How to influence your way

Hello dear reader,

I’ve been looking at the photos of the wild and wonderful (and downright bizarre) Met Gala outfits. My son has been informing me of major beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar and that the outcome has meant the charts are full of their songs.  Sometimes it seems that in order to have influence we’ve got to be outlandish or outrageous.

For no reason other than the fun of it, here’s one of the Met Gala outfits. Make of it what you will. 

But what if we need to influence others, but are neither of those things?

One of *the most common* questions I am asked when leading sessions is, 

How do I influence others?

This is especially asked by people in leadership positions who recognise that their strengths lie in executing, relationship building, or strategic thinking rather than the traditional influencing strengths. 

Should you try and become more like other people? More outgoing, more talkative, more competitive, more self-assured, more commanding? Well, moments in time might call for such strengths. But trying to lead or trying to influence in a way that is not natural, not comfortable to you for any protracted period of time will not work. 

You’ll feel awkward and uncomfortable and so will others. 

It’s like borrowing someone else’s clothes: they might look good to begin with but if they just don’t fit us we can feel it, and so can other people. When we try to do things that don’t feel authentic to us, the majority of the time, people can smell it a mile off. 

So, the good news is, that you don’t need to become someone else in order to be able to influence other people. 

And that’s not just my opinion, it’s backed up by some pretty hefty research from Gallup. For their book, Strengths Based Leadership, they commissioned research into whether certain strengths were necessary in order to have a key position of influence - as in, they wanted to answer the question: Did all the most successful CEOs have the really obviously influential personalities? 

No, friends, they do not. 

And from that, we can conclude, that you can use your very personality in order to have influence. You can lead others, bring about change anduse your voice in a way that works for you. 

There’s another key aspect about influence that doesn’t revolve around us. It’s all about the person we are trying to influence. This often gets forgotten in our fixation with trying to do a better job of leading and influencing. But this is a crucial aspect to influence and leadership and if we can get it right we will definitely be a more successful leader of others. It’s quite straightforward, yet takes a lifetime to work out. What are the strengths, preferences or personality of the person you are hoping to influence? Who are they, what do they bring, and what do they need? We ignore this at our peril - we might get short term gains but in the long run we will lose the commitment of the people around us if we make it all about us. 

In this week’s podcast we delve into this idea in a lot more detail. I give you some key strategies to help you grow your influence in a way that works for you. 

I look at:

1. The four key characteristics that all leaders need to embody in order to be effective in their influence for the long haul (and no, its not networking or persuasion)

2. Why all great leaders and influencers know who they are, and who they are not

3. What it looks like to cultivate influence according to our strengths and personality 

4. Why we don’t need to be everything, and the power of team

5. A better way of looking at the phrase “target assessment” which sounds like an assassination attempt to me.

This episode will leave you with a greater confidence in who you are and your ability to lead and influence authentically. It will give you the courage to be you, but even better, and how to use that self-awareness effectively. It will help you see that we can all influence and we can do it in our own way. It will equip you with a greater understanding of why 

The key to successful leadership and influence? I couldn’t put it better than Gallup do in their book, Strengths-Based Leadership. 

Know yourself. Know the people around you. Then get on with it.

Hope you enjoy this week’s pod, if you do, will you tell someone? We’d love to see the podcast grow in its audience and you, my dear friends are the way that will happen!

I’d also love to hear what you think of it. Join the conversation on social media.

Until next week, 

Hannah x