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| May 2011 | Navigating the Territory
Good Ideas for Leaders |
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Greetings!
I recently did an informal inventory of the challenges my clients are currently grappling with. One of the most common is how to have influence over people and processes that they don't control. In the course of just two days, three of my coaching clients described a person or a situation that they want to influence. In all three cases, they couldn't simply tell the other players what to do and expect them to comply. There are numerous everyday examples of situations calling for influence: Getting a teenaged son to clean his room. Helping one's boss act more like a leader than a dictator. Ensuring the success of a large change initiative that requires the buy-in of many people. In each case, the core challenge is the same: Making your point powerful from the perspective of the people you are trying to influence. I'll come back to that a little later.
I've decided to devote the next few issues of "Navigating the Territory" to the topic of influence. The organization Vital Smarts, authors of the excellent books Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, Influencer, and the new Change Anything, have done amazing work outlining steps you can take in order to have influence. I've combined their ideas with my own experiences and will walk you through each of these steps with examples and exercises.
For back issues of this newsletter, you can find them in the archives.
Thanks for your interest and support.
Deborah
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A Definition of Influence
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| by Deborah Reidy |  |
How do you define influence? Some people think influence is equivalent to "politics": Not what you know but who you know. This notion of influence seems underground and illegitimate, an end run around the official chain of command. And there are certainly plenty of examples of people who use their connections for personal gain in a way that's not above board. Yet it's also a reality that much work gets done through the networks of relationship that exist amidst the formal role structures that constitute our organizations and communities. Also called "social networks" (not the exclusive domain of Facebook or LinkedIn!) these informal connections between people are often how the real work of an organization or a community gets done. (See the September 2009 issue of my newsletter for an instructive exercise on this.)
Another way of thinking about influence links it to personality traits and/or formal position. We may think, "She's charismatic, she has influence." Or "He's the boss, of course he has influence." This way of thinking often results in feeling like a victim of circumstance, that there's nothing we can do to impact the course of events if we don't have the personality or position. But, as we will see, you can be proactive no matter who you are. There are a number of specific strategies you can employ in order to have influence. During the next few issues of this newsletter, we'll go through each of these seven strategies one at a time.
First, though, here's a definition of influence that is purely descriptive, without any of the baggage that often accompanies the word:
The capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something, or the effect itself.
The power to shape policy or ensure favorable treatment from someone.
Getting others to act on your ideas
-For reasons they are comfortable with
-Connecting to their existing concern or preoccupation
It is possible to exert influence in a way that is aligned with your values, strengthens relationships among people, and generates support for your ideas in order to be more effective at getting the results you want.
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Seven Influence Strategies
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by Article Author
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Here's a list of 7 influence strategies. We'll go through Strategy 1 and 2 in this issue.
- Know what you're trying to change by identifying the behaviors you want to influence.
- Understand the values and motivation of the people you're trying to influence.
- Use powerful and credible stories to touch hearts and minds with the need to change.
- Instead of trying to convince people with arguments, create experiences to help people see what must change and why.
- Help people become confident that changing their behavior will translate into results they value.
- Identify people who will influence others and engage them early on.
- Create supports in the environment that reinforce the change.
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| Strategy 1: Know what you're trying to change by identifying the behaviors you want to influence |
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Having influence starts out with being clear about what success looks like: What behavior will change as a result of your influence. Specifically, you want to know from what to what before you actually attempt to exert influence. One of my coaching clients was bemoaning the fact that her team did not take the kind of initiative that she was looking for. I asked her what it would look like if they were demonstrating initiative. Her initial response? "I'll know it when I see it." How was she going to influence them to behave the way she wanted if she wasn't clear in her own mind?
The more specific you can be, the better. Let's use the example of getting a teenager to help around the house. Initially it seems like a fairly specific behavior until you start digging into it: What do you mean by "help"? Does "getting" mean you have to ask him every time or are you looking for him to initiate the helping? What are your standards of quality? In what areas of the house? This may seem very picky but the clearer you are about the desired outcome of the influence, the more likely you'll get what you want if you're successful.
Here's another example: Let's say I am interested in influencing my husband to be nice to me. Repeatedly, I exhort him to be nice and he either looks at me in puzzlement or responds by saying, "I am nice!" After many unsuccessful attempts to influence him in this way, it comes out that he genuinely does not know what I want from him. And like my coaching client, neither do I: "I'll know it when I see it." And I am looking for something that's intangible and hard to define. Eventually we decide that a reasonable approximation of being nice is to offer to give me a hug. That works for him--it's a concrete behavior that he can do without having to worry about making a mistake. For me, it's always a good starting point and sometimes a hug actually is what I'm looking for.
One of my coaching clients, Rob, had just been appointed as the chief of a new organization that was going to have high visibility. He saw his biggest challenge as hiring the right people to be on the leadership team. Rob's boss had some very particular ideas about the kinds of people who should be hired into the organization and he also had recommended several individuals that he wanted Rob to hire. Rob wanted his boss to give him free rein to hire who he thought should be on his team. Before we started talking about how to influence his boss, I asked Rob to describe what success would look like. First he described his vision for the team itself and what kind of qualities the team and team members would have. Then he described the behavior he wanted his boss to demonstrate: "He needs to let us make the hiring decisions." Once he was clear on that behavior, we then talked about how to appeal to his boss in a way that would resonate with the boss's values, interests, and priorities. This leads to the second strategy.
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Strategy 2: Understand the values and motivation of the people you're trying to influence
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Once you are clear about what behavior you are trying to influence, you then want to turn your attention to understanding what makes the other person "tick." Earlier, I wrote that influence has to do with making your point powerful from the perspective of the person you are trying to influence. What makes a point powerful? When it resonates with what that other person values. But oftentimes we are so focused on what matters to us that we fail to consider what matters to the person we want to influence. Rob identified his boss as being motivated by, among other things, being right and being able to take pride in the organization. From those two values, we crafted an approach to the conversation that focused on acknowledging that the boss's hiring philosophy was a sound one, communicating Rob's vision of the team to the boss and linking his team vision to the idea of "putting the new organization on the map." Rob later reported that the conversation had gone very well.
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An Influence Exercise
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Here's an exercise you can do to prepare for an influence conversation by working through Strategies 1 and 2:
Identify an initiative that you are involved with in a leadership role. You don't have to be the primary leader but you do need to be able to have influence. Answer the questions below.
Identify the behaviors you want to influence:
- What are the results you want to achieve? State your desired results in one sentence.
- What are the measures you'll use to track your progress?
- Who are the people you depend on to make this successful?
- What are their few vital behaviors that will have the greatest impact on your desired results?
Identify your own interests, values and priorities:
- What are your own interests and values associated with this initiative?
Identify the interests, values and priorities of the person you are trying to influence:
- Identify one person whose support you really need for this to succeed
- What are their interests, values, and priorities? What unspoken rules are relevant and meaningful for that person?
Closing the gap:
- Evaluate how interests and values compare.
- Without compromising your own interests, values and priorities, frame your idea with the other person's interests and values in mind.
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| About Reidy Associates
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Reidy Associates offers customized solutions that enable leaders and their organizations to succeed in complex and uncertain environments.
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