Part 3
10 influencing challenges in action
Challenge 1 How do I influence without ‘treading on people’s toes’?
Challenge 2 How do I influence a diverse team?
Challenge 3 How do I turn around a failing presentation?
Challenge 4 How do I influence when there is conflict in my team?
Challenge 5 How do I influence someone who’s senior to me whom I never meet?
Challenge 6 How do I influence someone reluctant to shift?
Challenge 7 How do I remain credible at all times?
Challenge 8 How do I ensure my influence has the required impact?
Challenge 9 How do I influence when I’m under pressure?
Challenge 10 How do I ensure I influence positively?
Challenge 1
How do I influence without ‘treading on people’s toes’?
If we are to think for a moment about actually ‘treading on people’s toes’ then in order to do this we must be moving. Simply put, before moving forward with your idea you must stand still.
You must imagine what it is like to tread in other people’s shoes to avoid treading on them. The key here is understanding their position, and this includes a full understanding of their barriers and the reasons for their possible opposition.
The mistake is to be overly assertive and ignore the position of others. It is not enough just to listen to their standpoint and then trample over it. They need to know that you really get their point of view.
Tips to treading carefully
Listen up
‘I hear you, I hear you!’
‘Yes, but are you listening?’
They are different. We hear all the time and we tune out. Listening goes one step further. Instead of working your way through your own thoughts, pay attention to the other party. You don’t need to do anything to show them you are listening – just listen. Once you are sure they have had the full opportunity to voice their position you can gently reflect this back by summarising and showing understanding.
Acknowledge
When communicating with someone who is clearly in an opposing position, it can be difficult to acknowledge their position, especially if you passionately disagree. This is perhaps because we fear the other party will see our nodding and positive affirmative language as ‘agreeing with them’. Free yourself from this worry by making the clear distinction between ‘acknowledging’ and ‘agreeing’. Focus on letting them know that you have heard and understood their position. Their toes will be safe from harm and they will be more likely to afford you the same opportunity.
Challenge 2
How do I influence a diverse team?
All teams are diverse. There’s no escaping the fact that everybody is different, no matter how subtle those differences appear to be; and you wouldn’t want it any other way.
Very often, the strength of a team lies in its diversity.
Of course some teams instantly appear more diverse than others, especially if you’re on the lookout for the diversity big hitters:
- ethnic
- cultural
- religious
- gender
- sexuality.
While these strands of diversity need to be noted and tended to, it’s a mistake to assume that as long as you’re ticking those boxes you’re doing all you can. In fact, as individuals, we aren’t necessarily defined by any of those common diversity badges.
And, as an influencer, what could be more ridiculous than planning a specific approach for ‘all British Caucasian males’ or ‘all Afro-Caribbean Christian females’?
Fundamentally, the greatest indicators of diversity and difference lie at the level of the individual. As soon as you’re applying any group identities, you’re limiting your awareness of genuine, subtle difference.
Tips to influence a diverse team
Treat everyone as an individual
If this sounds obvious, that’s because it is. But it’s so easy to forget. The only way to truly influence anyone is to understand them first.
Everybody is different. The more you can learn about what makes a person tick, what inspires them and what they need, the greater your potential for having an impact.
It’s also important to understand their relationship to the team dynamic. For some, being part of a team is stressful, while others thrive on being a member of a vibrant, energetic group. Remember that no team is complete without this range of personalities; none is necessarily any better than another.
The key is to develop the team to ensure that it caters for everyone.
Keep the team in check
A team will develop a personality of its own, often led by those with the strongest personalities within the group. For example, you may have a very noisy, talkative team or, conversely, a silent team, reluctant to share information.
Watch out for these currents and work to challenge them. The prevailing culture of a team can dominate, causing individuals to behave in a way that doesn’t suit them and doesn’t help anyone. Individuals become trampled under the feet of the stampeding team.
Keep your ‘group think’ antennae switched on, and when you feel that a course of action is being pursued purely because the historic team dynamic dictates, that’s the time to offer an alternative.
Unify under a common goal
As well as being made up of various unique individuals, each with their own experience, opinions and needs, a team, by definition, also inhabits a common ground and is formed around a shared goal.
If the diversity within the team is threatening to tear the team to pieces, you need to redirect people’s focus and energy to the common goal.
The common goal is the unifying force. Define it and keep it in mind at all times.
Challenge 3
How do I turn around a failing presentation?
