The Number One Advocacy Skillset You Absolutely Need in the Age of AI

0:00 You're listening to the Nonprofit Power Podcast. In today's episode, we share the number one advocacy skillset you absolutely need in the age of AI. So, stay tuned. If you wanna have real and powerful influence over the money and policy decisions that impact your organization and the people you serve, then you're in the right place. I'm Kath Patrick, and I've helped dozens of progressive Nonprofit leaders take their organizations to new and higher levels of impact and success by building powerful influence with the decision makers that matter.

0:40 It is possible to get a critical mass of the money and policy decision makers in your world to be as invested in your success as you are, to have them seeking you out as an equal partner and to have them. Bringing opportunities and resources to you. This podcast will help you do just that. Welcome to the Nonprofit Power Podcast. Hey there folks. Welcome to the Nonprofit Power Podcast. I'm your host, Kath Patrick. I'm so glad you're here for today's episode because this is a subject that I know is on everyone's mind, but we've not really delved into it here on the podcast up until now.

1:24 If you've been hanging out here for a bit, you already know that information alone doesn't engage. But here's what I see as a flashing red signal. AI is transforming the information ecosystem. It's now easier than ever to get just about any information you might want or need, in fairly complex form, just by asking. If you learn how to engineer a good prompt, you can get a lot of fairly nuanced information. Now that information may or may not be accurate. You still have to deploy additional strategies to make sure that the information that appears to be very thorough and sophisticated is actually correct.

2:05 'Cause that's not a given. But there are strategies for that. The bottom line is that if decision makers just needed information, they would no longer particularly need us. They can get that on their own. They can just ask their favorite AI interface tool to go assemble that information for them. That is a huge heads up for us. I'm aware of a lot of Nonprofit leaders and advocates who tend to rely pretty heavily on information and data as their primary vehicle for communicating with decision makers. And I am sorry to tell you that is not gonna cut it anymore. We have to be able to engage them, one human being to another.

2:49 And that means developing a very robust set of engagement skills, the ability to engage people on a deeply human level. It's the one thing you can't fake. AI cannot do it. But it only works if you show up as your whole human self. Data and information and all that still have their place. But information alone, as we know, does not engage. It's your ability to engage another human being and inspire emotions and call up their sensory experience of the world and to adapt to that in real time as you observe how they're responding to you. It's that that will make the difference in your advocacy success.

3:32 Authenticity is essential. If you put on a professional mask and play down your emotions and emotional connection to the work that you do and the impact that it has, you won't be able to touch the emotional center of the decision maker's brain. And you won't be able to tell what's resonating for them and what's not, to adapt in real time. None of that is something that AI can do. For engaging other people, for truly creating engagement and moving them, inspiring them to take action on the thing that you need. That's all you. That's a hundred percent you. It's not your data, it's not your information, it's you. So we have to be good at those engagement skills that go beyond just communication.

4:18 There are skills in that arena that I regard as absolutely core, and I'm gonna focus primarily on those today. And then there's kind of the next layer, next level set of skills that is equally important, but you have to get the core skills down first. The first among them is your ability to actively listen. And I know that's a term that gets thrown around a lot, but it's worth really diving in here a little bit and talking about what does that actually mean? What does it look like? What does it involve when you are doing that with a decision maker? The first part of active listening is to be fully present. And by that I mean two things.

4:59 One, it's that you're not distracted, that you're really there. You're a hundred percent present. You're not thinking about the next meeting. You're not worrying about the to-do list. You're not thinking about the thing that's still sitting on your desk that's urgent and has gotta be done by five. You're not doing any of that. When you are in a room with a decision maker. You are 100% present. You are there. It also means that all of you is present. Not just your professional brain that's there to give a presentation. Or your official capacity self that's there as a representative of an organization. You are that, but you are also a whole human being.

5:40 And for true engagement to happen, we have to bring our whole human self into these conversations. Now that doesn't mean that we are inappropriate or that we engage in inappropriate sharing. But it means that we bring our full emotional self to the room. We bring all of our experiences and consider the possibility that everything about us might be relevant, might matter as a point of alignment, a point of connection, a way to engage. So being fully present is a huge piece of this. Noticing nonverbal cues. One of the beauties of being in a room with another person is that you get to observe all the nonverbal clues.

6:21 You can do this on Zoom to an extent. But what you're missing on Zoom is you're missing the environment they're in, which also can provide you clues. But even on Zoom, you can still see their facial expressions, you can see a number of aspects of their body language. You can get a decent feel for where somebody's at by noticing nonverbal cues on Zoom. But it's so much better when you're actually in the room with them, if that's possible. But you wanna be super attentive to that because a huge portion of communication happens nonverbally. There's the words that we're exchanging, but so much more of it is happening in all the nonverbal stuff. That said, it's important to give nonverbal cues of your own.

