7 Strategies to Influence and Improve Effectiveness
Some people are naturally gifted in their ability to influence others. Most of us have to work at it. Whether you manage people or need to sell a product/service or idea, understanding the art and science of influencing others can definitely help your effectiveness. To help build your influence skills, consider applying one or more of these relatively simple strategies.
Keep in mind that in order for these strategies to be effective, you need to learn them well enough to be able to carry out them seamlessly as well as automatically or subconsciously. That’s the “art” part to influencing others. It’s not easy and it takes discipline to know how and when to apply a particular strategy. Like any skill, it’s important to practice with intention, to experiment, to get feedback and to continue to work on even as you become an “expert”.
Consider this. When you first learned to drive, you probably struggled to do anything but drive the car. Now you can talk to passengers, listen to music, navigate, etc. without even thinking about driving the car–you learned to drive automatically or subconsciously while you consciously attend to other tasks.
In many ways, learning to use the strategies below automatically is easier than driving a car. And once you’ve mastered the art you’ll stand head and shoulders above most others who are attempting to influence the same audience.
A FINAL BUT IMPORTANT NOTE: Influence strategies are worthless if you do not, first attend to and listen to the person you are trying to influence. Listening and attending to someone trumps all other strategies. If you are thinking strategy and not listening, you may miss valuable opportunities to gain influence or succeed in achieving your goal.
Strategy 1 – Establish Rapport
Rapport means to be in “sync” with someone else, even for a moment. From shop floor to corporate boardroom, sustained rapport paves the way for a relationship that ideally includes mutual trust and liking.
Establishing rapport depends on both the content of any communication between people and the way the content is communicated. Usually, content is less important for the purposes of establishing rapport than how the content is exchanged. In other words, it matters less what you say than how you say it!
There are many approaches to establishing rapport. Each approach takes advantage of the observation that people feel more comfortable with others who are like them or act in ways that are similar and familiar. This is not a call for mimicry. It is a call for adjusting one’s interaction to match another. This is also a call for suspending judgment and insincerity. Only the least sophisticated will be fooled by insincere attempts to match or by matching that includes any level of judgment.
In my experience, the most useful approaches are:
- Pace/Tempo – Try to match the person’s rate of speech. If you speak fast naturally, slow down to match a person who speaks slowly. If you naturally speak slowly, speed up to match a person who speaks quickly. Try to be in “sync” with the other’s rate of speech as if you were playing musical instruments side by side.
- Representational System – Try to match the person’s representational system or the way she communicates her thinking. If the other person thinks visually phrases like “I see that” or “I get the picture” will be common. Alternatively, a person who thinks auditorily might say “I hear what you’re saying” or “that sounds right”. Thinking kinesthetically might include “I feel good about this” or “I can’t wait to get my hands on this”. Use phrases that are consistent with the other person’s representational system. Example: Say “You’ve drawn a clear picture for me” to someone who is visual.
- Level of Enthusiasm/Intensity – Try to match the person’s energy level or emotional state. If the other person is excited or low-key, try to operate at the same level of energy. If the other person smiles often try to match their emotional state or friendliness.
- Level of Detail/Abstraction – Try to match the “level of information” the other person is thinking and communicating. If he is talking about details, stay at that level. If he talks about the big picture or at the conceptual/abstract level try to stay there. The importance of this particular approach cannot be overstated. Often when people don’t feel listened to it is because there is a difference in the level of information they are exchanging with each other.
- Body Language/Physiology – Try to comfortably and unconsciously match the other person’s posture, gestures and movements. Do NOT mimic consciously – doing so will be off-putting. Do allow yourself to naturally respond to body language. We all have this capacity. It is why yawns are contagious.
You can check rapport regularly by seeing if the person you are trying to be “in rapport with” unconsciously mimics your natural actions. So, if you touch your hair or lean forward or look to your side, does the other person mimic your action within 5-15 seconds? As an exercise, watch couples and small groups in restaurants or elsewhere and decide who is in rapport and who isn’t.
You are likely already or naturally good at establishing rapport with others. Using the approaches listed above will help you in situations where “things don’t flow as easily as usual” or when you are trying to lower a person’s defensive shield.
