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Here are five steps to increase your influence.
1) Understand your influencing style. It all begins with self-awareness. What’s your dominant style? Do you assert, convince, negotiate, bridge or inspire? Do you tend to apply the same approach to every situation and individual? Understanding your natural inclination is a good place to start. If you’re not sure, consider taking a quick assessment. The Influence Style Indicator by Discovery Learning is a good one.
2) Take stock of your situation. Who are the critical stakeholders you need to win over to achieve an objective or overcome an obstacle? What influencing style might be more effective as you interact with them? For example, if you’re dealing with a hard-nosed CFO, consider using a convincing approach, which is based in logic, data and expertise. If you’re in a crisis situation where people are relying on you to be decisive and fast on your feet, an asserting style may be more effective. If you’re working cross-functionally and need to win the support of a peer, a bridging or negotiating style may be the way to go.
3) Identify your gaps. Once you understand your natural orientation and the appropriate styles to influence those around you, figure out where you’re on solid ground and where you need to shift gears and use a different approach to be more effective.
4) Develop. After identifying your gaps, find ways to develop in those areas. It might be a workshop, coach or internal role model who is particularly strong in the style you’re trying to develop. For an added bonus, find a learning partner – someone with whom you can role-play to gain confidence.
5) Practice. Begin with small steps – low-stakes situations where you can test out your new influencing approaches. Target a person or situation where you’d like to achieve a certain outcome, think through the influencing style that will work best in that situation, and give it a try. See what works and what doesn’t. As you build your capability and confidence, move on to higher-stakes scenarios.
Reward them according to their performance and listen to their interests & suggestions carefully.
To make each and every member of the team important.
To be a good influencer on your team or the people around, you should concentrate on the following:
1. Gain Rapport: Be on their level, recognize their beliefs and values; match their behavior patterns and blend your personality characteristics with theirs.
2. Ask Questions:Elicit needs and different responses; probe to identify their motives, attitudes and feeling.
3. Listen Actively:Demonstrate that you are listening: listen with all your senses; suspend judgement.
4. Stress Pertinent Benefits:Summarize how specific benefits of your proposal accurately reflect their needs.
5. Work Towards A Decision:Ask questions which will force a decision (or rejection); test interest through hypothetical questions; make positive statements which assume their acceptance.
Nice elaborations by Mr. Mayaleh, Mr. Jetley & Mr. Alex...........
I fully support the answers.
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1. Listen. Make a point of listening to the team members, individually and collectively. Give them an opportunity to tell you about themselves, both professionally and personally. Don’t make judgements based on hearsay or third party talk.
2. Observe. Watch how the team interacts with each other and with other people. See who tends to step forward quickly and who tends to hang back. Look for the person who others turn to for advice, guidance, and implicit leadership.
3. Expect. Even as you are listening and observing, set clear expectations for the team. Make sure they know what you expect from them in terms of communication, problem solving, performance and responsibility. This does not mean giving orders that are to be obeyed; it means laying out clear guidelines for behaviors and actions, and then modelling those behaviors and actions yourself.
4. Lead. This is a very small word with very big implications. To lead is to coach, guide, influence, decide, delegate, model, plan, implement, discipline, develop, and direct, just to name a few things. The leadership strategies you use will depend on the nature of the team, but you can be sure that if you don’t step forward and lead then someone else will. Be the leader so that you will be seen as the leader.
Every team member effective and important.
