The ability to influence people is crucial in your career, everyday life, management and leadership. When being interviewed for a position, you use influence to demonstrate you are the best candidate for the job or as a parent the crucial influence to your child. You use influence with clients to convince them that you can deliver better than the competition and as a parent that you influence your values and beliefs to your children.
Influencing people
So influence is changing someone’s behaviour. It is making an impact in a situation where you would not ordinarily have much control. It is a way of doing something rather than sitting back and deciding that there is nothing you can do.
Influencing others is something we learn very early in life and if you have children you know this well. But as we grow older we sometimes do not realise that our potential to influence through our challenges and experiences are huge.
There are several ways to influence – it can be through logical persuasion which is presenting the facts which often includes emphasising the positive benefits of a course of action. This is often used as a parent or when talking through issues with a team at work.
It can be through “consulting” which is a fancy word for advice-seeking. You use consultation when you know what you want to do, but request input on how to do it. Consultation works because when someone provides input, they become more committed to the idea.
As a result of influencing people at home or work it will give you the ability to build up your self-confidence. The more experience you have acting as an “influencer” the easier it will be for you. As with any experience it is never easy at first as you will need to make decisions and face challenges, but it can become natural and rewarding.
Gill Mathias
01530 589216