Client Confidential

Nine Potent Ways to Influence Your Colleagues

November 23, 2016 by Colin Gautrey

We talk a great deal about influencing stakeholders here on the influence blog, yet sometimes it is those closest to you that are a missed opportunity. If you can influence your colleagues, team members and closest co-workers, a great many others things become possible. So, without further ado, here are nine ways you can become a more influential team member:

Understand their goals. Key to being influential with people is having a deep insight into what they are striving for, or trying to avoid. If you can figure out their personal and professional agendas, you will develop a keener sense of how things that you do will affect them, and how they will react.
Be an enthusiast, of them. My oldest self-development book (Masters of the Situation by James Tilley, 1888) proposes enthusiasm as one of the secrets of power and influence. Still true, and here you can apply it to your colleagues and their goals.

Are You Worth Trusting? You Sure?

November 21, 2016 by Colin Gautrey

Obvious answer – of course you are! You know that. But, do they? It is far easier that you may realise for others to distrust you. You don’t need to do anything wrong to see their level of trust in you dip. Indeed, it may be nothing whatsoever to do with you. However, the negative impact on your work will be big. Below I am going to share thirteen reasons why trust may be declining around you – then you can take steps to arrest any decline, or make sure it doesn’t start to drop in the first place. Before I do that…

What is Trust?

“The degree to which someone can predict how you will respond in certain situation.”

For instance: giving them an honest answer to a straight question; remaining calm when disputes arise; supporting their work when the need arises. In practice, this usually means that they believe you will respond in a favourable way. Defining trust this way can also include Read More

Political Situation Case Study B: The Interim

November 15, 2016 by Colin Gautrey

The Interim: You’ve accepted a fantastic job. The problem is that you’ve been told -- and everyone knows -- that it’s a temporary position, and things quickly start to get awkward.

Interim appointments are becoming a more common feature of organisational life, especially at senior levels. The speed that ambitious and talented individuals move onwards and upwards results in key appointments forever needing to be filled – and if the organisation’s performance is not going to suffer unduly, then filling the vacancy quickly is important – but not as Read More

Political Situation Case Study A: The Apprentice

November 15, 2016 by Colin Gautrey

The Apprentice: The new guy has arrived and is strongly favoured by the CEO. He is creating lots of disruption for your team.

Anyone who has been working in an organisation -– particularly a large one -- will know that disruption is common, and often uncomfortable. While we may be able to manage our own work skilfully, the competitive environment places continuous pressure on us all to perform better and in different ways. Our ability to handle this relentless pressure to change -- and the ambiguity that Read More

From Political Naivety to Mastery

November 10, 2016 by Colin Gautrey

Many years ago I did a silly thing. At the time, I was working in a large financial services firm, in their international division. It was a wild place to be honest, out of the mainstream. But, a place where we could innovate, move fast, open up new markets, and make lots of profit – often to the embarrassment of the larger UK based divisions. The politics were fast, at times a little brutal, but we always made up afterwards and celebrated our collective successes. The silly thing I did? Well, I thought Read More

Top Ten Irritating Political Situations at Work

November 7, 2016 by Colin Gautrey

Over the last month I’ve been talking to a lot of people about the political problems they face at work. This research was initiated to accompany a new online course I am developing, Mastering the Politics. What I wanted to do is to make sure it is relevant and solves as many of the current problems people are facing as possible. What the research threw up was as fascinating as it was depressing. So, without further ado, in reverse order, the most irritating political situations people are having to cope with at work are: Read More

Implementing the Six Pillars of Political Mastery

November 4, 2016 by Colin Gautrey

The Six Pillars of Political Mastery are intended to get results. Especially useful where is it difficult to work out what is really going on. Here are two simple examples of how it helped two of my coaching clients recently. In the first example, Susan had been having difficulty with a senior level stakeholder. This stakeholder had been loud in her criticism of what Susan was doing, demanding reports at short notice and generally creating grief all round, not just for Susan. However, given her position it was difficult to ignore what she was doing. Susan’s initial inclination was to take steps to Read More

Influencing Style Resources

October 20, 2016 by Colin Gautrey

Developing your influencing style flexibility is a key priority if you wish to make the most of your relationships. This resource centre brings together the most effective articles, exercises and videos on this topic, and is freely available to subscribers of the influence blog. Read More

Turning Optimism into Hard Results

October 5, 2016 by Colin Gautrey

Second call with Alan today. He’s a senior strategy guy in a large financial services firm. Last month he became one of my Private Clients. Things are starting to happen, and you need to pay attention because we can all learn from this, me included. “Alan, what are the three biggest changes for you since our first call?” Firstly, he and his stakeholders are all crystal clear on what he wants to achieve – his next position. When we first spoke, it was all a little vague, it could be this, it could be that. After a tough challenge from yours truly, and a short period of reflection, he landed the vision. And then he went straight to work selling the idea.

Lessons Read More

Project Managers Are Too Soft. Are You?

August 9, 2016 by Colin Gautrey

Incredible it may be, but the data is beginning to emerge that this could indeed be the case. The usual caveat about generalisations aside, this is what my recent research is starting to reveal. And, you don’t have to be a project manager to learn from these results. Based on a group of 195 project managers[1] I have discovered, somewhat to my surprise, that they are more likely to be high in Tact and Diplomacy and low in Determination, than the general (professional) working population. To be honest, I had expected the opposite. These people all completed my Influence Profile that measures preferred behaviours when working with others. This is not looking at their actual behaviour, but rather the way they would most like to behave (which is reality is the default behaviour they use most of the time). Within this psychometric, four dimensions of behaviour are analysed and Read More

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