All of us do some form of “selling” to others in our personal and professional capacity, be it a product or service offering to our clients, to proposing an idea to bosses. I use the term “selling” loosely here, to mean a range of situations where we need to convince others to see our point of view.

When it comes to influencing others, we usually get cold responses like:

- “We don’t need that”

- “Let me think about it”

- “What’s In It For Me?”

- “No budget?” or

- “No Priority”

… and the list goes on.

Too often, we might be quick to prescribe solutions instead of understanding the real objections of those we’re trying to convince. Just imagine a visit to the doctor, who without diagnosing the patient’s problems, begins to prescribe the medications. How might the patient feel? 

If you’ve read the previous thought piece on stakeholder engagement, it's crucial to follow up that strategy with these practical steps of effectively influencing the people you’ve identified.

WAYS TO INFLUENCE OTHERS

Influence is the power of a person, directed in a compelling force, to produce effects on the actions, behaviours and opinions of others. An influential person can influence his colleagues to eat healthily, be on time for work, or change certain behaviours.

1. Adopting Power Bases to Get Things Done

There’re two power bases that we can adopt to influence others to get things done. The effectiveness of usage is dependent on the appropriateness of the power base selected for different situations.

Position power stems from the authority you have from your formal job title and every position comes with the power to get things done for the organisation. Naturally, a CEO has the highest position power apart from the chairman.

There are various sources of position power. These include:

1. Legitimate power - authority that’s derived from the position or role held in the organisation 
2. Reward/punishment power - ability to offer credible rewards for desired outcomes 
3. Coercive power - ability to use punishments, penalties or threats to force others into doing things
4. Connection power - connections or support from other influential members inside or outside the organisation

The other form of power base comes from personal power; the informal influence that a person has, which includes:

1. Expert power - high level of knowledge or specialised skills that other members do not posses
2. Referent power - ability to gain respect and admiration of others by treating others fairly and defending their interests
3. Connection power - connections or support from other influential members inside or outside the organisation (This power base is also a position power.)
4. Information power - access to, or possesses information that’s valuable

At the end of the day, which power base would you choose to leverage?

In my opinion, influencing others with position power not only gets a sustained positive response but also a quality one as well. Position power lasts as long as a person holds a particular position. It vanishes as soon as one relinquishes the position; whereas personal power remains with a person indefinitely.

Having said that, there’re exceptions for the use of position power that may involve crises and emergency situations, recalcitrant reports who are not changing undesired behaviours or continually underperform, among others reasons.

2. Practical Steps to Increase Your Power Bases

As we climb the corporate ladder, our position power goes up corresponding. We may find others getting things done for us more than before, subject to the legitimacy the position offers. However, the excessive use of position power may not only result in employee disengagement but also produce unsustainable outcomes.

What can we do to still stay in “power”? Here are some ideas:

1. We can raise our expert power by mastering a certain occupational skills that are needed at the workplace. People trust experts and act on their advice.
2. Attending networking sessions is one way to increase our connection power. There’s a lot of truth in the saying, “it’s not what you know but who you know that matters”.  It’s always advantageous for us to know the key people in our trade and industry, to facilitate us getting things done. Internally, it often pays off to know people from cross functional areas. The connection forged with them would certainly make things easier for us to accomplish what we set out to achieve.
3. Having updated and key information also places us in an influential position to impact and shape others’ opinions and behaviours. Without information, who would be convinced by what we have to say? Information from surveys, research, observations and experiments are just some of the many ways we can increase our information power.  An increase in this power base inadvertently leads to an increase in our expert power base as well, since expertise stems from the practice of knowledge that is deduced from information.

You can get things from others by "selling" or influencing. The former is often met with cold resistance from people, though you may find occasional success in your attempts. Influencing however, produces higher success rates in getting others to give you want you want.

Therefore, the use of power bases is instrumental to influencing others. The various sources of personal power, combined with appropriate use of position power, provides us with greater and more sustainable outcomes in the long-term.

Book a slot with our consultants to get advice on some key influencing strategies to get what you want from others. Its a free 15 minutes enquiry. We would love to have the opportunity to connect with you!