Part 2

10 influencing skills in action

Skill 1     Influencing a team

Skill 2     Influencing a colleague

Skill 3     Influencing in a meeting

Skill 4     Influencing senior management

Skill 5     Influencing a client

Skill 6     Influencing in an interview

Skill 7     Influencing in a phone call

Skill 8     Influencing in a crisis

Skill 9     Influencing in a presentation

Skill 10    Influencing from the front (as leader)

This and the next part of this book will guide you through many common influencing situations, helping you apply the skills and ideas from this book in real life. Before you read these sections we’d like to remind you of the three principles for successful influence we offered in our introduction:

1. Prepare yourself
2. Maintain relationships
3. Communicate clearly.

These principles provide a simple checklist, which will help you identify any weak spots in your ability to influence.

Are you prepared?

Is there a relationship?

Are you communicating well?

No matter whom you are trying to influence, answering these three simple questions will give you an immediate insight into how you can improve.

Skill 1

Influencing a team

Are you prepared?

‘O Divine Master, grant that I may not seek to be consoled, as to console. To be understood, as to understand.’

Saint Francis of Assisi

Surely a 13th-century forerunner to Stephen R. Covey’s ‘Seek first to understand . . . ’?

No matter who thought of this maxim for communication, we can and should use it here. To truly be part of and be seen to be a useful functioning member of any team, you need to focus on understanding the individuals.

Where are you in the sphere?

Begin by referring back to Step 1 and carry out a relationship audit of the team. Map out the relationships as described and use this to hone in on those that need strengthening. Work through the exercise and actually put pencil to paper to identify the areas of imbalance.

Aim for relationships that are balanced in terms of their influence on you and yours on them. An imbalance in either direction will surely topple as one of you is going to feel powerless, leading to disengagement.

Then, and only then, can you increase your ‘gravitational effect’ on the team as a whole.

Consider the reasons as to why there is an imbalance. Have you spent enough time and energy working on these relationships? Have you travelled the easy path and spent that time and energy on the relationships that come easy, feel natural and are thought of as friendships?

Re-route right now and spend a greater portion of that time and energy on the difficult/challenging relationships.

What can you learn from previous team meetings/experiences?

You may want to keep a notebook of those relationships that you have identified as needing work. Note what:

• interests team members;
• motivates them;
• annoys them;
• bores them;
• excites them, etc.

Consider how you can tap into these notes when communicating with them. Through this approach they will hopefully start to feel that you are ‘understanding’ them and therefore you are building the relationship – the sense of mutual trust and influencing becomes easier and collaborative.

Can you define your positive purpose?

Look over Step 5. Don’t expect others to really know you and what you stand for unless it trips off the tongue for you. This modern-day elevator pitch and the understanding of how it motivates you should underpin your communication at all times, with transparency.

Can you also apply this to your team as a whole? Perhaps there is an exercise in working with your team to agree on the nature of this. How and why does it contribute to the success of the organisation as a whole? Next time you book an away day with this team, if you haven’t done so already see if you can set aside some time to define the team’s positive purpose.

Mitigating any confusion over the collective purpose in this way is a sure-fire method of improving workflow and overall productivity. We aim for shared ownership of ideas, process and success.

Is there a relationship?

Well, yes, there are many: relationships with individuals that make up the team and the relationship with the team itself.

Make the most of encounters with members of the team. Create opportunities to find out more about them, how they like to communicate.

In one-to-one encounters, cultivate a trusting relationship in which you show genuine interest (refer again to Step 1).

With those in your outer orbit, make that journey, attend that face-to-face meeting. Really try not to cancel on them; make them a priority. Be interested and be flexible. As you come to understand each other, that interest in each other’s position and the flexibility of the position can only serve to get you on the same page – or at least in the same chapter!

If the encounters are fleeting, make the most of them. Be authentic, be concise. Consider how you can streamline your communication with them. Choose your underlying active verb to be kindle (ignite the relationship or idea), excite (about the relationship and what you can achieve together) or perhaps intrigue (arouse their curiosity).

In team meetings or conference calls, or indeed presentations, it’s likely that no one will thank you for running over time. At this point it’s worth remembering the law of diminishing returns.

As you add words and reiterations in your communications, not only do they decrease in value but you run the risk of negative returns – undermining all that has gone before. Be authentic, be concise.

Alliance building

Looking back at the universe of influence you drew, can you take a piggyback ride (Step 1)?

Analyse your atmosphere and inner orbit and see if someone with whom you have a stronger relationship exerts a greater gravitational force on someone you originally placed in your outer orbit.

Develop an alliance with those closer to you and aim to draw in those currently drifting in the outer orbit.

Are you communicating well?

Are you stuck in a communications rut because of your:

• self-limiting beliefs;
• stubbornness;
• ‘we’ve always done it this way’ response pattern;
• thinking that to be influenced makes you weak.

Break these now, especially the one about thinking that to allow yourself to ‘be influenced’ is weak. It’s not at all – in fact, you have the power to choose to allow this influence to occur.

Think of a situation where you could have allowed yourself to be influenced to change your mind, to follow a different practice or simply to try something new. Ask yourself why you will not allow yourself to be influenced. Do you consider it to be a weakness? Do you worry that others will perceive it in this way? Of course to allow yourself to be coerced, manipulated or tricked into something or a way of thinking is not ideal. Coercion, manipulation and trickery are negative and they can make you feel silly, used, weak or powerless.

Positive forms of influence, such as inspiration, require you to drop your guard. Allow yourself to be positively influenced and to be seen to be. Consider and choose – you have the power.

A further benefit of ‘allowing yourself’ to be influenced by members of your team is the trust it can help to build. You will be seen as flexible, approachable and a team player.