Clearly, seeing as public speaking is up there with death as a major human fear, it is understandable that a presentation that is failing can be an excruciating nightmare for both presenter and audience. You’ve thoroughly planned your presentation but now, with all eyes on you, something is not going to plan.
Where does this fear originate from and why does it fill us with such a strong sense of dread? Being exposed as failing in front of an audience in this way we fear the threat to our status and, on a primal level, being ostracised from our social group. This, of course, will not happen. Know this.
We put ourselves under immense pressure to be funny, entertaining, dynamic, professional, all-knowing. . . no wonder. So stop there and give yourself a break.
We as an audience expect the ‘professional’ bit, but not for you to wow us with all the other qualities. These will come with time.
Professionals get it wrong too. If you can bear it, look up film director Michael Bay’s anxiety-driven flee from the stage during a press conference. You can’t help but feel sorry for him, it could happen to anyone. As we watch this we almost feel what he is feeling. We can take from this the certainty that your audience wants you to succeed, rather than feel your failure.
In both sections on presenting in this book (Step 4 and Skill 9), we continually emphasise the need to prepare and rehearse. The preparation and rehearsal, though, is not specific to a single presentation, it comes from developing your skill as a communicator over months and years; taking any opportunity you can to stand up and be heard. So instead of shying away, seek out and embrace any chance to flex this muscle because when it does go wrong (and it will), experience will get you through.
When you are rehearsing, think of it as developing flexibility and not rigidity. We never want to hear you read your presentation (learnt or not) word for word. If the presentation is a framework, and the structure in which pretty much anything can happen is flexible, then really it can’t go wrong.
Tips to keeping a presentation alive
Come back to earth
Work through the earlier exercises on breath and physical grounding to become your own personal expert and saviour in times of stress. Pause, remember where you are and why. Slow it down and return to a sense of physical neutrality: two feet firmly planted on the ground, hip-width apart. Refocus on your breath, low and deep, and drop your shoulders.
If you use notes, write in little reminders on breath and physicality.
Be empathetic, not neurotic
How do you know the presentation is failing? Is it because you are focusing on the glassy stare from a single member of the audience? Are you reading into this signal and others as evidence of boredom or confusion, and therefore convincing yourself in that moment that the presentation is failing?
Recast your net over the audience; widen your focus to include those at the periphery too. You prepared well and you understand your positive purpose, and the presentation is fuelled by the active verbs that inspired the writing in the first place. Return to these and, with an awareness of the audience, inject life into each new section. Turn this feeling around and see it as a change of gear. Focus on your message.
Return to the core
If you’ve prepared thoroughly, you’ll know what the key message of your presentation is. You’ll be able to sum it up in one sentence.
Now is the time to use it! If you’re lost or have been thrown off course, reorientate and take control of your message again.
Challenge 4
How do I influence when there is conflict in my team?
At its simplest level, conflict is a breakdown of communication between two people. Your job is to reconnect those people, to bridge the gap that has emerged between them and that they are struggling to bridge for themselves.
If we imagine communication as a flow of both ideas and feelings between people, a breakdown in communication often occurs when the flow of feelings clogs up the flow of ideas.
Anger, irritation, jealousy, anxiety, fear, resentment – the list goes on – once negative feeling has accumulated it forms a barrier that must be broken down before meaningful communication can recommence.
Tips for resolving conflict
Listen and clarify understanding
Conflict is where your listening skills come to the fore. Listen to each participant in the conflict, with your sole desire being to understand their point of view.
Do not seek to change their mind, offer an alternative opinion or assert your view. Unless people feel heard and understood, they will not be prepared to change their behaviour.
Once you’ve listened, you must then check your understanding by summarising what you believe they have said and asking if that is correct. For example:
‘As I understand it you are annoyed because the extra work you did on the last project was not appreciated so now you don’t feel like meeting the high expectations of your manager? Is that correct?’
Then allow yourself to be guided to a more nuanced understanding until you are both satisfied that the situation is comprehended.
Diffuse emotion and create neutral space
Simply by listening and understanding you will diffuse some of the tension and negative feeling, which will begin to create a neutral space for fresh connection to occur in.
All new communication requires open space to flourish. Communication occurs in the space between people.
In a conflict, there is often no intellectual or emotional space between the participants. They are butting their heads together!
By first diffusing the emotion, you create a sliver of room to manoeuvre. Next, you can begin to unpick the intellectual conflict.
Where are they differing in their thinking?
