10 Ways to Gain Influence
If leadership is influence then dominance and coercion aren’t leading.
Police have rightful authority to control. Relying on power, authority, or position, makes you look like a cop writing speeding tickets.
Danger:
Dominant leaders achieve compliance at the expense of loyally, inspiration, and innovation.
If you want to lead, increase your influence.
Approval:
Increasing your influence means gaining permission to lead.
Influence requires approval.
People want to join with others and make a difference in the world. In short, they want to be led. But, if the led don’t consent to your leadership, command and control are your only options.
When leadership is influence, those you lead give permission to your leadership. They aren’t forced.
Understanding:
People are influenced by those who understand them. Permission to lead is given by those who feel known, appreciated, affirmed, and respected. When people feel you understand their talents, drives, hopes, and fears you earn their consent to lead.
Approving of others helps them
approve of your leadership.
Challenge:
Criticism and correction diminish influence
when it feels like disapproval.
Three reasons influential leaders criticize or correct:
- Correction is always for the benefit of the person being corrected.
- Criticism improves their ability to make positive difference within the organization.
- Capability to achieve a shared mission is enhanced.
10 Essentials of influence:
- Clearly stating what you want.
- Ask questions of others.
- Invite questions from others.
- Openness to the influence of others.
- Work together toward shared goals.
- Authenticity.
- Relationship building.
- Ask for suggestions, advice, and input.
- Make the case and giving reasons.
- Align shared values.
What can you add to the 10 essentials of gain influence?
I am intrigued by your “clearly stating what you want.” That can backfire if you are in a position of authority… it can stifle creativity. However, when leaders have something that they clearly want and don’t share… until after the creativity, that’s a big problem too. This one is a balancing act.
Hi Karin, I was taking a stab at the problem of people feeling manipulated because leaders aren’t up-front with their real intention. Perhaps a way to keep the door open to creativity is to clearly state the goal and leave the process of how to get there open to others. Thanks for adding value.
Another way to approach it is by clearly stating the criteria…what conditions must a successful solution satisfy. That makes the playing field very clear and encourages creativity by introducing some constraints. As Dan said, the real important thing is transparency and to avoid games.
That is a great ‘warning sign’ of the leadership tendency to micromanage, Karin, good point. And to Dan’s follow up, the staff doing the work know best ‘how’ to deliver it and there loads of creative ways to do that. If the manager/leader is ‘micro’ing the how, then there are problems.
Thanks Dan. On a general note, I appreciate your timing for distribution. It gives me as the reader the opportunity to start my day with fuel for a positive mind set.
Thanks!
Thanks for the feedback, Paul.
Great post!, agreed @Paul.
Keep me in mind when you’re in North Texas.
Thanks Ventrell, will do.
Dan – Just wanted you to know how valuable, even essential, your blog is becoming to several of us at Global University. Being a missionary institution that trains ministers around the world, we are staffed largely by ministers and missionaries with little or no real leadership training (not to mention academicians with even less experience). Your blog is emerging as the source of training that is so needed here. We have organized weekly discussion groups around the blog’s content. “Thanks” is a weak understatement! Randy J. Hedlun, D.Th. Dean, Berean School of the Bible Global University
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Wow! Thanks for taking a moment to share such an encouraging comment. My initial education is theological in nature. My deepest regret about that education is it lacked any leadership training. I’m familiar with Springfield. Perhaps one day our paths will cross. Best!
No pressure there Dan! 😉 What an honor!!
Hi Dan,
I love the fact that as leaders we can learn to lead with permission as we influence those we lead.
In addition we can also be deliberate about allowing those we lead to influence us.
I am recently thinking of ways to lead challenging and difficult people effectively. It is good because I feel like my leadership skills are being strengthened.
Blogs like yours Dan empowers me to reflect and question my leadership practices.
Again thankful,
Kel
Hi Kel,
Glad to see you again. Thanks for your contribution. Sharing your personal journey encourages me and I’m sure others.
I hadn’t thought about leading difficult people but I can see where things like asking for and/or earning consent is essential.
Cheers,
Dan
Great stuff – I especially like the opening. It makes it very concrete what it looks like to be a “leader” who tries to lead from positional power instead of influence.
Another way I’ve heard it described is: leveraging power to get things done as a leader is like using a battery. Sometimes you have to, and it can work. But if that’s all you use, you’ll drain the battery and have no “power” left (I would envision this as a leader who loses credibility once everyone sees that he/she has no real leadership, just a position of authority).
Thanks for sharing!
Love the battery illustration. I think every leader understands what it feels like to get drained or run down. Influence is about inspiration. A team of inspired participants energizes. It doesn’t drain.
Thanks for adding your insights.
Dan,
This statement stuck out to me :
” Permission to lead is given by those who feel known, appreciated, affirmed, and respected. ”
This is a principle that I have used to work with individual contractors. I never made the connection that they were giving me permission to lead. But because I made sure each contractor understood that I respected and appreciated them, they allowed me to lead.