In no particular order, see if you can tick these off:

• Aim to understand differences/preferences.
• Deal with individuals – not the team.
• Start with listening – make certain that you build those strong relationships by listening.
• Be able to list the priorities of each team member – seek out what is important to them.
• Be clear about what you want and keep an open mind.
• They need to understand what works for you – and vice versa. Is this the case?
• Empathise. Summarise thoughts and feelings to show you understand. Allow yourself to be influenced.

These days many of us work remotely, which can bring benefits to businesses and their employees. However it is important to remember that there’s simply no real substitute for face-to-face interaction.

‘The human moment has two prerequisites: people’s physical presence and their emotional and intellectual attention.’

Edward M. Hallowell (psychiatrist), The Harvard Business Review, January 1999

Skill 2

Influencing a colleague

Is there a relationship?

When wishing to have a particular influence upon a colleague it is essential, first, to understand the nature of your relationship with them.

There are many different types of colleagues and each brings their own set of specific traits in relation to you. Picture your current work colleagues for a moment and you’ll immediately realise that you relate to each one differently, no matter how subtle the difference.

At work we are always inhabiting both our professional self and the more relaxed self we are naturally outside of work. Often, the more senior the colleague, the more of our professional self we tend to inhabit around them. The more equal a colleague, the more comfortable we feel to be our natural self around them. Of course, there are also senior colleagues with whom we feel very comfortable, and equal colleagues with whom we have no relationship but the professional.

The interaction of these two roles, professional and personal, is an important element in your influencing style with each colleague.

Consider your colleagues again and note the nature of the relationship with each. Does it tend to the professional or the personal?

The key is to find a balance of the two with each colleague. It doesn’t need to be an even balance but, for example, if you have an entirely professional relationship with someone it will be beneficial to infuse it with a bit of your personal qualities, and vice versa.

Professional influence

• Organised
• Punctual
• Thorough
• Expert
• Effective

Personal influence

• Humour
• Interest/curiosity
• Friendliness
• Warmth
• Ease

Look for opportunities to build both sides of your influencing style with each of your colleagues.

Are you prepared?

In order to influence anyone meaningfully and positively you need to have done your groundwork.

Unless you know where you stand and what your aims are, then there is no way you can move anyone else in the direction you desire.

• Can you place your colleague in your universe of influence? (Step 1)
• Have you defined your unique positive purpose? (Step 5)
• Do you know what skills and attributes make you credible? (Step 5)
• Have you used active verbs to define the personal impact you desire? (Step 6)

These ideas are fundamental to ensuring that, generally, you have a positive influence on those around you. These techniques both place you in a universe of influence and give you a meaningful orientation within it.

Once the general background is in place, the next step is to identify one specific, clear objective for the colleague in question.

What do you need from them?

Influencing is more specific than simply communicating successfully. To influence well, you need to have a goal in mind. There needs to be a specific purpose.

Are you communicating well?

As you’ll have realised from reading this book, communicating well is a subtle and multifaceted process.

In order to influence a colleague you need to be aware of all communication habits, and make sure that nothing is inhibiting your chances of success.

Begin by listening!

Each colleague will be different. If you listen for long enough you’ll learn what they want and what motivates them. Once you have picked up this information you can use it to nurture the relationship between you.

Water-cooler moments

Small talk matters, it’s the glue that holds relationships together. Make the most of any incidental meeting, at the water cooler or in the lift for instance, to apply a bit more of this glue. Connect with your colleagues when and where you can.

Remember, you’re playing the long game here. By building successful communication over time, you’ll be set up to influence well when you really need to.

Flex your communication style for each colleague

Everybody responds to something different in you. Make sure that you meet them in the way they like to be met.

Equally, you will be responding to something in them. The greatest rapport occurs when you are responding to the same element in each other.

A great way to ensure that you are flexing your communication to meet your stakeholder in the appropriate manner is to match their mood.

Breathe out and put aside your own feelings and emotional energy for a moment and turn on your receptive self. Listen to, look at and feel the emotional state of the person you are communicating with.

Allow their state to affect you; allow yourself to take on a little of their emotional energy and mood. It can help here to subtly match their posture, tone of voice, eye contact and, crucially, breath quality. The breath often indicates the emotion.

This matching establishes a subtle physical and emotional ‘bridge’ between you and them. Once you’re tuned in you can take the conversation in any direction you like.

What are they looking for in you?

• Humour
• Clarity – of thought or intention
• Management – helping them with action planning and targets
• Friendship – equal-status sharing of thoughts and feelings
• Visionary imagination – imagining what could be in the future
• Logical persuasion – facts and data
• Collaboration – searching for joint solutions
• Status – your ability to influence within the organisation
• Coaching – counselling, help with their needs and concerns
• Energy or enthusiasm

There are many potential answers to the above question, but the key is to be attuned to your colleagues.

Unless you are simply managing someone by diktat, then communicating effectively within the parameters of a meaningful relationship is the best way to influence a colleague.

Skill 3

Influencing in a meeting

‘I am ready to disclaim my opinion, even of yesterday, even of 10 minutes ago, because all opinions are relative. One lives in a field of influences, one is influenced by everyone one meets, everything is an exchange of influences, all opinions are derivative. Once you deal a new deck of cards, you’ve got a new deck of cards.’

Peter Brook, theatre and film director

Are you prepared?

What preparation can you do for the meeting? Have you kept up to date with any papers/correspondence leading up to the meeting? Are you clear on your goals and do you already have an idea of the goals of others?

That first question again – ‘What preparation can you do for the meeting? You can only be prepared to a degree. Preparedness must be balanced with ‘aliveness’ – being open and ready to communicate in the moment. Much as a theatre director should avoid marking up a script with blocking and interpretive marks before rehearsal begins, so should you enter a meeting in an open state of mind.

One area that you can prepare is practising your awareness of your own non-verbal influence (as in Step 2).

