While influence has always been a valuable managerial skill, today's highly collaborative organisations make it essential. Consider how often you have to influence people who don't even report to you in order to accomplish your objectives. Success depends on your ability to effectively influence both your direct reports and the people over whom you have no direct authority.
Have you ever thought about how you influence others? The
tactics you use? We are all aware that people use different influencing
tactics, but did you realise that we each naturally default to the same tactics
every time? Or that the tactics we default to are also the ones to which we are
most receptive when being influenced?
It is these preferred tactics that define our influencing
style. Analysing the different
influencing tactics, researchers have identified up to nine primary influencing
tactics. In our quest to further understand personal influencing styles, we
did additional research to build on the existing knowledge base. From our
research, we've identified five distinct influencing styles: rationalising,
asserting, negotiating, inspiring, and bridging.
You may have an idea what your style is just from hearing
these labels, but the most accurate way to identify your style is with an
influence style indicator — a self-scoring assessment that classifies your
style based on answers to questions about preferred influencing tactics. But
even without the indicator, here are some questions you can ask yourself to
begin to understand your style:
Rationalising: Do
you use logic, facts, and reasoning to present your ideas? Do you leverage your
facts, logic, expertise, and experience to persuade others?
Asserting: Do you
rely on your personal confidence, rules, law, and authority to influence
others? Do you insist that your ideas are heard and considered, even when
others disagree? Do you challenge the ideas of others when they don't agree
with yours? Do you debate with or pressure others to get them to see your point
of view?
Negotiating: Do
you look for compromises and make concessions in order to reach an outcome that
satisfies your greater interest? Do you make trade-offs and exchanges in order
to meet your larger interests? If necessary, will you delay the discussion
until a more opportune time?
Inspiring: Do you
encourage others toward your position by communicating a sense of shared
mission and exciting possibility? Do you use inspirational appeals, stories,
and metaphors to encourage a shared sense of purpose?
Bridging: Do you
attempt to influence outcomes by uniting or connecting with others? Do you rely
on reciprocity, engaging superior support, consultation, building coalitions,
and using personal relationships to get people to agree with your position?
While answering these questions, take your style a step
further. How often does it work for you? Are you more successful with certain
types of people? Have you ever wondered why? Since there are five different
influencing styles, using only your preferred style has the potential to
undermine your influence with as many as four out of five people.
Gaining awareness about our own influencing style and those
of others is especially critical in light of todays fast-paced and stressful
work environments, and here's why: When
we are operating unconsciously out of a preference (our style) and not seeing
the results we expect, we actually have the tendency to intensify our preferred
behaviour — even when it's not working!
If your individual success depends on gaining the cooperation
of people over whom you have no direct authority, this should concern you. The
way to begin to increase your odds of influencing more people is to learn to
recognise and use each of the five styles.
Becoming aware that there are influencing styles other than
yours is a good start. To further increase your influence, you must learn what
each style sounds like when it's being used effectively and ineffectively.
Gaining this awareness will help you recognise when the style you're using
isn't working and how to determine one that will.
What's your influencing style? And what are you going to do
about it?
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