Influence to Success

“Influencing” has emerging as one of the most critical leadership skill in today’s world, as stated by CEOs, in recent leadership surveys. However, do we really understanding, what “influencing” is? How much of it is a skill and how much of it is a mindset? Could we all be good at it?

More than ever, Influencing is emerging as a critical element for all Leaders. With geographically distributed teams, Gen Y workforce, and disparate groups needing to collaborate together to deliver business outcomes, a Leader has to depend upon teams outside of his/her control to achieve success. This situation is further magnified by emergence of social media/networking. While social media provides access to multitude of people/resources that were earlier not possible, it requires the Leader to be in a position to influence remotely. Not an easy task at all. Before we go further, let us understand what “influencing” is?

Influencing means persuading an audience to:

·         Give you something

·         Take action

·         Accept your ideas

without formal power or authority. Even when we are in the position of power or authority, influencing is the best way to get things done. In our personal lives too, an effective way to engage with our children is through Influencing. One key aspect: Intent behind Influencing is to achieve a win-win situation. Focusing only on self-win will lead to manipulation, not influencing.

To best understand the framework of Influencing, we need to travel back to 4^th century to meet Aristotle. He was a Greek philosopher and a teacher of Alexander the Great. He came up with framework for persuasion (Yes. Influencing was critical even in the 4^th century) – Ethos, Logos and Pathos. Ethos refers to an appeal to the authority or honesty of the presenter. It refers to how well the presenter convinces the audience that he/she is qualified to present (or speak) on the particular subject. Logos is the logical appeal or simulation of it. It is used to describe facts and figures that support Speaker’s points. Pathos is an appeal to audience emotion. It is the ability of the speaker to connect to the underlying emotions/values of the audience. What does it all mean to us?

Ethos refers to our ability to build credibility with our client (target audience). Logos refers to the content of the message and Pathos refers to our ability to understand our client. Each topic by itself is a blog (that I’ll detail in the future) but here is the summary:

Ethos: Ethos is focused on you. Are you credible with the audience? Why should they listen to you? Why should they agree with you? Hence, before we start on our influencing path, it is important to understand the following areas:

Brand: First area to examine is our Brand. Do we know what our brand is? Branding is not an impression of ourselves that we carry in our minds, but perceptions that are carried in other’s minds about us. It is important to understand that brands are born of experience and reflect our reputation. Therefore, our actions/behaviors/words play a critical role in the way our brand is perceived by others. So, in order to build a powerful brand, first and foremost it is important to understand our Unique Value proposition. This should, in turn, help us to re-position our brand. We will discuss the process in a future blog

Knowledge: To gain credibility, it is important to build and share original thoughts. You may have great amount of knowledge but if it is not shared, you are not helping yourself. It is important to first - build your knowledge, second – translate the knowledge into your original thoughts (primarily, how you can apply the knowledge in your areas of expertise) and third – articulate your thoughts in various forums. Hence, it is important for you to be active in forums at your office, and on social media like blogs, twitter, LinkedIn etc

Network map: How do we address a situation where we need to influence, but do not have credibility with the audience – either because the audience is not aware of us OR we are not the subject matter experts in that specific area. This is where, we need to ‘borrow credibility’ by leveraging people who are in our network map. It is important to ensure that we have diverse set of people in our network. If all the people in our network are of the same profile as us, then we have a weak network. We should have people from our customer organizations, our own organization (but from different areas), industry. Network map also constitutes our personal connections and ability to tap into their networks.

Logos: Logos is focused on the content and our ability to articulate it effectively.

Content: It is important to build the content from audience perspective. More often than not, content is defined by the key points that we want to articulate as against what is important from audience perspective that would help us achieve the objective. One area where we implement this effectively is at the time of giving gifts. We may define the budget but when we think about finalizing on the gift, we always think about it from the perspective of the person who is receiving it. However, when we deliver the messages, it is all about what we want to convey as against what others need to receive. Content is not just about the message but is also about the timing of it (is this an appropriate time for the audience to receive the message).

Articulation: Even, when we have defined the content well, the success or failure is dependent upon how we articulate it. Do note that the articulation process is highly dependent both upon you and the audience. Even between same two people, articulation should vary depending on the subject that you want to influence upon. Usually, there are two techniques for articulation – Push and Pull. Push technique should be used when you have credibility with the audience and are an expert on the subject. Pull technique should be used when you do not have the credibility but yet need to influence. We will learn more about these techniques in a future blog.

Pathos: This section is all about understanding your client (audience). Unless, we understand our clients well, we will not be able to structure the message well and be able to know if we have the credibility with the customer.

Understanding the client: It is important to spend time in understanding your client. What is it that drives them? What do they like and dislike? What are their key goals? How does the current situation impact their eventual success? There are many other such questions that we need to answer before we can say we understood the client.

Stakeholder Analysis: More often than not, we tend to think that there is just one person who will make the required decision. However, in professional organizations, usually there is more than one person involved. It is important to do a comprehensive stakeholder analysis to first identify who are all the key people who will be involved in the act and then, identifying their current positioning on the topic before we decide how to influence them.

Influence Map: It is important to create an influence map that shows all our key stakeholders and their current relations/positions. We should then intersperse the influence map with our network map so that we know the leverage points. This is a critical point in the influencing exercise as it will allow us to prioritize/sequence the influencing process

Levers of Influencing: Once we are able to establish Ethos, Logos and Pathos, we can then identify Influencing levers that we could leverage during the Influencing process. Robert Cialdini has done significant research in this space and has arrived at 6 levers for Influencing – Reciprocity, Scarcity, Consistency, Consensus (Social Proof), Authority, Similarity (Liking).

Influencing is critical for success in today’s world. I’ll try to detail each of the above areas in future blogs so that we could cover each topic in a comprehensive manner. Kathleen Reardon, workplace politics expert has said that ‘Each of us is atleast 75% responsible for the way we are treated because we have the CHOICE to influence what others think and say about us; and the obligation to learn how’. Influencing is not only about achieving results but also about how we are able to influence our perception on others, thus laying a strong foundation for our success. If not anything else, I do hope I piqued your curiosity and influenced you to learn about Influencing?