is basically the it's the bottom of the totem pole from a creative perspective uh in in an agency job and there were three of us working there at the time and one of those production artists was the go-to uh person the one that everybody wanted to work with well I wanted that to me to be me I wanted everybody to want to work

with me the problem was I hadn't had enough experience or skills to sort of uh be that person yet so I decided to try something different and that was I happen to notice that everybody that was working with that person seemed to hate it it was uh filled with um tension and and people were just angry all the time and I thought well hey that's not fun and maybe I could try something different so I just decided to be fast and pleasant to work with and and um make people enjoy the process of working with

me and it worked um without getting into all the details I mean 21 22 how many years 25 years later I'm the owner of an agency and I believe that that happened because I sort of made a decision to to be easy to work with but I wasn't as conscious of the impact I was having having I didn't know that I was actually influencing what was happening I just knew that I wanted to enjoy the experience more the first time I realized the impact that you could have on people I was in a leadership position

at an agency and I was having a particularly bad day the kind of day where you get up and you just like want to fight somebody it's not just me right bad day got up was driving into work and uh wasn't feeling it you know and I had meetings that morning with people who were presenting work and they had to show me what they were doing and I don't remember the first meeting but apparently it went bad because the team stood outside my office door probably closer than they remembered being and I heard somebody say

do not go in there if you want him to approve your work and I I swear to you I I never considered first of all I didn't think anybody noticed I didn't think anybody knew that I was in a crap mood that day and I certainly hadn't considered the impact it would have on the way they felt about what to do next I mean to hear something somebody say don't go in his office he's pissed surprising so there's a this is when I first began to notice it and understand that you could actually use that

impact either for good or for bad there's a theory that we use at the agency and it's this notion of perspectives and this three sides to every story I guess is the whole the whole thing around it and if you think about any Dynamic that you might be in with a group of people or another person there's typically three perspectives there's yours which I'm sure you feel strongly about there's somebody else's the other person that you're um engaged with and then there is the outside perspective and the funny thing about the outside perspective is that

often it's the easiest perspective to know what needs to happen in a situation because you're not emotionally attached to any of the other two perspectives and so what we often will ask people to do in a situation is to think about the other perspective it's pretty simple you know yours try to imagine what the perspective is on the other side of that triangle and maybe you can use that to to help the outcome quick story I I I um we had a person at the agency um a couple years ago who seemed to have trouble

working with just about everybody else and um I'm sure this isn't new in in our business but uh it's the same for every business that person eventually had to get engaged to find out what was going on and and um of course I sat and listened and and that person said to me that you know they're not they're not getting it nobody else is getting it and the funny thing about that I don't know if you've ever noticed this but have you noticed that we we often are sort of like our first default position is

to try to control what everyone else is doing we want to control what they think and what they do without really thinking about our in our influence on that you know you have a dynamic and everybody plays a role in that Dynamic so that was the conversation we had and this person was quite surprised to think that they had never actually considered their role in that Dynamic and once they did they started to to change the way they acted within that group it worked for a while some people are just unhappy they have to go

another story um again I you talk about making a choice you have to you make a positive influence or you make a negative influence quick story about a I had a client who was particularly upset with the agency was calling me all the time I was getting one two calls a day about things that were wrong and I couldn't I couldn't get my head wrapped around it because it just seems so unlikely that this much stuff was wrong with the thing that we do every day so I finally got called to a meeting and I

was handed a sheet of paper and the sheet of paper had 17 not even joking I actually counted them 17 things that were wrong with what we were doing now try to imagine you know this is my agency I've got somebody telling me that there are 17 things wrong with the way we work and I know it's not true so I boiled instantly I'm not even joking like it was Charlie Brown's teacher talking to me I I didn't hear the rest of it CU all I kept thinking was what do I need to do here

to diffuse the situation I hated it it was very uncomfortable and I really didn't know how I was going to address 17 issues even if that weren't actually the case so I asked a simple question I just said how are you doing how are you doing changed everything the issue left the issues that the agency was gone it became about oh I'm stressed my team is is spread too thin it's too busy we don't it's too competitive in the marketplace we don't know what's happen happening and to which I said well how can we help

and all of a sudden the issue wasn't about 17 things it was about two or three that were probably impacting what was going on I've talked a little bit about those are sort of negative situations that you can impact uh uh you can choose your impact to make him positive I had a great experience a few years ago um a client of mine asked if her son could come in and talked to me at the office and uh he was between high school and college and he he came into the meeting I said sure I'll

sit with him for an hour we'll have a chat I don't remember exactly what I said to him but likely there's a few things I typically tell students don't don't be in too much of a rush to climb the corporate ladder it's very dangerous and be careful what you wish for uh stay curious a lot of people nowadays you know there's a sense of empowerment don't have that it doesn't help anybody and it's not what you learn it's what you do with what you learned that actually dictates what happens next so I had this meeting

