Influencing Skills: How to influence people

The issue of how to influence people often comes up when we are coaching our executive clients, with many people wanting to learn how to be more influential without knowing exactly what they mean by it.

Our usual approach is to find out what ‘being more influential’ looks, sounds and feels like to our clients; in other words, how will they know they are influencing others and being more persuasive?  Only then can we guide them further on how to influence people.  The reason is that the same term or set of words can have different meanings depending on the context or the culture in which the executive operates and we have to understand what influence means within that organisation.

Generally speaking, what our clients are talking about is their ability to guide the decision-making processes, gain allies and motivate people to behave in a particular way.

Once this is broken down into specific items or goals to be achieved, we work with our clients to develop a strategy – whether it’s for presenting effectively in a board meeting, gaining the support of their peers, persuading their teams of a particular course of action or not being walked over by a more dominant personality at work.

For executives, the challenge of being more influential can make or break their future career and so is a sensitive issue to talk about in public.  If this has been identified as a development need in an appraisal, executive coaching is an option well worth considering because training and development can be carried out in a private setting.

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