Making it Personal

We may not be inviting people to Buckingham Palace, but we can still make people feel special when we invite them to join us. There are many ways to accomplish this. The key, for us, is speaking personally to the people you are inviting and conveying the message "Come in—this will be worth your time."

This is as important in a corporate setting as it is anywhere else. It is easy for people to feel lost in the body corporate and to think that their voice does not matter. In a corporate setting, your request will be competing with many demands. It will sit alongside all the other meetings, e-mail, letters, notices, and phone calls. Making it personal can help it stand out.

Showing that you have thought about the person you are inviting and his or her particular talents, concerns, and aspirations can be powerful. When you help people see what they bring to the party and how their peculiar talents and backgrounds relate directly to your work, they are more likely to join in. Try this: Go through the list of people you created in Chapter 2. Take stock of what you know about them. How busy are they? Have they signed up for work with you in the past? Are they likely to volunteer easily, or will they need persuasion? What are they interested in? What might they be concerned about? What do they care a lot about?

If you know little or nothing about some of the people you are inviting, do a little background research. Talk to them directly, or talk with other people who know them and have involved them in projects in the past. Find out what might encourage them to volunteer. Work hard to build up a clear picture of what might appeal to them. Express your openness to having people offer gifts that are unexpected.

It can be helpful to think of inviting people to join you as a strategic activity. You may find you need different strategies for different people, such as:

• Different ways to make it personal—what will be a hook for one person might not work for another.

• Diverse descriptions of what the work is to match varied talents.

• A range of media—some will read and respond to e-mail, others will need that call.

• A set of tactics for following up.

You can use the Invitation Strategizing Tool (Figure 3.1) as a handy guide to the various tasks involved in answering the question, "How do I invite people to become involved?" Adapt the form in Figure 3.1, adding as many spaces as you need to cover all the people you will be inviting.

People	Relevant Personal Information	Points to Make	Media	Responses and Follow-up

Figure 3.1: THE INVITATION STRATEGIZING TOOL

Another way we make it personal is by speaking from the heart. As you prepare to invite each person to join you, get in touch with your emotions. Share your deepest desires, dreams, and concerns. Tell people why this venture is important to you and about the important difference you hope to make in the life of your organization or community.

You also make it personal when you make people feel special. When we are inviting people to join us, we can do a lot to make people feel needed and important. Just the request can be enough. If the people you invite can see your passion and imagination, they will be more willing to offer theirs. Don't be afraid to be vulnerable. Be ready to say, "We can't do this without you." The more energy you devote to the process of inviting people, the more likely you are to get an active response.

Figure 3.2 shows an example of a very distinctive invitation sent by the Reverend David Beedon to key people in the town of Wednesbury, UK.

A man was walking on the beach and saw a small boy throwing starfish into the ocean. There were millions of them washed up on the shore. "What difference, young man," he asked, "can that possibly make, throwing starfish one at a time?" The boy just picked up another starfish, tossed it into the sea and said: "It'll make a big difference to this one."

Dear

I am writing to you because I think you might be a starfish-thrower. I think you may be someone who, even when faced with a large, seemingly impossible task, will give your all to do whatever you can to make things better. I think you are probably the sort of person who feels that way about our town. If you are such a person I would like to draw on your enthusiasm, love of our town, commitment to make things better, as well as insights, and involve you in the planning of an event that I believe could benefit our town greatly. . . .

Figure 3.2: AN IMAGINATIVE INVITATION

Finally, including a surprise and making it distinctive will demonstrate that you care. When you do something unusual in your invitations, you lift people out of the everyday. People will be intrigued and wonder what it might be like to be involved in your project. The Body Shop International once sent out invitations to attend an International Franchise Meeting that included an audiotape featuring provocative interviews about change. This unusual step prepared people for a very different gathering.