Do you know how to influence others to listen to your ideas? The ability to influence others is one of the most important soft skills to develop, especially as you get more senior in your career. It is more of an art than a science. The good news is I believe anyone can master the influence skills if you put in efforts to develop it. If I can learn it, so can you. 🙂
What Does it Mean to Influence Others
Indeed has a good definition of influence skills. Influence skills are your abilities to encourage and persuade others to adopt your ideas. As a manager of a team, it’s much easier to influence those who report to you on your ideas. This is because you have leverage over their careers and likely because your directs already respects and look up to you. However the skill to influence is most needed when you work with colleagues who do not report to you or if you want to influence leaders more senior to you.
Biggest Myth in How to Influence Others
I was not very good at influencing colleagues and leaders when I started my career. I believed that if I was just smart and built a good logical case for what I want, then people will listen. This worked for simple things that other people already wanted, like change Friday to casual dress day.
However, presenting a logical case alone rarely ever worked when others don’t want to change or have differing point of view than I. I didn’t understand this at first. I thought if I just did enough research and was smarter about it, then people will naturally listen. That is the biggest myth.
The reason is we are dealing with people not robots. People have emotions, history, and personal motivation in addition to their intelligence. Logic can never persuade another to change their minds without these human factors. I didn’t understand this at first and put in all my effort on logic. I even put people off because I was so focused on being smarter, I inadvertently implied that they were stupid to not listen to me :-(. You can imagine how far that got me in persuading others.
To Influence Another, You Must Address the Emotional and the Logical Sides.
To successfully influence others, you must start by listening and by understanding their motivations and point of view. Just because something is logical to you doesn’t mean they will have the same perspective.
You also must build a relationship with those you want to influence before you attempt to influence them on an idea. Think about what would influence you to change your mind on something. You need to respect the person, trust their motives, and agree with their logic. The same will be true for the people you want to influence. You have to take action on all these fronts and more in order to have a chance to influence them.
Want to Learn More?
We just had an excellent coaching call on this topic. Thank you Connie for suggesting it. In the recorded call, we discussed
- What are the key things to do on the emotional side and the logical side to influence others
- What is the wrong or right ways to measure success in influencing others
- What are the benefits even if you were not successful in influencing others
- What to watch out for as you practice this skill
- Lastly, why developing this skill take time
Here is the full 20 minutes coaching call.
Sign up for Soft Skills Gym Membership to access it.
Practice, Practice, Practice!
At the end of the day, you cannot develop any influence skills just by reading and listening to me. 99% of the effort is putting what learned into practice. You will make mistakes just like I did, but you will also learn along the way. Developing this skills is worth the effort as you will gain higher job satisfaction, more respect from your leaders, and likely faster promotions.
Your comments: On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being a master at influencing others, what is your self-assessment of your influence skill level at work? How do you plan to improve it? I look forward to your comments and questions.
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Best wishes to your success. I am always in your corner.
Lei