Work towards feeling comfortable with the following; perhaps focus on one change in your style at each meeting:

• Increase your awareness of your patterns – be they speech or movement, gesture or posture (e.g. do you sit back on your chair in a way that could be perceived as disengaged or do you have a distracting habit of fiddling with a notebook/pen or, even worse, some kind of phone/tablet/laptop?).
• Do you give full focus and attention to the speaker? Don’t worry about trying to ‘show them that you are listening’ – instead simply listen. As you do this, your natural signals will be picked up by the speaker – they will know you are engaged.
• When you are speaking, have you thought about how you can ‘cast your net’? If the meeting is with more than one person, aim to spread your communication out equally. Even if the particular comments are aimed at one individual, involve others through gentle, relaxed but mobile eye contact.
• Consider your level of confidence. Act confidently. Even if you are not feeling on top of the world today, fool your brain into an improved confident state by sitting upright, looking strong, present, receptive and attentive. Look alive.

All of these are areas of preparation. They are things that you can practise and see yourself achieving way in advance of the meeting itself. (For more on confidence refer back to Step 4.)

Is there a relationship?

What do you know? Who do you know?

How would you describe the relationship? Where does it sit on the swingometer between personal and professional?

Is it a first encounter? What can you do to maximise your first impression?

Make sure you work through the short exercise in Step 7, examining the differences between the personal and work versions of you. Perhaps aim for a little more parity, allowing the relationships to be strengthened by letting more of the personal version of you out.

The power to influence is usually best played as ‘the long game’, so see every meeting as an opportunity to really get to know the attendees. Build relationships, build trust.

Are you communicating well?

What do you want them to think, feel, do?

How many times have you been to what you regard as a pointless meeting? So, have a point even if those others attending do not!

Use think, feel, do from Step 6 to clarify the point of the meeting for you. Even if it is as simple as:

think about your position in the team;

feel motivated to improve it;

do take notice of the relationship dynamics in the group.

At least this approach avoids meetings for meetings’ sake.

Cut to the chase

Be prepared to do exactly that. As if you are telling a story, be ready to lose the preamble and cut to the chase scene. Be concise – if you only had one minute, what would the purpose of the meeting boil down to – what is the core?

Highly illogical

Consider also balancing your communication approach for the Kirks and Spocks in the room. Engage them in the way you are learning they like to be engaged. In a first encounter, balance 50:50. It will probably be a little more formal, but be careful not to neuter your personality. Aim to know them and for them to know you.

The weight of the world

In this fast-paced, time-poor world, meetings can be an irritant and stressful. In times of stress it is especially important to keep a check on how this can affect your communication. Learn to take a little more control of how you and your state of mind are perceived.

It is common to see people rubbing their shoulders when tense; a result of holding your shoulders up to protect your neck. Drop them. Sit or stand upright but drop your shoulders.

Breaking that tension cycle will have a pleasing effect upon others as they see you as more relaxed, confident and open.

Next time you have a meeting scheduled (perhaps one you are not looking forward to!), put time aside to work on the ‘presence’ exercises in Step 4.

Skill 4

Influencing senior management

Are you prepared?

You only get the occasional glimpse of senior management, and senior management only get the occasional glimpse of you. These glimpses are where you have the most to gain . . . and lose.

In an instant, people will form an impression of you, and that impression may be lasting, so you’d better make it a good one!

The only way to ensure the impression you have in those glimpses is good is to be prepared.

You need to be perceived as someone with values, integrity and purpose by those senior to you. They are looking for meaningful contributors to the team; members whom they can rely on to energise and motivate others.

Before going any further, make sure that you have all these fundamentals under your belt:

• Have you defined your unique positive purpose? (Step 5)
• Do you know what skills and attributes make you credible? (Step 5)
• Have you written the biography of your skills and strengths? (Step 9)
• Have you worked on your personal pitch? (Step 9)

By bringing your professional self into focus like this, you enable others to see you clearly too. With senior managers only seeing you in short glimpses, it’s essential that they are able instantly to perceive what you stand for and what qualities you possess.

Is there a relationship?

Your relationship with senior managers can be distant, especially if they don’t share the same office space with you every day. If this is the case, then you may need to be more strategic about your influencing.

There will often be people in your office who are senior to you, and it is those people who may be able to provide access to those senior to them.

Have a look at your universe of influence (Step 1) and pick out the most senior colleagues who fall within your inner orbit. Of these, with whom do you have the closest relationships?

You need to identify those who can help you influence deeper into your universe. Build your alliances wisely.

And play the long game (Step 10). It can take years to influence significantly those senior to you. You need to demonstrate your skill, integrity and efficacy over time. Take every opportunity you can to show them how well you can do. Get into the habit of saying ‘yes’ as opposed to shying away and hoping somebody picks up on your concealed brilliance.

Have the courage to show off a little! But be judicious enough to know that less is sometimes more. It’s another fine balance you’re trying to strike.

Are you communicating well?

More than anyone else, senior managers tend to be time poor. There’s no room for waffle. You need to have done most of your thinking before you get in the room with them.

Know your stuff

They’re looking for expertise and knowledge. It’s always an opportunity to demonstrate your value to the team. While this kind of deep preparation takes place over years, there’s still no harm in quickly organising your thoughts and focusing on your core abilities and strengths in the short lift-ride to the office. Make the most of your time.

Be honest

Honesty is essential. People can always tell if you’re blagging! Sometimes it is stronger to say ‘I don’t know, but I’ll find out’ than to make something up to save face. As long as you have values and purpose, the occasional hole in your knowledge isn’t such a big deal.

Trust your expertise and experience to see you through.

Be timely

Pick your moments well. There’s no point in trying to influence someone who hasn’t got the time to listen. Meetings with senior managers may only be called with a specific purpose and agenda in mind and they won’t appreciate you going off piste if time is tight.

Be concise

Get to the point by the quickest route possible. And don’t be afraid of silence; if there’s nothing to say, don’t say anything – waffle is your worst enemy.

