Difficult skills to master require a decent amount of investment – of time, energy, blood, sweat and tears. Influence is just one of those that requires a big investment on many of these fronts.
While you can learn a great deal from books and articles, nothing quite works as well as learning through observation. However, passive observation is slow and of variable quality.
When it comes to learning influence through observation, some questions will help give you structure and speed up the process.
For instance:
- Specifically, what makes particular individuals highly influential?
- What do they do differently, from other less influential people?
- How does this differ from your own approach?
- What could you do differently?
- What will you do differently?
Alternatively, when you notice someone falter in their influence:
- What did they do (or not do) that could have led to their failure?
- How does this differ from other people?
- What would you have advised them to do differently, and why?
- What would you advise them to do now?
- How does this affect your own approach to influence?
All situations can give rise to different questions so the main point to take away here is that if you want to learn more about influence through observation, keep asking yourself specific questions. If you can develop your own question templates, so much the better.
Even better, focus on particular aspects of influence that you need to focus in on, such as gravitas, then assemble some key questions you can have in your back pocket to entertain you in those down times during meetings as you reflect on those present?
Resources Related to Learning Influence
- Learning How to Influence Behind the Scenes
- Seven Things Your Opposition Hopes You’ll Never Learn
- New Job? Quickly Learn How to Be Influential
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