Extending Your Influencing Strategies

19th October, 2011 - Posted by bethcurl - No Comments

Would you like to be more influential in more situations?

Most of us have a few favourite influencing tactics and we may not be aware that there are a whole range of other strategies that we could use.  About 15 years into my working life, I did the Hay Influencing Strategies Exercise and realised that there were two  strategies, Organisational Awareness and Relationship Building that that I wasn’t using enough. So from that point on I started networking and raised my profile and awareness of what was going on in the organisation. When I started my own learning and development consultancy I quickly realised all sales were based on developing a good relationship, so that the client could trust me and know that I would meet their needs and deliver high quality learning programmes.

On a recent Communicating to Influence Course, we did some work on Influencing Strategies. As  a group of  scientists they were already very good at Logical Persuasion and some of the other strategies, so they worked on the strategies they needed to develop, and here are some of the tips they came up with.

Common Vision

• Have a common goal
• Remind people of the vision and the end result you are aiming for
• Build pride in your team about the work you do in group metings
• Be forward thinking
• All for one and one for all

Relationship Building

• Take an interest in others and build rapport
• Get to know the people you work with
• Make time for sincere chat, when you don’t need people to do things for you
• Help others
• Networking
• Follow-up with people after meeting them
• Seek to build a relationship with people who have similar roles

Organisational Awareness

• Use organisation chart to find out who is in charge
• Find out who is influential
• Build up alliances
• Get the support of key decision makers
• Find out who are the people taking decisions, sometimes regardless of the organisation chart
• Organisation of department you are working with

Bargaining

• Reciprocation
• Understand the other person’s position
• Try to get a win win outcome
• Make sure the exchange will be at similar value levels
• Reward people for helping
• Aim to meet everyone’s needs

Coercion- taking a firm line and using  authority

Coercion is the term Hay use – I prefer to say taking a firm line and using  authority!

• Use for emergency or time dependent tasks
• Use for emergency or time dependent tasks
• Give clear deadlines
• Defined tasks
• Clear Expectation Management
• Let people know the consequences of not complying
• Useful in a crisis

I hope you find some of these tips useful and if you would like to know more about Influencing Strategies, the Hay Influencing Strategies Exercise is a good self-development tool.  At Skills2Grow we run a Powerful Persuasion Workshop, so do contact us to express your interest.