Present options and thoughts, don’t ask for solutions

Don’t burden senior managers with more problems to solve; they’ve got enough on their plates already. Present considered options and possible solutions to the issues at hand. Make yourself useful!

Be flexible and ready to collaborate if the chance arises

Again, this calls for you to deploy fine judgement. If the opportunity to collaborate and generate new ideas with senior management presents itself, be prepared to grasp it with both hands. These moments can be few and far between; they’re like rare jewels.

Never switch off from the possibility that a chance might arise.

Embody relaxed aliveness

What you say about yourself non-verbally matters (Step 2). Too little tension and you’ll come across as though you don’t care; too much tension and you’ll appear too anxious and lacking in confidence.

1. Be relaxed, but alive. Be present.
2. Centre your breath.
3. Release your neck and shoulders.
4. Sit alert at the front edge of your chair.
5. Be still and focused.

Skill 5

Influencing a client

Are you prepared?

Whether buying pet supplies on eBay, choosing a hotel using TripAdvisor or a carpenter on Rated People, it’s all about trust. Would you buy a car online from a vendor with zero feedback? Would you risk thousands on the dream honeymoon without researching first?

Trust is more important than ever as it’s we, the customers, who hold much more of the power now. We are wise to sales methods of yesteryear (door-to-door, telesales, spam adverts). Even a sniff of hoodwinking or coercion will have us slamming doors, hanging up or adding to junk folders without a second thought. As the consumer, client or customer we can access that knowledge at our fingertips and now there is no going back. Assessing trust and making purchasing decisions armed with this digital power is the norm for most nowadays. The power to find the best price on, say, flights and hotel or car insurance is no longer the privilege of the holiday salesperson or broker. So, think about how this affects you as supplier and about your relationship with clients, both potential and established.

What is their experience of you?

You should obsess over the customer journey – like we do. The whole journey. This is not to say that you become slave to the client and attend to their every need in a desperate fashion, but ‘them clients’ can be a fickle bunch and because information and choice are powers they happily wield they can drop you pretty easily!

How you shape the customer journey should be underpinned by knowing your core – your positive purpose (as outlined in Step 5). If you define your positive purpose, you’ll find it easier to maintain continuity for the clients. They know what you stand for and what to expect from you. They become familiar with the language you use to talk about yourself and the product/service, and trust that ‘what they see truly is what they get’ . . . YOU!

Remember this is a book requiring action. It’s not a theory, it’s a guide to best practice, so go ahead now and perform the biography and timeline exercise in Step 5. If you can’t do it now, stick it in your diary and underline it as a priority.

Use this exercise as a way of improving every aspect of the customer journey.

Is there a relationship?

As a leading provider of soft-skills training in the UK, we are fully aware that we have to utilise LinkedIn and the like, keep our site up to date and relevant, use social media and stay current, just to keep our heads above water in a saturated market-place. Most of our new clients come through word-of-mouth recommendation. The third party has often laid the groundwork for the relationship; that relationship is built on trust. As an HR manager, you may be reluctant or even terrified at the prospect of switching suppliers for training. There is a risk, a big risk, that you could look very foolish. We always nod to this in our initial conversations, we highlight our understanding of this risk and make it clear that we will do all we can to negate the risk. Indeed, if we are not the provider for you, we will say so.

There it is really: transparency and empathy. Try not to think of a business relationship as too different from that of a friendship or partnership with a loved one.

Balanced approach

Can you improve your understanding of how people want to be communicated with . . . short succinct email/phone calls or face to face for detail? We’re back with Kirk and Spock.

It’s all about balance here:

• Balance of pathos and logos (heart and mind) – build the relationship by understanding the ways they prefer to communicate.
• Balance of extrovert and introvert¹ – avoiding becoming overly assertive.
• Balance of listening and responding – of questioning and stating.

People buy from people. Do they? We tend to buy anonymously online or wrestle with the self-service checkouts in the supermarket. However, we assume here that you have or can have a human-to-human relationship. The human connection can make or break the relationship with the organisation. Understanding your positive purpose and, again, balancing this with the understanding of your client will serve to build the trust and strengthen all of the relationships (you + client, client + organisation, client + product/service, you + product/service). You become your product/service.

Are you communicating well?

Danger, danger! From this day forth vow to be fully aware of your own ‘assumptive behaviour’. In Step 7 we talk of the assumptions we can make when communicating and these assumptions (a guessing game that can have serious ramifications) can steer you onto the wrong path and ruin the client relationship.

Stack what you know about your client up against what you think you know. Stop finishing their sentences for them and focus on the listening and making sure they know you are listening.

Assumptions can include:

• understanding;
• thoughts;
• feelings;
• knowledge;
• context;
• interest;
• humour;
• appropriateness;
• preferences;
• familiarity – friendliness;
• frame of mind.

You may find it helpful when focusing on a particular client relationship to list assumptions that you make when communicating with them.

Time is on your side

‘But I finish their sentences because I know them by now, I know what they are going to say and surely this illustrates how well I know them . . . anyhow it speeds things up!’

Assumptions can often be a false economy. Those seconds you save in finishing sentences for your client (verbalising your assumptions) can lead to frustration if you have indeed made the incorrect assumption. Maybe giving them the opportunity to actually voice their concerns, following through on the process of thought to speech, is good for them. Allow them to speak their mind. Resist the need to rush through, allow space in the conversation, allow moments of stillness, of silence, of consideration.

When you do speak, make sure that you:

• Question to seek out more information on what they want or need from you.
• State with reassurance that everything you do is to meet those wants or needs as best you can.

Lastly, don’t be afraid of questioning. We can often feel that if we ask the wrong question it will expose our lack of knowledge – the knowledge we are expected to have or that our role demands.

Build with care

So, now that you truly understand your client’s needs – are you showing you understand?