Thank you for connecting that dot for me. This was very insightful.
Dadrian,
You remind me that permission to lead can be explicit or implicit, usually it’s the latter. We don’t go around overtly asking for permission to lead, although that may be appropriate, especially where tough situations or tough people are involved.
Thanks for your contribution.
Thank you for facilitating these conversations. I would add, who trust you to the “permission to lead” statement.
Thanks for chiming in and sharing your insight.
Along with “relationship building,” I always recommend “Truly caring about them as people as well as their goals and aspirations.” Far too many managers see employees as a means to an end rather than trying to inspire and motivate them.
Great add! Some of the top leadership thinkers are talking more and more about humane organizations and treating people as human beings. Cheers.
The 10 essentials of influence list is absolutely right.
Dan –
I have been playing with workplace improvement stuff for the past 30 (sometimes it seems like 30 million…) years and if there is one word that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up, you hit it on the head with the word, “compliance.”
I can think of nothing worse than that for a workplace (other than raw punishment) because it gives the appearance of things being okay, while everyone knows that it is NOT. The customer suffers, people go through the motions to do the minimally acceptable amount of work, the peer pressure holds down the better performers, and people muddle.
The workplace offers few rewards of any kind. But the Manager simply continues on, safely and securely, since that individual will meet the goals.
Ugh.
Love your rants Dr. Scott! Thanks for your experienced insights.
Dear Dan,
Very inspiring post Loved reading the meaningful & concluding thoughts to practse leadership of influence Liked your bold statement, ‘Dominant leaders achieve compliance at the expense of loyalty, inspiration and innovation’.
Too good for inspiring many potential leaders to practise right things to attain the desired success with a strong team of followers. The collective efforts of a charged, motivated staff can produce wonderful resuts for everyone to be proud of.
Thank you for the good word Dr. Asher. I notice you picked up on the “compliance” statement that Dr. Scott keyed on.
Perhaps, coerced compliance is the short-term way to get things done…but over the long-term earning the right to be followed works best.
LOVE THIS!!! 🙂
Thanks Jaime!
“Criticism…diminish influence when it feels like disapproval”–while this is similar to beauty is in the eye of beholder, a savvy leader picks up early on the EI elements of a mis-perceived feeling of disapproval. How this message is delivered is important as well.
Wonder if it could even be one of those early leadership conversations about how to best give/receive feedback? How each person effectively deals with/responds to feedback/criticism can be (should be?) individualized.
Actually, I’ve been considering going through this with my own staff. We are a government organisation with a lot of procedures which have to be followed in certain ways.
Different staff respond differently when given feedback and instructions so I’ve been considering sitting down with them and asking their preference for getting this information as well as training updates.
Some staff roll their eyes at meetings / group “mini-training” sessions while others absorb information this way, BTW I’m talking about base level non-qualified level one staff with direct customer contact, not university qualified people.
Thanks for all your comments, encouragements, and contributions today, Doc.
You make me think about the usefulness of personality and temperament analysis tools. Reading the DiSC profile of employees…no studying it, helps us understand people better…. just as an example.
Wow! Now that I live in Saskatoon, SK, there are a whole lot more comments than when I lived in northern Ontario! The benefits of a 2 hour time difference.
Great Post Dan. Sometime last month, i was planning an event, a Creativity night where we get to showcase our God Given creativity and there was also a Stage Drama. What i did was to first get the Theme for the day from God and i relayed it to everybody. Which agrees with the No 1. Point up there. When everybody knows what the team must achieve. Suggestions keep flowing in and my job became editing them all and making sure they aligned with the Theme of the day. So no offence if anyone’s idea gets booted. The reason is clear – It doesn’t align with what we want.
Another thing i learnt is the power of delegating authority not just duty. That way the delegates become influential to the team because of the authority they now command and they owe it all to you. So you also gain more influence when you delegate authority.
Finally, build a reputation for achieving your goals, both short and long term goals. Plan effectively, involve people in the execution and achieve your goals. Success makes everyone feel good and that will only translate to influence when everyone on the team was involved in achieving the said goals.
Thanks for this platform Dan, you have been of help massively. God bless you. I hope i have been of help.
Good article. I am currently going through a very tough time, I was hired to take over and lead, I beleive I influence and my team wants me to lead, I deleveloped a unique long term plan they and others love. It was desperately needed as we once had 90% market share and are currently at 10%. I was even given $ 1 miilion to make my plan happen ( long story). Things were moving in that direction and my hopes were very high. But the current CEO, who said he was retiring, but not really, rules by extreme dominance and coercian. He manipulated others and threathend my future. If this were a private company, I would simply move on.
Your article hits so much to home.
Reblogged this on Gary Rohrmayer and commented:
The Best 300 words on Influence I have read in a long time!
I enjoyed reading your post. I fully agree that leadership is through influence not through intimidation.
“If leadership is influence then dominance and coercion aren’t leading.” Brilliant statement Dan.
If leaders were to communicate with their team as if they were all volunteers that could be influenced but not coerced, magic could happen.