Invite clients or reports to contribute insight to your approach

Asking someone you lead for their input increases their investment in the outcome.

Why it works

When a leader or coach explicitly requests input from a direct report or client, the helper experiences the Ben Franklin mechanism: "I gave my knowledge to this plan, so I must care about its success." This converts passive recipients of a plan into active stakeholders who have invested their own thinking — which increases both ownership and follow-through.

How to do it

1. Before presenting a plan, ask the other person: "What am I missing?" or "What would you change about this?"
2. Genuinely incorporate a specific suggestion and tell them you did: "I used your framing for the second section."
3. Use this as a standing practice, not a one-time consultation before imposing a pre-formed plan.

Evidence

Participation in decision-making predicts higher commitment to outcomes in organizational psychology research; the Ben Franklin mechanism provides a dissonance-based explanation for this effect alongside the informational and autonomy-support explanations. (observational)

Participatory decision-making research is robust on commitment outcomes; whether the Ben Franklin dissonance mechanism or other routes (ownership, autonomy) is the primary driver is not cleanly isolated.

Common mistake

Asking for input as a formality while having already decided — people detect consultative theater quickly, and it produces more cynicism about participation than no consultation would have.