To do this, keep the client up to date – be regular and concise. Use the pathos/logos balance – know by now whether they favour the facts/figure details or just top-line progress.

Client relations are delicate. It may take years to build the client relationship. You may be taking over as a representative who is now responsible for that relationship. It only takes one bad experience for the house of cards to fall. That bad experience may be due to your response – a response not designed to serve the needs of the client but to satisfy your need to respond in the moment. So take a breath and wait.

Avoid responding when you should be listening.

¹Discover more about being ambervert (the selling state sitting between extrovert and introvert) from Daniel H. Pink’s Made to Sell.

Skill 6

Influencing in an interview

Are you prepared?

‘Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.’ Never is this truer than with an interview.

There are two types of preparation for an interview: background and foreground. The background preparation you need to do has been widely covered elsewhere in this book (see Steps 5, 7 and 9).

Before going any further make sure you have:

• defined your skills and qualities;
• defined your unique positive purpose;
• written your skills biography.

Without these in place you have only shaky foundations upon which to build. You must know what you stand for before you begin to consider the specifics of the interview. This bigger picture informs the specific interaction of the interview; without this bigger picture your presentation lacks depth.

Once you have these key ideas consolidated, you can move onto foreground preparation – the specifics.

First, make sure you have your personal brand and pitch on the tip of your tongue (Step 9).

Reduce the language

By clarifying your three-sentence pitch and, if possible, reducing your personal brand to a single word, you are not only preparing to sound focused during the interview, you are also telling your mind to concentrate on the essentials. Just like a mantra, the more you repeat it the greater its influence on your thinking and the greater its influence during the interview.

Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse

There is no better preparation for an interview, or a performance of any kind, than live rehearsal.

And that’s the key – the words you say and the movements of your body go together. Your language inhabits your body and infuses it with meaning and purpose.

Make sure you role-play answering potential interview questions out loud and preferably up on your feet. This rehearsed animation will flow through during the interview, even if the interview is static.

Use your imagination

The mind and the body are interwoven and just as the body can lead the mind, so the mind can lead the body. Mental rehearsal is a great preparation tool.

Play the film of the interview in your mind’s eye. Imagine yourself in the interview room, sitting upright in the chair, looking relaxed and easily engaged with your interviewers.

Picture the interviewers asking a question and see yourself taking your time to answer in a calm and thoughtful manner.

Finally, imagine the interviewer asking you a very difficult question – what might that question be? And visualise yourself answering that question intelligently, remaining composed and grounded with your breath connected to your centre.

Revisit and replay this mental film as often as you can in the days leading up to your interview.

Is there a relationship?

An interview is the beginning of a potentially exciting and life-changing relationship.

Imagine the future relationship

As part of your preparation and research you may have begun to imagine working for the company, you have begun to form a possible new relationship in your mind. This imagined relationship is the relationship you want the interviewers to engage with and join you in. We return again to the imagination’s power to inform and shape the future.

Use a timeline extending 10 years into the future to plot your prospective relationship with the company. Fill in as many details as you can – possible achievements, potential relationships, deployment of skills.

Imagining a successful future with the company is the first step to making it happen.

Get off on the right foot

It’s important to make the right impression to set this new relationship off in the right direction. Pulling no punches, it’s important that the interviewers like you and feel that you would get on well with colleagues. That doesn’t mean you have to be an extrovert, or a social dynamo. It’s more subtle than that.

You need to demonstrate sensitivity and flexibility. The ability to adapt and respond to a diverse range of people is what matters.

Show curiosity. At the start of any relationship it is as important for you to find out as much about them as for them to find out about you. Use the interview to gain as much understanding of the company and the role as you can. Your aim is to understand as much as you possibly can.

By shifting your focus slightly from ‘Am I right for this job?’ to ‘Is this job right for me?’, you also ease the pressure of the interview a little.

Are you communicating well?

Be positive

Positivity comes in many forms. You can be interested, curious and keen to learn. You can be informed, expert and driven. You can be bright, responsive and full of ideas. You can be physically present and ‘alive’. Ideally, you can be all these things at once.

However positivity manifests in you, use it.

The way you make people feel matters. If you are sluggish, dour and uninspired then you will make others feel this way too.

Find your spark and use it to ignite the interview.

Listen

Always balance your outward communication with deep listening. By listening with a genuine desire to understand, you demonstrate depth and you open your mind to new possibilities.

Only through listening during an interview does the interview stand any chance of taking flight in an unexpected and positive manner, rather than remaining nothing more than a series of questions and answers.

Be open. Pick up on what you hear. What do the interviewers seem interested in? What makes them tick? Can you find any immediate common ground?

Make sure you are listening, and not pretending to listen in order to show your listening skills! The only listening skill of any worth is the ability to really listen with desire to understand.

Be concise

Don’t waffle. Allow silence. Make your words count.

Be future focused

Use the imagined reality of yourself in the role to frame your conversation. Wherever possible, act and speak as if you are already in the role and performing well.

Start your sentences with

‘I will . . . ’

For example:

‘I will encourage my team of designers to pay greater attention to the client brief.’

As opposed to:

‘I would encourage my team of designers to pay greater attention to the client brief.’

It’s subtle, but it begins to establish a new reality.

Help them understand you

Remember, the interviewees are trying to form an opinion about your suitability for the role, so help them out by giving as much information about yourself as possible.

Use every answer you give to their questions to illustrate something of your working style, your personality or your skills.

Consider your main attributes before you go into the interview room, and use them to frame every answer you give. This will leave the interviewers with a coherent lasting impression of you.

For example:

Interviewer: ‘Tell me about your project management experience?’

Response 1: ‘Well, I’ve managed projects for the past two years both in the publishing industry and in design. The last one I managed was a six-month project for a major high street brand.’

That’s pretty dull and doesn’t really give the interviewer any information about you, only information about the projects you were involved in.

