You and your team are smart. You know some pretty important stuff. Without you, projects fall over, objectives are not achieved and the business wouldn’t be as competitive as it currently is.
This may be your view and you may well be justified in it.
But let’s take the view of your stakeholders. They obviously find your work useful. But just how influential do they think you and your team are?
Do they follow your advice? Do they involve you early? Or do they bring you in when its too late to do your best work, leaving you frustrated?
Being brought in too late on a project means you lose your autonomy and ability to scope your own work. You are left responding to a runaway train of a brief. And you have the recurring thought, ‘yes, but I wouldn’t have started from here.’
This is a vicious cycle.
You have been forced to deliver work which doesn’t contribute to the project as it could have. You are not given the chance to showcase the difference you can make when you are given free rein to make your strongest contribution.
It can be frustrating for the team when you’re not able to do your best work because you’ve not been involved in the right way.
General Counsel, Sydney
The four essentials of becoming more influential are:
- Building Relationships
- Positioning
- Communication
- Problem Solving
My upcoming articles will go through these four essentials in detail.
You can also jump onto my free webinar here. It’s on Thursday 11 April! In the webinar, I will dive more deeply into the problems and solutions of influence. But in the meantime…
Building Relationships
Business is People. If you want anything to happen you need to influence others through your relationships. In those relationships you need to be able to communicate that you can empower others and that they can trust you. You need them to open up to you so that you can see how you might best help them.
Positioning
Could it be that your stakeholders have a different view of what your role is than you do? Might you see your role as more strategic or more advisory yet they see your role as inputting knowledge? If so, you have a chance to put that right. Decide who you are as a team and what you are there for (have a look at my last article on purpose for more). This should then dictate what work you do and what work you don’t do. It will also guide how you work with others. Positioning is something you do – if you consistently demonstrate your positioning and it’s value to others, they will begin to work with you as you would want them to.
Problem Solving
Nobody wants to work with nay-sayers for a minute longer than necessary. Perhaps your role includes spotting risk, so you often get painted with the nay-sayer brush. Well, your role also gives you the chance to spot opportunity. If your team opens up opportunities for others and solves problems, your team will be more than welcome at the decision-making table.
Communication
Our brains are very full and the constant stream of information makes it difficult to take in all that is being said. I’m sure you want to be influential and communicate in a way that people can easily absorb and respond to. Be clear, concise, relevant and interesting. Remove padding from around your genius ideas so they can be seen more clearly.
Try These 4 Steps To Increase Your Influence
- Assess how influential your team is right now. Then detail the benefits of becoming more influential to you individually and as a team.
- Consider how focussed you are on the 4 Essentials – Building Relationships, Positioning, Communication and Problem Solving.
- Register for my free webinar here. Be quick because it’s on Thursday 11 April at 11:30am AEST. Even if you can’t attend live, you can still receive the resources to help you start your journey to having more impact in your organisation.
- Let me know in the comments below your greatest obstacles to making an impact in your organisation and industry.