By doing this you will also notice areas of shared thought and tiny strands of possible collaboration that, later, can be woven together.
It also helps to hold any conversations about the conflict in a physically neutral space, so use an office that is free from either participant’s baggage.
Create space to get the good feeling flowing again.
Mediate and collaborate
Having understood the conflict to the best of your ability, the next step is to bring the participants together and mediate between them.
By mediating you are making a deliberate intervention, with the purpose being to bring about reconciliation.
Here’s how:
- Describe the situation as objectively as possible, stating the positions of each participant as you perceive them. Make sure that everyone agrees with this description – you’re already establishing common ground!
- Then, clearly state that the aim is to achieve reconciliation and find a way forward together. Again, gain agreement with this objective.
- Allow each participant to air their views using non-accusatory language. The best way to do this is to ask them to use ‘I’ statements, for example: ‘I feel that I can’t approach you to discuss my workload.’ As opposed to ‘you’ statements, for example: ‘You are unapproachable and you never have any time to listen to my difficulty with the workload.’ You can see how ‘you’ statements are provocative!
- Look to build collaboration by generating ideas chains. In improvisation, the cardinal sin is to block your fellow improviser. Blocking occurs when you continually say no to your partner’s ideas. Eventually, your partner becomes angry or gives up. Once the initial emotion has been diffused in a conflict, begin to unblock the communication by encouraging participants to build on each other’s ideas. ‘Yes, and. . . ’ is a simple but powerful phrase. Ask the participants to listen to each other and respond by building on each other’s ideas using ‘yes. . . and’. For example: ‘Perhaps we could schedule a biweekly meeting to talk about the work flow?’ ‘Yes and we could hold it in this neutral office.’ Subtle changes in conversational habits, such as this, can have a long-lasting, transformative impact.
Refocus on the task at hand
The fact is, at work there is a job to be done. The demands of the project are paramount.
If all else fails, remind the participants in the conflict that there is a shared responsibility to get the job done.
Assert the needs of the project.
Focus on the facts.
Focus on the task.
Remind them of this shared challenge, and unite them in striving to achieve it.
Challenge 5
How do I influence someone who’s senior to me whom I never meet?
Tricky, but not impossible. Perhaps because you never actually meet you’ll never have a direct influence on them, but you can try!
Find out everything you can about them. Take opportunities to join working groups, attend seminars and networking meetings where you’ll be mixing with the person’s colleagues. Hopefully in this way you’ll at least have the opportunity to meet these colleagues, and, with the right preparation, impress with your vibrant working personality, attitude and ideas. Fellow workers should always be able to put a name to a face that you can approach.
Remember to play the long game and build alliances; identify those in your spheres who can help you with your influencing need and gain strength from this.
Tips to influencing ‘big’
Read up
Knowledge is key here. Know all you can about the person you want to influence and their journey through the organisation. Consider where your need to influence fits into the bigger picture of the organisation.
Work 360°
Plan and continually refine your strategy to have an influence up, down and across the organisation. Strength comes in numbers. Select those who get the job done – if you can get them on board and being vocal it can do wonders. Once they are on board, work with them and meet regularly to check your strategy is paying off!
Connect
Consider how you can use LinkedIn/Twitter (or internal systems) – if you can connect on these platforms and others you can plan a strategy of awareness. You can use focused social networking to select interesting and useful articles and posts, thereby reinforcing your connection and increasing the chance of coming under their radar. Learn all you can about digital networking. Read Adam Gray’s Brilliant Social Media to improve your skills in this area.
Challenge 6
How do I influence someone reluctant to shift?
Most people don’t enjoy change. Change can be perceived as a threat as it generates uncertainty about the future.
Humans are creatures of habit, and habits provide a sense of safety. How many times have you heard the phrase ‘But we’ve always done it this way’? It’s the cry of someone desperately clinging to the status quo, sometimes with good reason but at other times simply because they’re not feeling good about change.
Tips to encourage someone to shift
Understand their reluctance
As with all influencing situations, understanding is essential. Their reluctance to move could manifest in a variety of behaviours: silence, anger, confrontation, vocal disagreement, rebellion.
You must look beyond the behaviour to the underlying emotion and empathise. Empathy with feelings of anxiety and fear about change is the only way to get things moving.
Having understood the deep-seated emotional response, you can then move on to understanding the finer detail of their reluctance.
What specifically do they dislike about the proposed changes? Once you get them communicating, you’re on your way.
