Influence With A Mission – Featured On The Straits Times (29 Dec 2016)
Influence With A Mission
Adopt the correct mindsets to be an effective and successful influencer
During my speaking and training engagement, one question that I regularly posed to all participants is: Do you influence because it is your job or do you influence with a mission? Influencing because it is your job is not going to take you very far.
But if we shift our mindset to influencing with a mission, we will walk and run the extra miles because it’s exciting and it’s worth it. At the end of the day, even if we did not get what we want, but the journey would have given us a lot of learning and wisdom when handling people, which would made us an even better influencer.
There are three mindsets to adopt when it comes to building and harnessing the power of influence.
THE TILT MINDSET
An effective influencer with this mindset is not concerned about winning one battle, but having the victory of the war in mind. Such Influencer are not worried if they can’t get the people to go in their desired direction, but they stay consistent in finding ways and approaches to bring the message to them – the attitude of influencing with a mission.
They know that the mission is not an overnight success. Even when they do win the day, they know that the success today is about laying the foundation for future attempts to influence others. What you do today impact your possibilities tomorrow.
THE ‘NEED, HAVE, WANT’ MINDSET
Great influencer understands the differences. They take time out to plan and think about what people really want. Influence requires preparation, and this separates the great influencers from the average.
Most of the time, we spent too much time arguing about what each person needs or has among scarcity of resources. But I have come to realize what people eventually want differ from what they thought they needed.
There is a story about two people fighting for the same budget. Person A requires a particular solution, and he insists on using the budget to make a new purchase. Person B insists that the money needs to be used to upgrade a current solution – only to realize that the solution is never about money, but getting the expertise of people in the company to create a simple tweak that can serve both parties. It was never about the money.
You would be surprised how often people don’t know what they want. Do you?
BE CONSISTENT BUT FLEXIBLE MINDSET
Consistency is one of the biggest currencies in the world. People lose faith in a leader when they sense he is not consistent. This goes the same for the influencer. When what you say and do is not consistent, you are projecting a message that people can afford to trust your word because you are going to change your mind soon anyway.
Great influencer stay consistent in their goal and direction, but remain flexible about the ways they can use to get there. They can modify the course but never change the target. Consistency is in line with credibility. When you are aligned in such a manner, your credibility will soar!
Great influencer adopts the TILT mindset, knowing that there is always another day to influence even if they don’t succeed today. They take the time to map out what people want versus what they perceive to need or have.
Most importantly, effective influencer never changes their goal but flexible enough to use other routes to get there. This increases their credibility over time which is a key to building influence.
Article by:
Joseph Wong, the behavioral transformation coach and leadership influence expert of TrainingGearAsia Pte Ltd. He is an author and thought-provoking professional speaker and master trainer on topics of influence, leadership and change motivation at work. Email him at influence@traininggearasia.com