Response 2: ‘For me, the most important element in managing any project is communication. I always communicate regularly with all the stakeholders in the project and ensure I understand their needs up front. Only then will I be able to bring them altogether to get the project done. A recent example of this is . . . ’

This second response is framed with an illustration of who you are and what you do, giving the interviewers an insight into how you would approach the role on offer.

Skill 7

Influencing in a phone call

Are you prepared?

The question really is – is telephone the right medium for this conversation? If it’s unavoidable, prepare using the techniques in this book in the same way you would for other encounters.

As you would for face-to-face meetings, prepare with an appropriate environment. Use a space that will enable you to focus without interruption and think without distraction.

Choose the posture that you think will work for the type of call. In Step 3 we talk about how the smile behind the voice can have a real effect; the same goes for posture. You wouldn’t wheel a bed in to an office and conduct a meeting from the foetal position, all snuggled up, would you?! If you are working from home, shower, have breakfast and dress for the day. Business is business. This simple tenet will do wonders for the work–life balance of homeworkers too.

Plan intention using think, feel, do in the same way you would for a face-to-face meeting, but also remember that this is a conversation, not a lecture or a presentation. Be flexible and allow for two-way flow.

Aim for them to think about your contribution to the call, to feel listened to and to do want to speak to you again because of this experience.

If you have very specific objectives, perhaps even practise the words out loud and allow your whole body to follow. Stand engaged when rehearsing and allow for full congruency – use your hands to gesture, your face to express and your voice to show connection to the objectives. It’s all very well saying you are ‘very excited about this new opportunity’, but does it show in your monotonous delivery?

Is there a relationship?

It is clearly very, very different when you have an existing relationship – you understand each other’s speech patterns, tonality, sense of humour and you can picture the individual in person. See each call as an opportunity to cultivate relationships.

A simple approach to building the relationship is to remember this:

instead of being interesting – be interested.

Are you communicating well?

So are you physically present – in the same way as you would be in a face-to-face meeting? Having clarified your intentions, be ready now to listen to theirs.

Silence is golden

Silence can be ambiguous in a call with the loss of non-verbal acknowledgements, so be in the habit of summarising and voicing understanding. However, don’t get carried away! Appreciate the silence – the space for thought and reflection. Choose to be comfortable with silence, with space.

Cull and void

Cull your unproductive filler language – resist the urge to fill the void. Instead allow the void – the empty space.

Listen not only to the other party but to yourself. Start this today – in the next phone call you have, improve your awareness of just how many times you are talking just for the sake of filling the void.

‘Don’t fear the tumbleweed moment!’

Shift your focus from talking to listening. Increase the efficiency of the call by really listening with a desire to understand.

Next time you have a call coming up (any call, not just the important ones, as this gives you a chance to practise your telephone technique) read over this list and see if you can tick each box:

Before you dial are you clear about what you want from the call?	✓
Are you focusing on just the phone call without distraction (e.g. gadgets)?	✓
Are you avoiding mumbling – using your voice confidently with energy to the end of the line?	✓
Are you ‘alive and present’ in the call like you would be face to face?	✓
Should you perhaps stand and be grounded?	✓
Are you leaving space for the communication to work? (Be comfortable with pauses either from you or them.)	✓

Take note

If you have not already, try this. During the call, organise your thoughts and note theirs. One of the reasons we trample over each other in a phone call is a fear of forgetting to say something we deem important that very second. It can usually wait.

Divide a page and on one side make notes of things you want to say – those important reactions that come to you when the call is in progress and when the other party is speaking. On the other side take notes of what is clearly important to them. This will help you to remember to address these and make them feel truly listened to. Make this a habit. Of course the advantage of having these notes after the call, summarising them, scanning them and referring to them will help make the next chapter of your communication seamless. You’ll pick up where you left off – just like you do with a friend you rarely see. The relationship is being built.

Finally, improvise! As communicators we improvise all day long and generally we’re pretty good at it. We certainly don’t walk around with a script of the conversation we are about to have, so be ready to listen, to accept and build conversation. Even if you disagree over a point you can still aim to give the whole call a yes . . . and feel (Step 8).

Skill 8

Influencing in a crisis

Are you prepared?

Whether you are managing a team, or simply a member of a team, when an unexpected emergency strikes the quality of your preparation will be put to the test.

Of course, the nature of an unexpected event means you can’t necessarily be prepared for its occurrence.

The key to surviving a crisis is to have your groundwork in place, both by building relationships within your team and by learning how best to manage your own stress.

Use phases of calm – when it’s business as usual – to nurture relationships with colleagues. If you are in management your team need to trust you, they need to feel safe in the knowledge that if the going gets tough they could rely on your support and navigation.

Furthermore, you need to feel safe in the knowledge that if the going gets tough you could both support yourself emotionally and rely upon yourself to provide direction.

This is where all your work on your personal biography, skills biography and connection to your authentic self comes into play (Step 9).

You need to:

• Be authentic: listen to yourself and pay attention to your own feelings; communicate with your team from these genuine feelings. You are your primary resource.
• Reflect upon and trust your own experience: your personal story and skills biography is an essential tool. You can only draw upon your own experience, so make sure you bring it to the fore.
• Consider your team: they are your secondary resource. In times of business as usual, reflect upon your team; in a crisis, each one of them will be looking for something different from you to help them through. Who can you rely on? Who has personal resilience? Who will need help handling the pressure? Who will need focusing? Who should you leave to their own devices?

Manage your own stress

Know yourself. Know where you find support, and make sure that in a crisis you lean on those bases.

To have a positive influence, you need to stay centred and balanced. If you are reeling out of control, your influence will only be unsettling to others.

Make sure you do the basics: eat well, sleep well, breathe well . . . and switch off the email after work.

If it’s ruining your health, it’s just not worth it.

Is there a relationship?

