Gautrey Unleashed

Adapting Your Style of Influence

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As you grow up and experience the world you begin to learn what works and what does not work. When you find something that works, you will tend to repeat it until such time as it is proven conclusively that it no longer works for you. This is how personality evolves and behaviours become habitual. Yet, what works for you, may or may not work for someone else. Indeed, it may work for you in some situations better than in others. So things begin to get rather complicated, and interesting. Since all of my work involves helping people to become more influential, I have approached these personality differences in terms of how Read More

Assessing Your Network: Nine Factor Analysis

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To begin with, it’s a race for the numbers. If you have no network, how can you have any friends? This is true on Social Media and offline. Unless you have people to talk to you are not going to be able to develop quality relationships. Unfortunately, the rise of social networks makes the numbers a little more tempting. Their visibility and apparent social-proof has a noticeable effect on behaviour. For a while at least, it becomes a number chasing exercise. This is great to begin with, but at some stage it is vital to return the focus to building quality relationships, either on or offline. So, what does quality mean in network relationships? In workshops when I ask this question I usually get a rather subjective response. Only with persistence do people start to break it down and find clarity. If you can make an objective assessment of your current relationships you can make decisions about where you need to focus on building more quality. It also gives you some simple ideas on how to develop them too. For example, you might objectify the quality by Read More

Preparing to Persist

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A few articles ago I pointed out that one of the most common influencing mistakes is Failing to Attempt to Influence. Allied to that is another mistake ― giving up too easily. Many people can think through situations, develop great strategies and even begin to put them into practice. However, one of the features of influence is the scale of the unknown. Fact and figures are easy to pin down and understand ― opinions, emotions and human nature provide an entirely different challenge. My guess is that in over 95% of Read More

Alternative Influencing Tactics

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Most people bowl into influencing with their tried and tested techniques, without thinking about how suitable they may be to the individual about to be influenced and the situation they are in. In the last article, I alluded to making a definite choice about which of nine tactics to use (you may use more than one, and you may decide to alter the order). These were originally defined by Dr. Cecilia Falbe and her colleagues who were studying the relative effectiveness of each in gaining influence. The nine influencing tactics are: Read More

Safeguarding Your Reputation Building

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As you begin to create a disturbance with your reputation building, others may become uncomfortable with the change in the way you are operating. The status quo has gone, and they may be more, or less, happy with the new challenge you are presenting. In the last article I shared some ideas on how to prepare for these changes and the potential consequences (Ruffling Feathers and Due Diligence). That done, I’d now like to suggest that you turn your attention to a more positive thread of activity and adopt a clear set of principles to guide all of your behaviour going forward. These principles are naturally Read More

Ruffling Feathers and Due Diligence

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In the last article (A Healthy Dose of Obsession) I alluded to the idea that you need to step into your new reputation as soon as possible, and begin to live it. This means you will begin to do things differently and start to appear as a slightly different person. Consequently, others will begin to notice — which is just what you want but, be careful. As soon as you stick your head out and appear different from what you were before, all manner of things will start to happen, and not all of them are positive. For instance: Read More

A Healthy Dose of Obsession

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Obsession is frequently defined along the lines of:

“The domination of one’s thoughts or feelings by a persistent idea, image or desire.”

If you want to build a reputation, becoming a little obsessive about it is a good thing. The trouble with most great ideas (such as your new idea about how to become distinctive) is that given a few weeks, they start to fade into the background. Little by little, they get forgotten. Don’t let this happen to your ambition to build a strong reputation in your organisation. If you’ve put the investment of time and thinking into crafting your desired reputation, now is the time to capitalise on that clarity and make sure you continue to build it in your mind, and in your behaviour. Here are five ways Read More

Preparing to Influence Others

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No amount of strategy can avoid the need at some point to actually do some influencing. Okay, you may have developed a great strategy which involves getting others to do the heavy lifting; however, you still have to influence them in the first place. Put another way, if you are not out there influencing, you’re probably missing some great opportunities or, you will lose out on the credit later. Much of what follows depends on you having a clear notion of where you are going. In an earlier article (Influence Processes and Goals) I suggested you should use the Stakeholder Influence Process to guide your influencing work. At the very beginning Read More

Behaving with Distinction

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By now you should have developed a real sense of the reputation you want to create, the brand you want to establish and the impression you wish to create (if not, see refer back using the links in the reading list). Now it is time to work out how to do this. Before we get into the building greater substance to back up your reputation, I want to focus on the behaviours which you can adjust right now, and which will help you to begin stepping into your new reputation. The exercise which follows will stretch your thinking and will evolve in Read More

Understanding the Bigger Picture

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In the last article (The Structure of Your Leadership Arena), I asked you to map out all the groups that are involved in your arena — that will be essential in helping you to gain the most from this article. Any attempt to understand your arena will falter if you don’t first know its structure. If you didn’t get a chance to do so before, take another look here. Within your arena, decide which group you wish to be more influential within. You don’t necessarily need to be a member of this group, but you do need to have a clear vision of who they are. It is also worth making sure that your decision here tallies with your earlier consideration about what you want to Read More

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