How to Be more Influential

SUMMARY

• Becoming more influential is one of the fastest way to increase your chances to succeed at anything! We never succeed alone and nothing is as powerful as having the ability to get others to believe in you, work with you and move forward with you.?
• Building influence is a long-term game though, that requires lots of patience and frustration-resistance while you navigate various relationships and new situations.
• Discover in this article 3 simple principles to start moving the needle forward and build your influence skills!

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

One fact that we often overlook – no one ever succeeds alone. Whenever we try to achieve our goals or simply bring more quality to our life and relationships, we need to be influential.

We need to be able to communicate properly with other human beings and move things in the right direction. We need to get companies to give us a chance to become one of their new employees. We need to be able to have a conversation and get other people to change their behaviours, if we are not happy with how the relationship is going. We need sometimes to persuade others to buy our products or convince them to collaborate with us. Sometimes, our fulfilment comes from contributing to other people’s lives positively and we must find the best way to do so.

Whatever success means for you, people skills are essential to build relationships in the best possible way and to have the influence levels you need to get others to believe in you, work with you and move forward with you. And obviously, move forward yourself!

But have you ever asked yourself “Do I feel influential enough today to achieve what I want?”? I often ask that question to my clients and it’s not an easy one. Often, we do not realize when we are influential. But we often do when we are not! Lack of influence creates a lot of frustration, discouragement, and loss of confidence. Sometimes we feel that nobody is listening to the ideas we are sharing or supporting our dreams. Sometimes we just would like to be able to improve slightly our relationship with a co-worker or family member by getting them to change some of their behaviours. Sometimes we get stuck into limiting beliefs – I am not an authority figure, I don’t need to have influence, I don’t have the right personality skills to be influential.

Everything that makes us feel resigned and give up on trying to be influential is a pitfall for high performance. Being intentional on deciding to cultivate your influence skills daily and to keep yourself accountable to always find new tools and strategies in this area can be the key to your long-term success.

I want to share with you today 3 simple principles worth putting more attention towards daily if you want to feel more influential and confident in your ability to move others!

#1 – Be Intentional

You cannot influence people if you don’t know what you want to influence them on exactly and if you don’t know who you are yourself. Getting crystal clear on your intentions for your own behaviours and what you want to achieve in your interactions is essential!

Who do you want to be? What are your values? What is the message you are trying to get out there? What is your vision? What are the things that need to happen to make this vision real? What do you need to remind yourself to do? What do you need to ask them? What energy do you want to bring to the room? How do you want to serve? How do you want the person to feel? What is the impact you are trying to have on the person in front of you? What exactly do you want this person do, say, change …?

The clearer your intentions are, the faster you are going to get where you want to go. Developing a strong discipline to set intentions before every interaction or meetings can go a long way in helping you feel more influential. One simple way to do that can be to define a couple of words that you want to keep yourself accountable for when you interact with another human. For instance, I am going to be present, I am going to listen twice as much as I talk, I am going to be curious and ask more questions, I am going to leave them energized. Anything that can focus your actions and behaviours will help you build the confidence that you are moving forward in terms of influence.

#2 – Find your style

There are multiple ways you can influence people in different situations. Finding and strengthening your natural style is an important step to feel more influential. It is also crucial to experiment with other styles that can resonate better with other people as well, to keep building your people skills toolkit and feel resourceful in any situation!

One common way to influence people is to teach them how to think – for instance give them perspective, guide them while they navigate problems, help them find new solutions and opportunity. Everything that can help someone look at a situation in different angles can have a massive impact. Whether you are mentoring someone, or just sharing your own experience when you hear someone expressing beliefs that are different from yours, you can be just bringing to the person exactly what they need to figure out the situation they are in.

Another way can just simply be the one cheerleading them and support them, the one who believes in their dreams and help them stay in momentum. Not everyone receives the support they want or the listening ear they need, so you can choose to become that person for them!

Another style can be the challenger style. That means becoming the person raising their ambitions, keep them aligning with what they say they were going to do, pushing people to take more actions. Being the person creating the momentum and keeping the ball rolling forward can be very powerful because not many people are doing that for others.

Dig in here – What is your natural style? How did you influence people successfully in the past? What do you think other people need from you right now? What could you do more or what could you try?

Also look at people who you consider were influential for you – How did they influence you exactly? What behaviours could you start to implement yourself?

Always remember here – you might need to adapt your style to the person and to the situation, but you should still stay aligned with your intentions.

#3 – Embrace a role model mentality

Every day, people are looking at what you do and how you show up, whether you realize it or not. And it means that you are always influencing someone. The choice of making it a negative, positive or neutral experience for that person is entirely yours.

If you want to become more influential, you need to show up daily in alignment with your message and become a role model of the behaviours you want to see. For instance, if you decided to start challenging people around you to take more actions, you also need to start doing that yourself. If you want to encourage your partner to make more efforts in your relationship, be the first one to make more efforts and be explicit about it. Integrity and authenticity will help others believe in your message faster because they will believe the messenger!

Make sure to also stay a role model for yourself. For instance, if your intention is to leave people energized after every interaction, you need to keep yourself accountable to master your own energy so you can show up the way you want.

Very importantly as well, keep a long-term thinking when you are embracing the role model mentality. You can’t just show a behaviour once and expect that people will believe you. You can’t just communicate something once and assume that the person in front of you listened and understood completely. Don’t hesitate to repeat over and over the same message and the same behaviours without getting frustrated. Patience and consistency are key when it comes to influence!

Did you find this article insightful? Let me know in the comments!

Clo - Your Expanded Coach