More influencing styles - all popular!
- Personal appeal -I draw on their loyalty or friendship.
- Ingratiation - I flatter them, pay them compliments, butter them up.
- Exchange - I do something for them in return, bribe them.
- Pressure - I get tough, demand action, use threats, coerce them.
- Legitimacy - I claim my rights, use my authority, cite the rules.
- Coalitions - I gang up on them, get my pals on side, get political.
- Packaging - I get liberal with the truth, exaggerate the upside.
- Sulk - I pretend to be hurt or offended until I get sympathy.
- Withdraw favours - I ignore them, cut them off, until they crack.
- These influence styles reduce to three...
1. Be demanding!
- Push people and you get short term gains and long term losses.
- Pressure gets immediate action but damages your credibility.
- The more fearful you make people the less useful they will be to you.
- Force is just one way of failing.
- Force only works when you are there to ENFORCE.
- Hence your influence is limited to those you can see.
- Force means regressing to childhood tactics.
- Who can look up to a child?
2. Using reason to get your way
- Works with disinterested or neutral parties because they have nothing at stake.
- Reason is still pushy --- you're trying to change someone else's mind.
- The more they have at stake in their position, the more you can be sure that reason will fail.
- Reason is one-way communication, amounting to "telling" or "selling".
- Asking people to "be reasonable" means asking them to see it your way.
- Pure reasoning sticks strictly to facts and logic, stressing organizational benefits.
- Reason becomes a bit more engaging when your arguments point out benefits to the other party.
- Reason, of course, often works but don't limit yourself to this influence tactic only.
3. Involving others
- This is the best approach, time permitting.
- Real involvement means seeking mutual gains.
- Start by trying to understand the other party's needs and interests.
- The key to influencing through involvement is to ask questions. Do more asking than telling and selling.
- Develop joint solutions with people rather than "reasoning" with them.
- Full involvement generates the highest level of commitment.
- Agreements are then negotiated rather than sold or imposed.
- Involvement builds mutual respect and greater trust.
- Involvement is harder work than pushing, telling and selling.
- Full involvement is as rare as full maturity - it takes emotional intelligence.
- More directive approaches only work when commitment is not important (when is that?
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