7:04 If anybody told you anywhere along the way, that being professional means that you keep a neutral expression on your face or that you listen attentively, but don't react, any of that stuff. They gave you bad advice. And it's particularly bad advice right now. Again, you wanna bring your whole human self. So if they say something funny, laugh. If they say something surprising, react with surprise. Let your reactions show on your face, in your body language. Now that said, obviously you know about avoiding sending nonverbal cues that are going to drive them away.

7:46 So even if they're saying something irritating, you don't necessarily wanna cross your arms and lean back and give them the death stare, if you wanna still continue engaging them. So you manage your reactions, but you allow your full human self to react. Ask questions. We talk about this all the time, about how important it is to ask questions. And then let them talk. You will learn so much more from listening than you will from talking. I guarantee it. So ask questions that are designed to encourage them to share more of their thinking, more of what they're feeling about whatever you're talking about.

8:27 Generally speaking, people love to be asked what they think. So if you can ask them, you know, well, tell me more about that. Help me understand the strategy behind that. Help me understand your analysis of that, whatever it is. But ask questions that are designed to get them to willingly expand on what they're thinking. Because then that will give you so much more information and context and a sense of where their emotions are at, that will help you guide the conversation to its next most productive place. Another hugely important active listening skill is the ability to paraphrase, summarize, reflect back the emotions you're hearing them express, as well as the core nuggets of what they have to say.

9:12 And sometimes it's you're recapping because you wanna make sure you got it right. so do I have it right that your take on this is XYZ? Or if there has been evidence either their nonverbal cues or through their actual language that something is upsetting for them or made them sad or they're really excited about or feel inspired by or whatever. Echo that back. Just say, wow, you seem really inspired by that. That's really cool. Or, wow, that must have been really difficult. Think about if a friend were sharing with you something that they felt strongly about. As a good friend, you would reflect that back to them.

9:53 You would say, wow, gosh, that must have been really hard. Or, wow, that sounds amazing. How cool. And you notice what I just did with my voice. The tone of your voice, the quality of your voice has to match the words. If I said, wow, that must have been really hard, or, wow, you sound pretty jazzed about that. Mm-hmm. That does not communicate the same meaning as the first way I said it. The emotion has to show up in your voice. If it doesn't, it conveys an entirely other meaning that you do not want. And then the last thing that's still part of active listening skills. You see why I'm zeroing in on this'cause it's complicated.

10:35 Is not to rush either them or you. And I've seen both things happen a lot when I've been with clients in meetings with decision makers where they've asked me there just to be kind of moral support. And I'll watch the thing unfold. Very often the advocate, the Nonprofit leader will rush through. Maybe they're worried about time, maybe they're worried about getting all their stuff in. Maybe they're just nervous and they want it to be over with. There's all kinds of reasons we rush ourselves, and then in turn, we wind up rushing the decision maker. And that's not a recipe for engagement. That's not a recipe for connection. That's a recipe for pushing people away.

11:16 And everything we're doing is trying to cause them to lean in, to engage, to want to talk more, to want to engage more, to engage fully themselves as their whole human self. So that sounds like a lot, right? Like, oh my God, how am I gonna remember all that and how am I supposed to do all that? And now I'm stressed out even more'cause I have to do all the things. Just pause and think about, again, if this were your friend and you were having a conversation together about something that was important to both of you. Think about how you would engage in that conversation. You would show up as your whole human self. And you wouldn't have to be thinking to yourself, okay, now I have to make sure that I'm not distracted.

11:58 I'm not focused on other things. Da da. It's like, no, this is my friend. Of course I'm present for them. And you wouldn't have to be thinking about, oh, I shouldn't rush them. Of course you wouldn't rush them. You would let them share what they need to share because you care and you want to support them. You want them to feel heard. If you come to a conversation with a decision maker with a desire for connection, a desire for mutual engagement, a desire for understanding between you. If you let that be your driver, all the pieces of active listening just begin to come naturally. Now, if I've listed something where you had a little moment of, oh yeah, wow.

12:42 I really have a hard time with that one. I, I kind of tend not to do that. If there were one or two of those where that poked you a little bit and you're like, oh yeah, I'm, aagh, I don't always do that. Then okay, be a little more attentive to those one or two things. That's totally fine. These are skills. We have to practice them to get really good at them. But awareness is the first thing. And like I say, if you let a genuine desire for connection and engagement be your guide, as opposed to I am here to deliver information, I must deliver it. That will get you nowhere. The delivering information MO, that should be buried and dead.