Ask open questions
If you go in too hard when someone is digging in their heels, you risk forcing them even further into their rut.
Direct challenges put people on the defensive, so try to avoid asking ‘why’ questions to begin with; for example:
- ‘Why should we keep the existing system?’ could be perceived as a demand for them to justify their ideas.
Instead, probe with open questions to gently encourage their position to soften; for example:
- ‘What do you like about the current system?’
- ‘What improvements would you suggest?’
Paint possible futures
When you’re asking someone to change a particular behaviour, or change a working practice, it’s essential to provide a new future for them to move in to.
More than likely, if they are very unconvinced about a particular change, they will, in their imagination, have created a negative future. In this future, all the good things about the old system will have been lost, they will feel powerless and nothing will work as well as it once did.
You need to counteract this negative vision by providing a convincing positive potential future.
Place your reluctant colleague at the heart of this future by using ‘we’ and ‘you’.
For example:
‘We will be able to produce the same results much more quickly and you will find your personal day-to-day workload reduced by about 25 per cent. This means you will have more time to spend on developing the business.’
Persuading someone to change first their feelings, then their opinion and finally their behaviour can be a slow process. But never forget, everyone is malleable and able to change in the end, no matter how much they say they don’t want to.
You have to play the long game!
Challenge 7
How do I remain credible at all times?
Do you believe yourself? Are you invested in your influencing need? Have you lost your way a little and become uncertain of your ‘cred’ (slang)?
Stop and return to the need. Decide in no uncertain terms why there is this need to influence and why you are the one to push it forward.
If you’ve carried out the exercises in Step 5, then you know that:
Credibility = Positive purpose + Skills + Qualities
and you are well on your way to moving from shaky to solid ground. From this ground, consider that when you communicate, any subconscious wavering of beliefs will show in the non-verbal cues you display. Much stress will manifest from feeling that you are not being entirely truthful in terms of either knowledge or belief. Therefore, having clarified your positive purpose, you must understand:
To get a grip on this, try not to ask yourself too many questions but perhaps start with:
What is driving the need?
Tips to remaining credible
Pay attention to yourself
Notice when you are feeling on shaky ground in terms of belief or knowledge. Do your homework and truly know your stuff.
Be congruent
Aim to communicate in a state of ‘relaxed aliveness’. You are calm, you are grounded, your breath is centred and you are believable. Tension in the voice or body does not get in the way of your message. Your voice and body (all the non-verbal aspects of communication) work together – congruently. Body language works in clusters, so your tone of voice must not contradict your stance or your facial expression. If you are purposefully connected to ‘the need’ and in the relaxed state then all of this will tend to happen naturally.
It’s your story
Trust yourself. Remember your personal experience is valid.
Tell your story. Follow your instincts. You know more than you imagine.
Challenge 8
How do I ensure my influence has the required impact?
Throughout this book we have talked constantly about making the most of your personal impact, but it’s worth repeating a few key ideas. If you take nothing more from this book, these ideas will ensure you make a good impression.
Tips to ensure your influence has impact
Everyone always has an impact
There is no avoiding making an impact. Even if you make no choices and take no control of your personal impact, you will still have one.
Even if you opt to lock yourself in your office and avoid all direct communication with other people, you will still have an impact.
Work always requires interaction with others, even if you’re just sending an email, therefore there is simply no way of avoiding making some kind of impact on someone.
Given this, you may as well make a choice. Decide what you would like your impact on others to be.
For example, if you’re feeling a bit irritable, and you have only one moment of communication with a colleague during that day, unless you have consciously decided to have a different impact you are likely to pass on your irritability, or even worse lead them to believe you are irritated with them!
For professional interactions, always consciously consider your impact.
Be specific
In Step 6 we suggested using active verbs to clarify your intention and impact. Use them! They focus your mind and body on a single, specific impact. Before a meeting, a pitch, a presentation, an interview or even just a conversation, choose a verb.
For example, do you want to make your colleague feel. . .
informed, excited, challenged, calmed, relieved, inspired, motivated, reassured or tickled?
Get a dictionary and expand your verb vocabulary; the more you have at your fingertips the finer your influencing skills will become.
Listen
Listening is probably the primary influencing skill. By remembering to listen to others you don’t become domineering and accidentally negate the chance of making the positive impact you desire.
If people don’t listen, it’s all that is remembered about them. It puts people’s noses out of joint, it rubs people up the wrong way, it closes people down. Not listening is not good enough.
