What Happens Before You Make Your Case?

One thing people often ask me is, “How do I get people to listen to my ideas?”

Usually, they’re thinking about how to make their case more compelling, explain their thinking or get someone to see what they see and agree with their idea.

But there’s another part of strategic influence that receives less attention: what happens before you start making your case.

And that’s important because people don’t come to your conversation with a blank slate. They arrive with issues, information and priorities already occupying their attention and therefore influencing their judgement. What they’ve recently heard, discussed or focused on can shape how they receive and judge the ideas that you share.

One reason for this is a psychological process known as priming.

What’s Priming?

Priming is when something you’ve recently seen, heard or experienced influences what you pay attention to and how you judge what comes next.

One definition suggests that priming can affect “the opinions that individuals express, not by changing their attitudes, but by causing them to alter the criteria they use to evaluate the object in question”.¹

In a series of experiments, political scientists Shanto Iyengar, Donald Kinder and colleagues explored what happened when they changed the emphasis given to different issues in television news broadcasts.

Some participants saw more coverage of issues such as defence, while others saw greater emphasis on issues such as inflation.

Later, when participants evaluated US President Jimmy Carter’s performance, they gave greater weight to the issues that had received more attention in the news.²

In other words, what received attention earlier helped shape the criteria people used to judge his performance.

If you’re seeking to influence others, that’s a useful insight. The issues and priorities already occupying someone’s attention can affect how they receive and judge the ideas you put forward.

Keep Priming in Perspective

Research on priming has attracted debate, and some reported priming effects have failed to replicate.³

So, we need to be careful about what we take from the research.

Priming isn’t a hidden switch that lets you control someone’s behaviour; its value for strategic influence is more practical.

The context surrounding your idea can influence the lens through which people consider it. What they’ve recently encountered can make certain ideas easier to access and more likely to attract their attention.

When those ideas are relevant to the decision at hand, they can influence what people notice and how they interpret what comes next.

For example, if cost has dominated recent conversations, people may approach your proposal with cost more readily in mind. However, if customer experience has been receiving attention, they may be more attuned to that aspect of your proposal.

Shape the Decision Environment

Knowing that context can affect judgement changes how you prepare when you’re trying to influence a decision or gain support for an idea or proposal.

Your argument still needs to be sound, but you need to go further than that. You need to consider what already has people’s attention, what matters to them and the criteria they’re likely to use when assessing your idea.

Research on what Professors Jane Dutton and Susan Ashford call “issue selling” reinforces this point. Senior leaders have limited time and attention, and people compete for both.⁴

Their research shows that gaining attention for an issue involves choices about how you package it, who you involve and when you raise it.⁵

Understanding who already has momentum behind an idea, and who doesn’t, is equally important. Mapping your stakeholder landscape before you make your case is explored in depth here, including how to identify allies, neutrals and detractors before the conversation begins.

For example, imagine you’re seeking support for an investment in a new system. You could begin by explaining the system, its features and the investment required.

Alternatively, before discussing solutions, you could ask the group to agree on what the decision needs to achieve. Perhaps the criteria are improving customer experience, reducing operational risk, building future capability and delivering an acceptable return.

With those agreed criteria, the conversation now has a shared basis for evaluating the options, which changes how you influence.

It means that rather than asking, “How can I convince them my idea is right?”, you’re asking: “How can I make the relevant criteria explicit early enough that we can examine and agree on them before preferences become entrenched?”

Putting It Into Practice

To answer that last question, consider four key steps.

1. Start With Their Attention
Take time to identify what already occupies the attention of the people you’re seeking to influence.

For example:

• What pressures are they managing?
• Which organisational priorities dominate their conversations?
• What are they repeatedly hearing from customers, employees, regulators or the executive team?

This context helps you understand the environment your idea is entering. It also flags issues that may already be shaping what people notice and how they judge what comes next.

2. Check the Frame
Once you understand what has people’s attention, consider how that might shape how they see the issue.

If recent discussions have centred on cost, cost may be receiving more weight than it deserves. If speed dominates, risk, capability or longer-term value may be receiving less attention.

Then, identify what else needs to be brought into the conversation so the decision is viewed from a broader perspective.

As part of this thinking, turn the lens on yourself, too. What have you recently heard, read or experienced that could be making one consideration unusually prominent in your thinking?

Remember, the decision environment influences your judgement too.

3. Surface the Criteria Early
Next, before people become attached to solutions, establish what a successful outcome needs to achieve.

You might say, “We have several options to consider. Before we get into them, can we agree on what matters most in making this decision?”

You can then invite people to share their perspectives, put forward the criteria you believe are relevant, and encourage others to add to or challenge them.

This gives the group a shared basis for evaluating the options before individual preferences take hold. It can also reveal differences in assumptions that might otherwise remain hidden.

4. Make the Connection Clear
Once you establish the criteria, your next step is to show how your idea connects to and relates to them.

This requires more than claiming alignment with a strategic priority. It’s about explaining the connection and providing the reasoning or evidence that supports it.

For example, if customer retention matters, show how your proposal addresses the factors affecting retention. If capability is constraining delivery, explain which gap your proposal addresses and what could improve as a result.

Be equally prepared to acknowledge where the connection is weaker. An idea doesn’t need to satisfy every criterion equally, but the decision-makers you’re seeking to influence need enough information to assess the trade-offs.

Your intent is to make the connections between your idea and the agreed criteria visible and credible, rather than assuming others will make them for you.

Influence With Integrity

There is an ethical consideration running through each of these four steps.

Once you understand that attention and context can influence judgement, you need to be thoughtful about how you use that knowledge.

The goal is to bring relevant considerations into the conversation and make your reasoning visible. If you believe particular criteria should matter, explain why and invite others to challenge them. As part of this, be open to considerations you may have overlooked and to the possibility that others will weigh the criteria differently.

You’re still seeking to influence how the issue is considered. However, your reasoning remains visible and open to scrutiny. Taking this approach gives others the opportunity to challenge your reasoning, consider your argument, and reach their own conclusions.

Your Next Step

So, what’s your next step?

I’d encourage you to choose one decision you need to influence in the next fortnight.

Then, before you work on your argument, write down the criteria you believe should guide the decision. Next, find an opportunity to discuss and agree on those criteria with the people involved before you put forward your preferred option.

Two steps that are simple shifts in preparation, but ones that can change the quality of the conversation that follows.

Getting you ready for tomorrow, today®

Award-winning author and global workplace expert, Dr Michelle Gibbings, helps leaders, teams and organisations unlock strategic influence to accelerate progress.

References:

1. Lavrakas, P. J. (Ed.). (2008). Priming. In Encyclopedia of survey research methods. SAGE Publications. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412963947.n399
2. Iyengar, S., & Kinder, D. R. (1987). News that matters: Television and American opinion. University of Chicago Press.
3. Klein, R. A., Ratliff, K. A., Vianello, M., Adams, R. B., Jr., Bahník, Š., Bernstein, M. J., et al. (2014). Investigating variation in replicability: A “Many Labs” replication project. Social Psychology, 45(3), 142–152. https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000178
4. Dutton, J. E., & Ashford, S. J. (1993). Selling issues to top management. Academy of Management Review, 18(3), 397–428. https://doi.org/10.2307/258903
5. Dutton, J. E., Ashford, S. J., O’Neill, R. M., & Lawrence, K. A. (2001). Moves that matter: Issue selling and organizational change. Academy of Management Journal, 44(4), 716–736. https://doi.org/10.5465/3069412