Strategy 2 – Deepen your relationships
You can deepen your relationship with others using several basic relationship care-taking techniques and approaches.
One of the best guides to relationship building is the book: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. It has a gold mine of timeless insights on how to form and deepen relationships. The key insights from my point of view are:
- Learning to smile regularly and show your liking for other people.
- Learning to take a genuine interest in the other person you are relating to. Of course, a key part of taking a genuine interest is listening well and caring about the other person’s interests and concerns.
- Learning to express appreciation for the work or efforts of others often and sincerely.
- Learning to be quick to admit being wrong and, equally important, being gentle in pointing out other’s mistakes.
There are many more points on building relationships in Carnegie’s book but you can gain a lot from paying attention to and developing your use of the four listed above.
Usually about this point in most presentations on “Influence Strategies,” someone inevitably asks something like: “Isn’t this manipulation? You’ve told us to establish rapport and deepen our relationship with the person we are trying to influence but if we are doing this to get something we want, to influence the other person to do what we want, isn’t it manipulation?” or “If we are really skilled at this, how are we different from a skilled con-man?”
My answer is, if your intention is to serve your self-interest only, than it is manipulation: A con. If, instead, you are looking to serve the other person’s and your own self-interest simultaneously, it is not manipulation. This is true whether you are attempting to influence the company’s lowest paid employee or the Chairman of the Board of Directors.
In the real world, interactions are often multifaceted and complex but the point of looking for win-wins is essential to figuring out where your attempts to influence others land on the continuum from ethical influence to manipulation.
Strategy 3 – Increase your ability to empathize with others
Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, most of us think other people think/feel like we do. That is, we think others share or have very similar perspectives, priorities and comfort zones to our own. If they do not, they are wrong or something is wrong with them! Right?
Well, I’m afraid the evidence suggests that each of us has our own unique perspectives, priorities and comfort zones. This means it is the exception rather than the rule that someone thinks/feels the same way we do.
To overcome our own blindness to how other people see the world differently, we need to improve our skills at “reading” other’s perspectives, priorities and comfort zones. Doing so will increase our ability to empathize with them and appreciate their unique view.
For example, some people are comfortable relating to other people and “schmoozing”. They place a priority on relationships and often excel at influencing others through interpersonal relationship. In contrast, some people are more comfortable in the world of facts and reason. They place great stock in knowledge and reasoning. These type of people are excellent at accomplishing tasks and, as often as not, will do well without collaborating with others.
Being able to read which of these two very different types of people you are interacting with gives you tremendous insight into what is important to them and how to speak to what is motivating for them: To see the world as they do.
Another way to overcome blindness to another’s perspectives, priorities and comfort zones is to listen well. Listening well is so easy to recommend–an obvious bit of advice. If you listen well, all but the most reserved will tell you what is important to them, how they see the world, when they are at ease and when they are not at ease.
Listening well is easy to recommend but much harder to put into action. Indeed, most observers note that listening well is almost a lost art. To listen well you need to do three things consistently:
1. Forget about the impression you want to make and the information you want to share.
2. Truly care about what the other person is saying.
3. Ask questions that serve to deepen your understanding of the other person’s views, priorities and comfort zones.
If you listen well, you can change the character of your interaction with the other person. Not only do you learn more about the other person, you also lay the groundwork for trust and respect.
If you really want to elevate yourself above your peers (and competition), learn how to “read” people to see the type of person they are and learn how to really listen. These two skills will greatly enhance your ability to empathize with others and ultimately to influence them by appealing directly to what is important to them, given their perspectives, priorities and comfort zones.
Strategy 4 – use reason and the strategy of “re-framing”
Using reason is a common strategy for influencing others. It is the strategy of choice for most “experts” and others whose “leverage” comes from a well-reasoned argument. For example, someone might say, “We’ve found that the most efficient way to handle this task is to follow the procedures in your manual.”
You can increase your effectiveness at using reason as a strategy for influencing others if you understand the perspectives, priorities and comfort zones of your audience (see strategy 3).
