Influencing is the ability to affect the behavior of others in a particular direction, using key tactics to connect and inspire. A successful leader needs to know how to communicate effectively to obtain desired results.
Influence training can help leaders in your company better interact with team members, other staff, and authority figures. It allows individuals to hone their methods of communication to achieve better results when interacting with others. Creating and maintaining healthy business relationships is key to achieving overall success. By training such skills, they can have access to the tips and tools necessary to succeed.
What Are Key Skills for Influencing?
There are several skills that are beneficial for influencing. Many of them build over time and require a certain level of experience and charisma. Influencing is all about the ability to connect on the right level. It is knowing when to push and when to pull back. Influence training can help develop and master different skills. While there are many to learn, knowing your organization, building trust, and promoting yourself and your team are the most valuable.
Knowing How to Communicate Within Your Organization
There are a few key skills that are beneficial to master to better influence others. One of these skills involves organizational intelligence. To put it simply, this is the ability to understand and adapt your communication style, depending on who you are communicating with. Any organization has a formal structure that is the set goal of how the company should operate and the informal structure of how things usually work. Influencing on this level requires the charisma and savvy of a politician. The ability to adapt and communicate differently depending on who you are speaking with can be used constructively to advance the overall aim of the conversation.
Knowing how to communicate with different levels of authority can increase networking potential. As a company, you want to have as much outreach as possible. Whether this is attracting new clients or building your vendor options, a person with social standing, aka credibility, will have a better chance of influencing others. A large factor in this skill is thinking before responding.
Negotiating can get frustrating, and no leader likes the feeling of being challenged. A great influencer will take the time necessary to step back and think before responding. This allows time to focus less on the emotion of the response and more time on the logic of it. This allows a leader to think about what the concern is, who has it, what options are available, and how there can be a mutual benefit.
A successful influencer will use skills such as looking for non-verbal cues to gauge how interaction is going. Non-verbal cues can signal that the conversation is going well or if the approach needs to be reconsidered. This also involves the ability to participate in active listening. You won’t be able to influence someone who doesn’t feel heard. Acknowledging their position and responding in an attentive matter can quickly change the direction of the conversation, often for the better. Influencing involves the ability to appeal to common goals and benefits. A successful leader has to do more than command. They also must show the ability to understand and change if the situation would benefit from it. Ending on a note of working together and finding common ground can leave a good impression. Good impressions further help to build an individual’s credibility.
Building Trust
Leaders in your company should be trusted. Without trust, this leaves decision-makers in the role of having to force compliance. This can hurt the true potential of the team, closing doors on commitment, capability, and creativity. A leader has to do more than direct; they also need to know to whom they should show understanding and support. They should also inspire others in the company to do more. This requires the ability to factor in the emotions of other individuals involved in different projects. A successful, influential leader will know how to balance between pushing people into new areas while being mindful of their concerns and feedback. This inspires growth but allows for comfort. Influence training will help show individuals ways to build their credibility and trust within their organization.
What Should I Expect From Training?
Influence training helps leaders in your company understand the best way to communicate effectively. This communication is key when dealing with customers, coworkers, and other leaders in the company. A great leader is adaptable and understands the power of their approach and word choice. Influence training often consists of:
- Building credibility. This can take time to do, but training will give you the tips and tools to speed this process up. It largely depends on your ability and willingness to stick to your bottom line, communicate effectively, and produce results that are beneficial to all parties involved.
- Engage emotions. It is important to understand emotion when trying to influence others. We are naturally geared towards making decisions based on emotion and then follow that decision with logic. Influence training helps leaders learn their own emotional responses, as well as how to deal with the emotional responses of others.
- Use logic. Once emotions can be gauged, this allows room to focus more on the logic of the situation. This includes the ability to influence others to see that a specific approach makes the most sense for major goals.
- Facilitate action. Action is a critical part of influencing others. Action must follow agreements that have been reached. This can include getting agreements in writing and ensuring any new policy or approach is followed.
Start Your Influence Training Today
A successful leader needs to know how to successfully influence others. This helps to keep projects moving and ensures everyone can find a way to work together. Shapiro Negotiations Institute offers a course in Influence and Persuasion Training. This can help the leaders of your company improve their success, which ultimately improves the success of the entire company. Contact us today to learn more or to sign up for our highly popular course.
