Gautrey Unleashed

Understand Hidden Agendas

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Agendas can be professional or personal. Personal agendas are not always known unless you are very close to the individual concerned. Yet these agendas have a significant influence on the personal decisions the individual will make.

"If you can discover the hidden agendas, you can find new ways to influence them."
It is your job to uncover these hidden agendas so your increased understanding can be factored into your plans. Unless you know what is against you, it is very difficult to influence effectively. While using the term hidden agenda, I do not wish to imply Read More

Create an Influence Plan

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You are probably familiar with creating project plans to achieve the targets set by your organisation. This means you already have the skills to create an influence plan.

"The main reason why people don't plan their influence is that it doesn't occur to them."
In just the same way that you create a project plan, be very specific about what you want to influence (your deliverable) and then create an influence plan to achieve it. You can use many of the project management disciplines you are probably already familiar with, including Read More

Finding Time to Influence

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It is all very well saying that to be more influential you have to do this or do that; but what if you don’t have time to do any more? If so, becoming more influential isn’t going anywhere. Time pressure comes from many directions. Bosses want you to do more with less. Peers and colleagues want you to work on and support their initiatives; and they are perhaps, a little less interested in what you have on your plate. People in your team often seem to have unrealistic expectations of the help and support you will give them. And then of course there is the pressure you put on yourself. If you are ambitious, you want to make things happen. You have big visions and plans to get results and assure the upwards momentum of your career continues. Read More

How to Manage When Agendas Conflict

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When you are clear about what you want to achieve, it is often frustrating to find that others do not share your enthusiasm. A great deal of time and effort is expended building the case, considering the risks and planning the execution. Everything seems to make sense, and you are keen to get going — you want to implement swiftly. Then the problems start. Reaching out to your stakeholders, you begin to find out that some are not interested. They fail to buy into your project, or, worse, don’t even give you the time to explain your plans. When you do get to see them, they start to share insights with you about other things going on elsewhere in the organisation which seem to be in direct conflict with what you are working on. Trouble is, you can see that they may have a valid point. Doubts begin to set in as you realise that what you have been tasked to achieve is not necessarily going to be as straightforward as you originally thought. Indeed, you probably start to wonder why the people above you can’t agree on what should be done — must be the politics!

Understanding This Challenge

As an organisational strategy swings Read More

What Do You Do when You Meet the Unengageable?

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As a motivated, successful and positive individual, it is all too easy to filter out the reality that not everyone is like you. Of course, everyone should be, shouldn't they? Totally bought into your idea, swelled and inspired by your enthusiasm, swept along with the change contagion. Yet as a fellow reader of the ATD, I know you know better than that. Many people out there you have to engage with are cautious (if not suspicious), worried, objectionable or simply not interested in your latest change project. Engaging with them requires a different approach, which may take you out of your comfort zone and could even challenge your integrity. But knowing this is one thing, doing it is quite another matter. Here are a few ideas to develop your practice...
  • Check Your Attitude. Allow for the fact that it is okay for people Read More

What Is Group Power? How to Influence Strategically

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This is another of those simple concepts often over-complicated by well-meaning consultants in the realms of organisational psychology. Avoiding the complexity gives you more time to act. Once you understand what group power is, it will become easier to spot opportunities to influence more effectively. It will help you to magnify your influence and put the group to work. So, keeping it simple, in organisational realms, group power is:

"the collective capacity of a group of people to create influence"

There are four elements you need to think about with this definition. Read More

What Is Influence? Some Practical Implications

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In my work, it is often easy to forget the simple things ― yet, they are often the most important things. If you want to be influential, a good starting point is being clear on what influence is. We throw words around, but if you pause a moment and pull it apart, you will find it contains some useful ideas to sharpen up your influence. In the fascinating world of interpersonal relationships, influence is...

"someone changing what they do, say, think, or feel"

Why they were influenced to do something different could be as simple as deciding it would be a good idea. The cause could be outside of their awareness ― like one of those little tricks some Read More

Improving Processes for Problem and Conflict Resolution

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Usually, if you have managed to achieve high levels of Trust and Credibility and also Communication and Influence, this theme will look after itself. So this last section is deliberately brief because I want you to focus on the first two themes to maximise your progress. Once you have strengthened them, you will have a really good stakeholder relationship. All that is needed here are a few supplementary points which build on this strong base and are relevant to this theme – in fact, they assume you already have a great relationship with your stakeholder!
  • Problem Solving and Conflict Resolution is about cultivating and encouraging a robust attitude, which promotes proactive and objective attention to problems facing either party – hopefully Read More

Improving Communication and Balancing Influence

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The first thing to appreciate is that by far the best way to improve on this theme is to make sure you have lots of Trust and Credibility between both sides of the relationship. The first theme forms an unavoidable prerequisite to successful Communication and Influence. Think about it. If you don’t trust someone, the more they communicate, the more suspicious you will become. Similarly, it is very difficult to influence someone if they don’t trust you (i.e. they are suspicious of your motives). To be blunt, if you haven’t got the first theme covered, you will probably be wasting your time trying to strengthen Communication and Influence Instead, as you work to improve Trust and Credibility, add in a few of the ideas Read More

Strengthening Trust and Credibility

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The key to strengthening trust is to understand what it is, how it works and what you (and others) do to maximise trust, or bring it crashing down! Trust is a complex concept which can easily be simplified into the extent to which you can rely upon someone (or something) else. Will they do what you expect them to do? Can you rely on their word? Can you predict what they will do in a given set of circumstances? There are also various different levels of trust. You may be able to rely Read More

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