An important key to influence is being able to notice before you attempt to influence what is likely to motivate someone to want to do what you want them to do. An easy way to begin learning more about motivations is to look inwardly at how and why others are able to influence you. By noticing what motivates you to do things differently, you can begin to see new ways to influence others.
One of the great things about this sort of self-reflection is that you don’t have to worry about not getting the full story. When you’re asking someone else, there is always an overlay of caution in their answers — they may hold back on the full truth. After all, why should they tell you how to influence them? Of course, you could be deluding yourself, yet the more you think about this, the closer you’ll come to the really useful answers.
Most of the time you will be influenced by your perceptions of what you might gain or lose from the transaction. This could be positive or negative.
For instance, you may be asked to do something by your boss that you’d not planned to do. You have to decide if you are going to do it. If you don’t, perhaps they will be upset and cite it as an example of how difficult you are to work with. This could lose you your pay rise or bonus. Alternatively, if you say yes it may help your promotion prospects or, you may just have a great deal of fun doing it. Sometimes you might say yes just so they go away.
Whatever the reason, there will always be a reason why you allowed yourself to be influenced. By looking deeply at these reasons, you will learn a great deal more about the reasons which allow others around you to be influenced too.
- Make a list of 10 times recently when you did something that you initially would have resisted.
- Include times that a salesperson has sold to you, or when someone approached you with an idea that you initially resisted.
- For each, work out what motivated you to change your mind.
- What was it about the person, the idea, the proposal or the situation that convinced you to do something different?
And remember — we are all human animals, and many of the things which influence us will also be useful when attempting to influence others.
The Gautrey Influence Blog
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