13:22 We need to let go of that. And go all in on engagement and connection. When we do that, all the information that we need to share and that we want them to understand, will find its home in that conversation at the appropriate time. It's all there. It's all relevant. It's all gonna weave in. But let the connection and the engagement be your primary focus. And then your active listening skills will have a much better chance of actually happening and serving you well. Similarly, in order for true connection to happen, we also have to have emotional connection.

14:03 Now again, this is a professional setting, so we're talking about levels of appropriateness here. This may not be the same level of emotional connection you feel with a friend or a loved one, but you're still seeking emotional connection with the decision maker. We are all humans. We all have the same full range of emotions and life experiences that have provoked those emotions many times over. We are all well immersed in the human experience. Just allow that to be part of the truth of the conversation. So the first thing is showing up with a genuine desire to create connection, to find points of connection and build on those.

14:47 To understand that those points of connection absolutely exist. You may not know what they are yet, but they're there. And often it will be over little stuff, as is the case with most of us humans, right? The people that we're close to, the people that we form bonds with. When we first meet them, we don't have any shared background necessarily, and yet somehow we find connection and we find little pieces of connection that build on one another over time. It's the same thing with any human relationship, including those with decision makers. And so it might be something trivial. It might be you both love a particular pizza place. It might be that you both love a particular sport.

15:31 You both love a particular type of music. It could be any of those things that are absolutely not related to the work. Now, you may also have points of connection around the work, and you do wanna find those. But remember that human relationships aren't just built around one arena. That's not just like, Ooh, we have a shared passion for an issue, therefore we're gonna work together. That's cool. If you have that, yay. But if you don't have that, it doesn't mean that there aren't points of connection to be had. And because you're building a relationship, you need those. Now the absolute caveat to this is that you have to be willing to share and display your own emotions.

16:14 And again, this is where that professional mask will get you in such terrible trouble. As will nervousness, discomfort with a power imbalance, all the other things that can get in our way and make us kind of shut down and just be one dimensional, professional. I am here to share this information. I am representing this organization, da, da Thank you for your attention. I will leave now. That is not what we wanna do, right? We want to show up relaxed. I know this is easier said than done, but the best possible way you can come in to any conversation with a decision maker is relaxed and confident.

16:58 Not arrogant, not combative. Just confident. Confident that you belong in this space, confident that you are peers with this person. That you are here to figure out how you can be problem solving partners. You are here to find common ground and to work together. And so it's all good. You got the meeting. If they didn't wanna meet with you, you wouldn't be there. So that's the first thing to remember. Relaxed and confident is the best place to start because when you are relaxed and confident, then you are comfortable being your whole human self. And that is the fastest way to engagement. Now we have tons of messaging techniques that will speed and encourage engagement and all of that.

17:44 And we've talked about that on a lot of episodes and I'll continue to bring that in. But for today, I wanted to focus on the one skill set that absolutely is necessary in the age of AI. Because AI has made us irrelevant if we are seen primarily as an information source. We still have value in that arena. We still have knowledge and perspective that is unique and that they can't get somewhere else. But they also have to trust us as a source of information. And that's actually kind of useful because the other thing that's happening as AI transforms the information ecosystem. Is that there's a whole lot of AI slop out there.

18:27 There's a lot of garbage information. And if you establish yourself with a decision maker as a trusted source, who will not BS them, who will give it to'em straight, who will tell'em what's really going on. And will do it from a perspective of I'm sharing this so that we can be effective together. And they can trust that you have their interests at heart as well as your own, and that you maybe mutually are interested in the people you serve. Becoming that trusted source of that kind of information. Of not just data, unless your data are completely unique and can't be found anywhere else. But it's more about your perspective, your insight.

19:08 Your understanding of the problem and the understanding that you have that has resulted from years of experience, from years of direct engagement with the people you serve, and a level of understanding of what their lives are like and how that plays out and what difference it makes when the effective service is provided to them to change their life. All that is still very valuable. Please don't misunderstand, I'm not saying that information doesn't matter. It absolutely does. But information without engagement is far more likely to get ignored, to not really be taken in. And that we can't afford. So we still need them to get it. We still need them to understand stuff and we still have to include information and data and all that in that conversation.

19:53 But if we don't have the skills to deeply engage them as human to human, our ability to get them to take in our information and fully integrate it, goes way down. So that's it, my friends. The absolutely essential skillset for advocacy in the age of AI is the ability to be fully present as a whole human being, to deeply engage, to use all of the active listening skills in every encounter. The more skilled we are at these things, the more powerful our engagement will be. And the more we engage decision makers deeply, the more they lean in and the more likely they are to become highly effective problem solving partners and allies and champions.

20:40 Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode right here on the Nonprofit Power Podcast.