Establish Shared Commitment

When you need to build stronger relationships with others who impact your success, ask questions that help you understand their needs in order to establish shared commitment. Listen! And ask more questions if you still need clarification.

Situations Involving Influence

Situations involving influence are most successful when everyone understands, participates, and agrees on the required actions, the timeline, and key indicators of success.

Effective Influence Skills

People are often hired for their technical skills and fired for their lack of effective interpersonal skills. Effective influence skills help you get cooperation and commitment from others to accomplish individual and organizational goals.

Gain Willing Commitment

Using effective influence skills to gain the willing commitment of others – instead of using your positional power – will give you the edge to accomplish your results and build more productive business relationships.

Persuading Others to Help

If you need help completing a task, use your network to find an expert. Figure out how that person would benefit by helping you or think about what is important to them. Use that information along with your influence skills to persuade them to help!

Prepare for Your Influence Opportunity

Prior to your influence opportunity, think about the key issues: what is the mindset of others involved, what is important to them, and what is happening in the organization. Preparing to respond to those needs will advance your probability of success.

Take a Break

Don’t be afraid to take a break during an influence situation or conversation. Sometimes a short break gives everyone a chance to think or cool off. A longer break or even postponing to a later date may be needed to gather more data or other opinions.

Validate Common Ground

Taking time to highlight similar goals, values, and positions can help validate the common ground and move your influence situation forward. Many times the differences are minimized after you realize how much you already agree.

Facing Resistance

When you have explained your position in a logical way with data to back up your position, and the other person is still resisting, ask open-ended questions to learn more about their needs or objections. Then ask focused questions to help the other person focus on possible alternatives (“If we wanted to move forward with this project, what could you do to help?”).

History of Problems

You may be working on a project or situation that has a long history of problems in your organization. Prepare for your influence opportunity by using your network – talk to other people, research what happened in the past, and learn from those that have been involved or were key stakeholders. You will increase your probability of success if you have an understanding of the history and others’ perspective.

Plan for Your Influence Situation

Having a clear approach or plan for your influence situation will greatly increase your chances for success. In addition to considering the other person’s views, you must clearly identify what you want to achieve and be able to answer “How will I know when I get it?”

Not What, But How You Present Information

Savvy influencers realize that how they present information is as important as what they present. Learning to be flexible with your influence approach and tailoring your communication to the style of the other party is an important factor in becoming an effective, successful influencer.

Avoiding Positional Power

Achieving your goals requires working with other people who may not be willing to share information or who do not agree with your priorities. Using effective influence skills helps you gain the willing commitment of others and build the relationship without using positional power to enforce compliance. What influence skills help you in your organization?