Without some level of trust in your workplace relationships, it will be very hard to wield significant influence in a time of crisis. This trust takes time to build, which is an important reminder: influencing is not a series of quick fixes, it is a long-term activity requiring personal commitment and investment. This long-term investment builds a big reservoir of trust.

In the most difficult moments, as a manager, it is important to be present, to engage with your staff. Do not disappear into your bunker, do not close down. Stay open.

Show concern. Check in with people. Communicate. Ask them what help they need to help them through. It may be as simple as providing free breakfast at work during the week.

All these little things add up. During times of greatest stress, you need to listen with closer attention than usual to the unique needs of each colleague. You need to tune into the emotional state of your staff, and act as a lightning rod to diffuse any excess charge.

Here are a few good ways to diffuse an emotional charge:

• humour – allow laughter;
• getting to the root of the issue, talking it out;
• providing perspective – it’s never the end of the world;
• giving clear direction;
• listening;
• reminding your team of the common goal;
• taking responsibility for the issue at hand, thereby easing the pressure on your team.

The good news is, not only does a crisis test your workplace relationships to the maximum, it also provides an opportunity to form new and lasting relationships quickly. Relationships forged in the full heat of the furnace can be the strongest, so make sure you capitalise on these opportunities when they arise.

Are you communicating well?

Communicate, communicate, communicate.

If you’re not communicating in a crisis, you’re not being influential. In fact, you run the risk of things going seriously off the rails.

Your team will be looking for clear direction, so provide it. Providing a daily focus for the team is sometimes more important than the focus itself for holding things together. If the direction proves to be the wrong one, you can always change it.

Establishing a secure holding state enables staff to continue to function while a permanent solution is found.

Be clear and decisive

Offer clear direction and decisive action as soon as it is possible to do so and be generous with the information that you have. Nothing breeds distrust faster than people feeling in the dark or, even worse, disregarded.

Don’t put up a front

People can tell if you’re faking it.

If you’re swirling in inner panic, it’s better to take a few moments to regain your composure, to connect with your centred breath (Step 4), than to put on a brave face. Otherwise the cracks will appear and this deep anxiety will infect the rest of your team.

Conversely, as long as your centre is calm, and you fundamentally trust yourself, there’s no harm in showing a little agitation or anxiety. If anything, this will reassure your staff as they see that their feelings of stress are normal under the circumstances and that it’s possible to function effectively, perhaps even more effectively than usual, despite them.

Finally, smile when you can – it shows everyone you’re coping!

Skill 9

Influencing in a presentation

‘The most important thing for me is that it wasn’t boring’

Are you prepared?

Hunching over your laptop, creating a sparkly PowerPoint is not working on your presentation. It’s a tool that you may choose to use to assist you in delivering your message.

Get up on your feet and speak out loud. Learn to appear comfortable with being uncomfortable. Presenting demands a degree of performance energy. This is not to say that you should adopt a different personality, wear a costume and act, but we don’t want to be bored! It’s you but it’s the performer in you. The performance is genuine, it’s natural, it’s you through and through. So, get up on your feet and speak the words out loud.

‘Readiness is all.’

Sage advice from Shakespeare’s Hamlet

Presentations are fantastic opportunities to flex your influencing skills.

You must decide upon intention for every part of the presentation and if you have planned and rehearsed well enough it should be seen as an invigorating and exciting communication.

On our presentation skills training programme ‘Art of Presenting’, which has been delivered to thousands of staff at all levels in all sectors, we give great focus to intention. The feedback since 2006 has nearly always been that the presenter learns to focus on intention rather than worrying about their nerves and how those nerves show themselves in front of an audience. Instead of something to fear, presenting then becomes an experience to enjoy.

Presenting/public speaking can indeed be very stressful. We worry about a great deal of things (many of which are beyond our control) but if we define our intentions then not only is this the key to dynamic, focused and interesting presentations but also the key to creating the presentation content.

At the planning stages of your presentation, begin with intention and work through the ‘active verb’ approach as detailed in Step 6. As you decide upon the changes in intention, the presentation almost writes itself. If you are reviewing an existing presentation and cannot decide upon the underlying verb (the effect you want to have on the audience) then perhaps it needs cutting.

At every stage of your presentation you must decide what you want your audience to think, to feel, to do.

Consider this

A troupe of actors decide upon a play to perform in six weeks’ time. The play is cast and the date is set. ‘See you in six weeks then at 7:00 pm!’

Oh dear. The play has been written and the venue organised. The tickets have been sold and the audience are eagerly anticipating the performance.

But what about the rehearsal? Ridiculous isn’t it. It is never enough to read through your notes on the train heading to the presentation.

So get up on your feet and rehearse!

Now that you have created the content by deciding upon intentions, try out the language. As you stand and move and speak, all should work together congruently. Intention informs delivery – all else will follow. Allow yourself to have an experience of performing.

And remember, we don’t want to watch you rehearsing. Build your sense of confidence by getting the mistakes out in the rehearsal phase. This is what all professional performers do, no matter what the discipline.

Is there a relationship?

Presenting is two-way. It is not a lecture, it is a conversation.

‘At a recent presentation to 40 + people I gave up on the slide show, finding that they restricted my train of thought and didn’t deliver what I sensed the audience were expecting. I went off-piste, much to my colleagues worry, and talked directly from my experience and related that to theirs. The mood in the room changed dramatically and the engagement became much more rewarding. The Q&A more constructive.’

Slides and handouts can kill the presenter–audience relationship. As you become more experienced and confortable with presenting you should aim to cultivate the relationship by ‘relating’. Establish a connection with the audience.

Are you communicating well?

Use the multitude of techniques from Part 1 and see presenting as an opportunity to try them out. Pause now and refer to Step 3. To improve and perfect your influencing when presenting take any opportunity you can to get up in front of an audience. Really try out each of the techniques and skills talked about in the earlier part of this book and see what works for you.