Listening ensures you retain the right to make your impact.
Let it go
Finally, let it go. There’s only so much you can do. You can’t control what other people think or feel about you. You can only influence it, so once you have prepared properly and practised your communication you then need to relax a little.
You need drive, purpose and impact, but you also need ease, balance and flexibility.
It’s yin and yang. One supports, and regulates, the other.
Challenge 9
How do I influence when I’m under pressure?
What is the source of the pressure? Is it time? Do you need sign-off from a client on a project? Do you have your boss breathing down your neck? Do you need to get buy-in from team members to meet a deadline?
How is this pressure affecting you? If it is really starting to stress you out and have a physical/emotional effect on you, stop. More haste, less speed.
Take a moment to work out just how you will either deal with the pressure and soldier on, or how you can delegate or use your relationships to help you out. You should at this point be aware of Robert Cialdini’s law of reciprocity – look him up, he’s everywhere!
The simple question to ask yourself is ‘Do you have any favours owed?’. Have you helped someone out in the past (have you allowed another to influence you) and now they feel obliged to help you? With influencing you must always think to the future and work to cultivate relationships where reciprocity is the norm. Then the next time you are under pressure there will be a valve to let some of that pressure off.
Tips for influencing under pressure
Give in
When you can, allow yourself to be influenced. Be seen and known to be flexible and agreeable. This can help build alliances and relationships that you can call upon should the need arise.
Go large
Otherwise known as ‘door in the face’, this can be particularly useful when under pressure. Increase the desired outcome from your influencing need. This way, when you scale down the outcome and the demands on those involved they’ll be more open and willing to accommodate. For example:
You say you need the reports in by the end of the week but actually the end of the month will do; you need 15 images Photoshopped for your presentation tomorrow but actually five will do; you want to take the whole of June off but actually two weeks will be fine!
Stay centred
Return to your centred breath. It will stabilise you and ease away the panic.
Make centred breathing a lifetime habit!
Challenge 10
How do I ensure I influence positively?
This question, perhaps, encapsulates the entire purpose of this book.
We agree that we have an influence, for better or for worse, so here are the guiding principles to ensure that it is positive.
Tips for influencing positively
Right feeling
In any influencing situation, the person with the strongest emotional state defines the feeling of the communication. The way you feel has a more influential effect on others than what you say or do.
Work on your feelings. If you are aware that you have negative feelings towards a particular person or meeting, make sure that you have talked them through with somebody independent beforehand. You have to create a bit of space around them.
Self-reflection is vital. If you aren’t feeling right about something, then you must get to the root of it.
Seek to begin any influencing communication in a positive emotional state.
Right intention
All behaviour begins with intention.
It is very hard to behave in one way while intending something else, and if you do try it you run the risk of alienating people as they will sense that you don’t quite mean what you say.
People pick up on your intention, so clarify it before you attempt to influence and always be positive! Positive intention is vastly more powerful than negative when you want others to follow your lead.
By stating your intention positively you give people cues as to how you want them to behave, as opposed to criticising them for how they are behaving.
For example, consider the difference between:
To point out the mistakes in current sales practice.
And, more positively:
To inspire staff to use the new sales system.
By unifying your intention and your actions you harness your power to influence.
Right thought
Clarity and thoroughness of thought demonstrate depth of engagement and intelligence. The clearer and more developed your thinking on any issue, the greater your chances of influencing others.
Make sure you give time to thinking things through before you seek to influence!
Be purposeful
Have a positive purpose that informs your work. All the most influential people are purposeful. Without purpose you are adrift, constantly responding to the shifting currents.
Anchor yourself with an underlying purpose at all times.
Having a purpose gives you clarity and enables others to see you clearly.
Tune in
As always, listen, listen, listen.
Close down your broadcast speakers and switch on your receptive antennae.
The only way to influence is to understand, and the only way to understand is to tune in to the thoughts and feelings of others.
This is a habit that can be developed, so start now.
Right action
What you do comes as a result of what you think, feel and intend. Your actions are the external expression of your internal world. If you perfect these three elements, right action will follow.
By right action we mean action that is congruent with your purpose, and is based on a deep sensitivity to and understanding of others. It is the culmination of all the preceding points in this list.
Your actions always influence others; people observe you and read into your actions, they form as much of an impression of who you are by watching how you behave as they do through direct communication with you.
Prepare properly and allow that preparation to flow through your actions.
Right communication
Right communication is everything. To communicate is to influence.