Being able to influence is a vital life skill. Cambridge Dictionary defines influence as “the power to have an effect on people or things” and “to affect or change how someone or something develops, behaves, or thinks”.
Any activity that involves people, will involve influence. Your ability to influence therefore is a vital factor in your professional and personal life success.
Whether we like it or not, we are influencing or being influenced all the time. It’s the basis of leadership, communication, sales and conflict resolution. What’s the last thing you purchased? Which leaders/colleagues inspire you? Who do you follow on social media? All these decisions would have been influenced in some way.
Here are five top tips to improve your influencing skills:
- You need to be able to build rapport with anyone and everyone. Rapport is the building block to effective communication and influencing skills. The idea is, to get them ‘onside’ and on the same wavelength. Relating to one another creates trust and understanding. You are more likely to agree with someone to whom you relate. Rapport is based on commonality. Commonality of behaviour, values and/or beliefs. When two people are in rapport, typically, they will be matching one another – in body language, movement and speech (pace/volume/tone). Think about this in your interactions with others.
- You need to work on your active listening and observation skills. Being a good influencer, does not mean banging your drum louder. You need to pay attention to who it is you are trying to influence. People like to be heard and understood. If you are not taking the time to understand their perspective and to consider and respond to their thoughts, and to frame your message in that context, you are not likely to be able to influence them. You need to be able to show that you care and have heard them.
- You need to truly understand the other person and their world. The best salespeople spend most of their time asking questions, listening to the answers and using the information gathered to then frame their message, in a way that will influence what the other person does. You need to ask a good mix of open (who, when, what, how, why, tell me about) and closed questions to get enough detail, to be able to frame your message confidently and persuasively.
- You are not going to be able to influence others if you can’t communicate effectively and confidently. Your ideas and opinions need to be expressed with confidence and clarity. If you come across as unsure and/or tentative and your idea is half-baked, you are unlikely to be able to influence. Being confident and clear will require you to have done your research and to prepare key points in advance of your liaison, together with credible evidence and data.
- Follow Lyle Sussman’s advice in building your frame – this involves four steps:
5.1 Determine your specific objective (have clarity on your outcome/wants);
5.2 Conduct a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis of the other party’s current status (this is where most people go wrong as they do a SWOT on their own status and not the other persons);
5.3 Determine the other party’s core values; and
5.4 Write a simple, vivid, evaluative statement linking the three sides.