‘Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature.’

Shakespeare’s Hamlet giving advice to the court performers

What do I do with my hands?

Are you ‘comforting’ yourself – maybe we as an audience are not interested in watching you comfort yourself. Many inexperienced presenters fall into the trap of using repeated gestures and non-verbal habits to simply make themselves feel more secure in this nerve-racking scenario.

Make certain that:

• you are not performing patterns – physical or vocal;
• you are not ‘hands in pockets’ purely because you find it comforting;
• you are not exhibiting signs of wanting to escape – shrinking away or speeding up.

Skill 10

Influencing from the front (as leader)

Are you prepared?

Your entire life up until the point when you are called upon to lead is your preparation to be a leader.

No matter how early on in your career you are thrust into leadership, your experience is invaluable to you. Your experience, to that point, is yours and yours alone – and the lessons you have taken from it are yours too. Trust your experience. Trust your thoughts and feelings. Trust yourself – you have been asked to lead for a reason: you are ready for it.

Broad awareness

To be a successful, influential leader you first need to develop a broad awareness. It is part of your responsibility to hold the bigger picture, and its many permutations, in your mind. The more you reflect, the fewer blind spots you will have.

Refresh your universe of influence (Step 1).

Consider these areas:

• the company or organisation – its purpose and aims;
• the organisation’s performance in the past five years;
• the company staff structure;
• the core company processes;
• key relationships, both those with you and those between others;
• the individual members of staff;
• yourself – your thoughts, your feelings, your ambitions, your strengths and weaknesses. Crucially, consider your work relationships – where can they be improved?

Be focused

By defining your positive purpose, your personal brand and your one-word slogan (Step 9), you not only build clarity of purpose into your thoughts and actions, you enable others to perceive you clearly as well.

By bringing your meaning into focus, you bring yourself into focus for others.

You will avoid blurred edges and present a sharply defined image to your staff and colleagues. This clear purpose will imbue your actions and interactions with an unshakable meaningfulness, and a leader’s actions always have meaning. As a leader, every step you take in front of your colleagues is read for meaning. Make sure it’s the meaning you want.

Common goal

Once you have set out your own purpose, the next step is to use it to motivate your team around a common goal.

The strength of your personal convictions has the power to get your team all pulling together, and in the same direction. However, the real power lies in uniting your staff around a set of shared goals or principles. For your staff to take responsibility and be proactive in the fulfilment of these goals they need to play a part in creating them.

Avoid imposing your thinking too firmly; instead allow the team to find its common purpose under your watchful guidance.

It is your job to ensure that gradually, over time, the team coalesces around a meaningful, shared purpose.

Is there a relationship?

As a leader, and an influencer, people are what matter. It is, after all, people you are leading. Not projects, not data, not work flows, not plans. People. Without people to lead, you are not a leader.

Place people, and relationships, at the centre of your leadership. If a relationship breaks down, you lose your power to influence and lead. This is the greatest challenge of leadership; you need to develop the flexibility and empathetic skills to identify with and communicate with a wide range of people, some of whom will be very different from you.

As a leader it is your responsibility to put your personal preferences to one side and adapt in order to make difficult relationships work. This doesn’t mean compromising your principles, or letting others’ set the agenda; it means having the self-awareness to know when you may be allowing your personal response to someone to interfere with your professional duty. And your professional duty requires that you find a way to connect.

People will follow you because they want to.

Personality

The most effective leaders allow their personality to shine through.

Richard Branson is a great example of an influential leader who allows himself to have fun in front of his staff and colleagues. He lets the more animated side of himself burst through on regular occasions, sharing his humour and charisma with his team. This, in turn, frees them to do the same, to invest themselves more fully in their work and work life.

Be genuine, authentic and interested in the people in your team; look to connect on a personal level where you can. The best leaders are fascinated by people, by what drives them, motivates them and brings the best performance from them.

Everybody you lead is an opportunity to learn.

Collaborate

The ability to collaborate and to get others to collaborate is a great leadership skill. As a leader you set the tone for your team, and by demonstrating the will and desire to collaborate you engender collaboration in others.

Your attitude, habits and behaviour form those of your team. Your team is made in your image.

Are you communicating well?

Embody confident ease

The most effective modern leaders not only embody confidence and purpose, they also embody ease. They take their time, and will not be rushed or pressured by anyone. They have the confidence to stick to their own agenda.

Indeed, the leader of the free world, Barack Obama – surely a man working under more pressure than anyone else on the planet – is a master of confident ease. His body is relaxed and centred at all times; and when the stakes are high, and his work is urgent, this urgency flows naturally through him rather than tangling him up in nerves and tension.

Ensure that you are communicating from a fully expanded physicality, with a centred breath and open voice (see Steps 2, 3 and 4).

Great leaders listen well

Listening is the key to understanding others; and the more you understand the people you lead, the more influential you become.

Make sure you create one-to-one opportunities to listen to your staff face to face, but also gently eavesdrop! Have your ears, eyes and awareness open wide and stay tuned in to the emotional tone of your workforce.

Monitor your impact

As leader you have the greatest impact and, therefore, you need to have the greatest awareness of your impact.

Every conversation you have will impact upon the person you have it with. What may seem a passing remark to you, could have a resounding impact on them.

You are significant.

Monitor your impact carefully and constantly recalibrate it to ensure you’re making the right impression. Use your active verbs! (Step 6.)

Lead by example

Finally, lead by example.

Like a parent with a child, you model the behaviour you wish to see in others.

If you fly off the handle with rage, or drown in nerves, or look miserable at work, then you sap the energy and enthusiasm of others. If you aren’t up for the day ahead, why should they be?

By employing all the leadership skills in this step, you will be setting a good example to your staff, but it’s essential to remember the personal influence you wield simply by holding the position you hold.

Make it count.