When I published Feeling Powerless in a Relationship last week, a great many of you jumped on the opportunity to complete the online Power Profile.
Using this to build awareness of where you get your personal power from is quick and easy, but only the very start of your journey to greater power and influence.
However, there are two things that just about everyone has missed, and these are critically important if you wan to become more influential.
The first is, once you have a basic understanding of what makes you powerful, you can then start to analyse what makes your stakeholders powerful. This is important because:
“People tend to be most influenced by others who exhibit the sources of power they themselves favour.”
For instance, Sally is driven, determined and prides herself on her track-record (a flavour in the Credibility source). Maybe you know Sally? If she is anything like normal, she will most likely recruit others who show the same passion for landing big results.
When someone tries to influence her based on the insights they have gained from a with network of people around the organisation (a flavour of the Connections source) she may listen, but will probably be thinking “Yeah, and what results have they ever achieved?”
Which means, that if you want to influence a stakeholder, make sure you know what makes them powerful and look for opportunities to adjust your approach.
Since you already know how the Power Profile works, what only one person has done since last week, is used the tool to diagnose someone else. Same questions, but reflecting on what you know about another powerful person.
Then, you can begin to compare the results.
Resources
- Feeling Powerless in a Relationship: Original article on power in important relationships.
- Power Analysis Exercise: The original exercise I published in Influential Leadership to compare sources of power and spot opportunities to adapt for greater influence (read now).
- Power Profile: To use this to analyse others (see instructions in the video above) complete it yourself first. If you’ve already done it, find the email and click the link at the bottom to access your report again. At the bottom of the report, click on the analyse others button (go to Power Profile questionnaire).
A Little Incentive
I want more people to make use of the diagnostic before we begin to charge for it.
So, during November (2018) I will reach out to someone who has completed between 5 and 10 analyses of their stakeholders during the month and offer a full coaching session on using power to become more influential. No more, no less, because that’s the recommended number of stakeholders in the Stakeholder Mapping Guide.
And the second thing people have missed?
You’ll have to wait a few days to learn about that. But don’t let that stop you exploring the power of your stakeholders today.
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