If you want to become more influential, it really helps if you know the how, and the why, of influence. That way you can economise on your work as an influencer, and gain a great deal more influence.
At its most basic, influence is about causing someone to take a different course of action than they were planning to take before they experienced the cause. This influence is very direct and obvious — it either happens or it doesn’t. Slightly more difficult to spot is the influence you can have on attitudes which will ultimately lead to different action. For instance, if you influence a stakeholder to change their mind about you and think that you are actually pretty good at your job, a few weeks later they may respond/act in a much more positive way when you send them an email.
Before you can have influence, you have to have power. Power is quite simply the capacity to influence. This is what is at work when you are interacting with people. To illustrate this capacity, imagine for a moment that you have just won the lottery and now have a bank account full of money. This gives you a tremendous capacity to influence. Immediately your bank manager is going to be far more attentive, hoping that she can encourage you into making some investments. Similarly, you’ll probably begin to discover lots of best friends you never knew you had. Many people will be acting differently around you, having been influenced by the presence of all that cash.
There are five principles of power which I have outlined in my book, Influential Leadership: A Leader’s Guide to Getting Things Done:
- Consequences. Power creates waves and needs to be handled with care.
- Calculation. Power is all about individuals making personal decisions in order to satisfy their needs and wants.
- Supply and Demand. You will be powerful if people want what you have, and especially powerful if they can’t get it elsewhere.
- Perception and Reality. It is not so much about what power you have, but what power people think you have.
- Utilisation. Your power and influence will grow if you use your power.
In the lottery example, there are certainly consequences attached to you having all that money, for you, and for others. The bank manager (and your new-found friends) are calculating that it would be in their best interests to be nice to you. Quite simply, because you have something that they want — the principle of supply and demand.
Their perception of your power may vary from reality. They may know that you’ve suddenly come in to a lot of money; however, they may not know that you need to use it to pay off your debt mountain, or have already committed it elsewhere. Similarly, if you had managed to keep everything quiet, they would have the perception that you are still poor and would continue to ignore you.
The final principle is very important in the long term. If you don’t use your power, you’ll lose it, or at least, its capacity to influence will dwindle. How long before your new friends realise that you may have lots of money, but there is no way you are going to share it with them?
This is just a simple illustration of how the principles of power affect influence. Now here is a little challenge. In the last article (How Influence Works for You), I suggested that you consider how you are being influenced. Return to your notes and think through how these principles relate to each example you came up with. If you can, see how each of these principles is working in your life, it becomes much easier to tap into them as you are influencing others going forward.
The Gautrey Influence Blog
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