Colin Gautrey

Realisation of Influencing Goals

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Once you begin to clarify your influencing goal, your mind may start to play tricks on you. One bright day you felt positive and inspired to reach for the stars. On these days, you feel totally empowered ― anything seems possible, nothing can get in your way, you are invincible. Feeling inspired, you lay down your goals with positive expectations. Next day, things look a little darker. Doubts have started to creep in. The old well-worn dialogue gets to work inside your head. What on earth were you thinking? How can you possibly achieve the goal you laid out only yesterday? If you are not careful, these Read More

How to Be Charming

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Rivalling gravitas, charm (or charisma) is the most cited personal characteristic which contributes to effective influence. As people describe what charm is, they often appear to swoon as they mentally step back into an experience of being charmed ― experiencing once again the almost magical effect it had on them. Clearly, charm is a very potent capability to have within your skillset. Yes, it is a skill. Most presume that charismatic people were born that way and that people are either charming or not. If you think that way, you will be missing a golden opportunity to become more influential. Skills can be developed. Charm can be developed. You can become more charming ― if you really want to. Here’s how to start…
  1. Recognise that Read More

The Dangers of Integrity

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Before publishing this article, I sent it to a couple of friends. One reacted strongly, telling me I was wrong. I'm just pleased he proved my point entirely! We all applaud people of integrity, don't we? Those who have a well-developed sense of right and wrong: strong values which they apply consistently in their lives. These people become highly trustable because they are reliable. My guess is that we are all still "work in progress" when it comes to integrity, mainly because we are all still learning. Each new experience contributes to our understanding of the world and how to live in it. Values nudge forward and are evolving within us all the time, even if we don't realise it. Yet every step Read More

Are You Gambling on Agreement?

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Like me, I am sure you have been in a meeting presenting your ideas and seeking agreement to proceed. Gaining buy-in is a key job requirement of middle to senior-level people. If people say no, I am sure you have plenty of ideas about what to do next ― especially if you have been reading my work for a while. But, what do you do if they say yes? Most people will gratefully accept that little word and swing into implementation mode, or patiently wait for them to do what they have just agreed to do. Put another way, they will take a gamble that yes meant yes and not no or maybe. I know that you know yes often doesn’t mean yes. Is that what you do? Initially, the relief of gaining agreement hides the gamble. Suspicions that they are not quite with you can be squashed out by the fear of losing agreement. Trying to check that they really mean yes is somehow seen as being foolhardy. Worry about Read More

Developing a Positive Influencing Attitude

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People who have a positive attitude towards their work as an influencer benefit greatly and, to be honest, are much more likely to get what they want. This works for a number of reasons:
  • People with a positive disposition are more readily listened to.
  • Many enjoy engaging with positive people, so doors fly open.
  • Among ambitious people, those who are negative stand out awkwardly.
  • Optimists focus on what can happen at the expense of what cannot. Whereas, pessimists focus on what cannot be done at the expense of what can.
  • Being positive about what you are seeking to achieve makes people sit up and listen.
Before I continue, please note that I am not Read More

Why You Fail to Influence

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Why are you unable to get the influence you want? What is preventing you from reaching your influencing goal? Sometimes, events conspire to thwart your honest endeavour, and the reasons why it is not working become obscured. If you’d like to find out what is wrong, what you are missing and, then, how you can begin to make progress, here is an exercise for you to try. BUT, please do it one step at a time. Resist the temptation to read the full article before trying the exercise. Just decide you want to give it a go, find a ten-minute slot and go and have a coffee with your notebook. When you are ready: Step1: Write down an influencing Read More

Political Analysis in Your Organisation

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Without a clear understanding of the way the politics are functioning around you, the best you can do is hope that your own influence attempts will work. Success or failure resides within the vague web of informal agendas and interactions between the powerful people and players. You may well believe that your success should rely on your brilliant ideas or no-brainer business case — but it doesn’t. The ideas which get implemented are those favoured by the most powerful players — that the numbers do stack up is usually incidental (albeit convenient). Yet understanding this hidden world is tough, particularly for those who are not yet actors within the political mainstream. Understanding is developed by degrees and this happens naturally over years of experience, or you can focus on it now and accelerate not only your Read More

The Risks and Rewards of Exposing Your Agenda

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When influencing, it really helps if you can be open about your personal agenda. Initially, this may strike you as being naïve, and in some cases, it can be. Yet, overall, if you can do this, you will benefit. To my way of thinking, the key to exposing your agenda (or sharing if you prefer) is to do an appropriate risk/reward assessment based on its importance to you. The more important, the more thorough your analysis needs to be. In reality, you are already doing this at a subconscious level; however, if you want to avoid unfortunate accidents, use the following ideas about risks and rewards to inform your decision making.

Personal Agenda Sharing Risks

  1. The opposition may Read More

Tell-tale Signs of an Influencer at Work

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By now, you have probably bought into the idea that influencing is a key part of any middle to senior role in large (or small) organisations. You are also likely to be keenly aware that if this applies to you, it also applies to your team members. Perhaps you think it is so important that you have even hired someone like me to come and train them on the critical skills of influence. So, how do you tell if your team have taken this on board? How do you know if they are taking their work as an influencer seriously? Naturally, your first clue will be the results they are getting and the feedback you get about them from your peers and colleagues. Yet, good feedback is not always good enough. Sometimes it depends Read More

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