he left I never really thought much it after and a few years later I got a card in the mail attached with the card was attached to a basket of beer which is awesome the card is from 2008 and I still have it in my office and I won't read the whole thing to you but I will read the last line of that card that says more importantly I want you to know that you influen the life of a wonderful young man it's pretty heavy like I was like I don't even remember what I said

to that guy I I feel like I should have right I should have remembered but whatever I said worked that's kind of scary right if you can be conscious of it if you can be aware of I'm having I want to have this impact I want to have that impact it can be a great thing it works the other way too when you choose to be angry it works my son and I uh he's going to love this one we're driving downtown the other day and and uh I guess it was a couple weeks ago

I don't know there was snow CU there's lots of it and we watched somebody walking down the street and like a very serious Walker and uh there was somebody at an intersection uh waiting to pull out and of course you can't see anything so they were kind of out in the road and blocking the sidewalk and the very serious walker uh gave the guy the finger as she was walking he was in the way and the guy in the car sort of laughed waved as if to say like you know what am I supposed to

do and we had a little debate in the car I'm sorry man he said to me oh man I would have lost it yeah he probably would have what would that have done now there'd be a road rage scene I'd be getting my phone out we'd be posting it on YouTube it'd be awesome but the guy just waved he's like what am I supposed to do I'm not that angry I'm going to get on with my day completely diffused that situation you can use it for good or you can use it for bad my wife

and I had the opportunity last year to go on The Amazing Race it was a pretty uh intense thing to do as you might imagine incredible stressful fun exciting pretty insane um that that experience was reduced to a couple of episodes unfortunately because I dislocated my shoulder on a surfing challenge in teino um I carried that injury with me the bag AG of that injury with me for quite a while um you know it was fascinating to be on there and it was fascinating to have done the challenges and to even to be kicked off

was fascinating but as the days passed I I I carried that with me for a while I I remember I felt really disappointed in myself to have gotten all the way there and then to have that happen um I was disappointed that my wife would be upset with me in fact I think at one point arm still dislocated I actually told her to keep going you can go find a partner that's what she did and then I thought you know we were so excited when we first got announced as a team on the race because

we were the only team that was from Atlantic Canada and that was so exciting oh my God everyone's going to be rooting for us it's going to be great and then I dislocated my arm and got out and I thought oh my God we're the only team in Atlantic Canada everyone's going to be so disappointed well the truth is nobody cared as much about this as we did they design it that way I think um but then two things happened uh and this isn't about our influence on these people this is about their influence on

us the first was every week that the race was somebody was eliminated they were they were giving gifts to people who had tweeted about it and in this case I can't even see it here but somebody had tweeted about the influence uh that we had on them and referred to us as a bit of a class act it turns out that this person was actually a friend of my wives who we hadn't seen in years who now lived in Alberta about West which was crazy but we saw that tweet and the first thing I thought

was wow here I was worried about people being upset and thinking what they were going to think and this tweet actually started to make me feel better I started to think less about who to a disappoint I wish we could have gone further all that stuff and thought wow like that actually impacted me it's the first time I started to feel better then we got asked to um we got asked to take part in this Parkinson superwalk just to help bring some attention to it and to to see if we could um help them so

we went down to do that walk and I remember feeling quite awkward when we got there because again who nobody knows us we're going to do this thing it's not stuff that we typically do but we'll go do it and we went and we we were starting the walk we were walking around the block and a pretty neat thing started to happen all these people all ages uh kept coming up to us and saying oh it was so great to see you guys on the race and how's your shoulder and all of a sudden again

it it was starting to lift and feel much better and just the seconds you know that people took to say amazing job and it was so great you know it was just seconds we finished that we went we did a speech at the end and there were a few people who came up to take pictures with us and there was a I think a a little girl um who came up and she just seemed really really excited to to be taking a picture with us and again this wasn't about our impact on her this was

about she she has no idea what that did for me to know that she was that excited to see us and here I was sulking about the whole thing it changed the way I felt about that experience I talked earlier about you know my our parents and the influence that they have I don't think you can have a talk about the power of influence and not talk about your parents that's where it all begins again I don't know if they know what they said to me the impact that they had but they will now my

wife and I were were were looking around or talking to someone I can't remember what it was it might have been in a book but we were reading about the frustrations of raising a teen and uh I remember again one thing that stuck out in that book and it was this this thought that no matter what you think no matter what how much you think they're not listening no matter how much you think they don't care keep saying what you think keep believing in what you say and and something will stick something will stick I

actually don't think this applies just to kids I actually think it applies to all of us that's the Superhuman power that we all have we have the ability to influence and shape the lives of people with the things we say how we Act and the choices we make with it so you have it I hope you find it most importantly I hope you use it for good thank [Applause] you