How do you balance assertiveness and empathy when influencing others?

2 Use the right strategy

Depending on your situation and objective, you may need to use different influence strategies such as reasoning, inspiring, consulting, collaborating, and negotiating. Reasoning involves using facts, logic, and evidence to support your proposal or request. Inspiring uses vision, values, and stories to appeal to your audience's emotions and aspirations. Consulting seeks input, feedback, and suggestions from your audience to involve them in the decision-making process. Collaborating works with your audience to find a mutually beneficial solution or outcome. Negotiating makes concessions, trade-offs, or compromises to reach an agreement. You can combine these strategies to adapt to different scenarios and audiences. For instance, you may use reasoning and inspiring to persuade a senior executive to approve your project while consulting and collaborating to engage your team members in the implementation.

3 Express yourself clearly and confidently

The way you communicate is just as important as the content of your message. To effectively influence others, it is essential to speak with clarity and confidence. To do this, use straightforward language, a respectful and confident tone, and body language such as eye contact, gestures, and posture. Additionally, practice active listening skills such as nodding, paraphrasing, and asking questions. Finally, use feedback and acknowledgment to show appreciation and understanding.

4 Handle resistance and conflict

Sometimes, resistance or conflict can arise when influencing others. This may be caused by a disagreement in opinions, interests, or personalities. To address this situation effectively, it is important to remain calm, respectful, and constructive. You can do this by identifying the source and reason of the resistance or conflict, acknowledging and validating the other person's feelings and concerns, focusing on shared goals, using open-ended questions and statements to explore the issue, and employing assertive communication skills without blaming or attacking the other person.

5 Follow up and follow through

The last step to influence others is to follow up and follow through to ensure that your message is understood, agreed upon, and acted upon. To do this, it’s important to summarize the main points and outcomes of your conversation or presentation, confirm the next steps and responsibilities of each party, send a follow-up email or message, monitor the progress and results of the action plan, and provide feedback and support as needed. By doing so, you can build trust, respect, and credibility with others while achieving your goals and inspiring your team.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?