For example, if you know someone resists changing how they’ve done something in the past but want them to adopt a new procedure, you might spend extra time telling him/her how the new procedure is more effective, will save money, help the company stay in business, etc.
But to cut through the defenses that often protect someone’s reasons for behaving the way they do, try “Re-framing”. In essence, it is a change in perspective that opens the door to re-thinking about a particular problem or situation. For example, let’s say you do not believe you should “give away” an e*book on business networking–one of your areas of expertise. Then you learn that Seth Godin advocates giving away such content and making money on the “coffee table” versions of the book (the same content in printed form) and speaking/consulting engagements that come from the wider distribution of your “free” material. If you buy Mr. Godin’s argument, you are looking at your e*book from a new perspective, thinking about it differently. You have put a new “frame” around it.
The potential of re-framing to influence others is amazing. Of course, it helps a great deal to understand your audience’s perspectives, priorities and comfort zones to re-frame their perspective. It also helps to be flexible in your own thinking as well as creative when trying to come up with new perspectives. In the example above, Seth Godin’s perspective changed through his own experience but only after he came up with the idea of trying a new approach.
Another insight into the power of re-framing is to realize why stories often can be a powerful tool in re-framing the beliefs and behavior of others. The next time you hear someone tell a story, observe how the story can re-frame your (and other’s) view of the circumstances described in the story. Aesop’s Fables are great examples of stories that re-frame perspective.
Finally, in a very important sense, your success using strategy 4 is dependent on your success in following strategy 3. Although reason and re-framing work without empathizing with the perspective and priorities of others, their effectiveness is not as great as it might otherwise be. Knowing what is important to your audience is critical is shaping your “well-reasoned (logical) argument” or “re-frame”. It is one reason people who are good at influencing groups often employ multiple rationales and perspectives behind a particular choice in their presentations–multiple to better align with the different views/thinking within the group.
Strategy 5 – appeal to the other person’s self-interest
This is not news to anyone who has tried to influence a sale or another’s behavior by pointing out how the other person gains by behaving in a certain way. The sales advice to “find out where the pain is and address it,” is a sterling example of “appeal to the other person’s self-interest” in practice.
People who are very skilled at appealing to another person’s self-interest, quickly and accurately identify what self-interest to target. They also present their “pitch” in a fashion the emphasizes how self-interest is served.
If I am able to really understand your perspective and priorities and can present my pitch in a way that shows how you benefit by moving in the direction I am trying to influence you, then the chances I will influence you increased significantly.
In the real world, this can be as simple as telling a subordinate who is looking for a raise, to increase her performance in a specific way. It can also be as complex as asking a second subordinate what his priorities really are–discovering that more money is a distant second to flexibility in work hours and realizing that if you want to increase this subordinate’s performance you should dangle increased flexibility in work hours as a carrot.
The real trick is not assuming that you know what the self-interests of another person are. It requires that you to stop making assumptions and ask questions to decide what is important in the other person’s view. Your ability to empathize with another person (strategy 3) has a role here but so does asking questions.
To stop making assumptions is a real challenge for most of us. It saves time and energy to make assumptions after all. But halting the assumptions is a critical step toward being able to successfully identify and then appeal to another’s self-interest.
So, to summarize:
- Stop the assumptions.
- Ask questions.
- Empathize.
- Present your appeal in a way that highlights how self-interest is served.
If it doesn’t work every time for you, then you’re not asking enough questions or perceiving the other person’s self-interest. Try again until this strategy works consistently for you.
Strategy 6 – Trigger automatic behavioral responses when appropriate
This strategy and its sub-elements are adopted from the book: Influence: Science and Practice by Robert Cialdini.
Cialdini focuses on strategies that trigger automatic behavioral responses. These automatic responses allow us to manage a complex world without endless deliberation over choices but do so at the expense of critical thought. For example, if we hear that others value a particular product, we tend to automatically assume that the product is valuable. In the process we suspend our critical thinking about the real value of the product to us.
At their peak, such automatic behavioral responses can lead, for example, to increased price pressure. In the distant and not so distant past there have been”runs” on things like tulips, pet rocks and internet stocks that have more to do with automatic behavioral responses than critical analysis.
If you are invested in influencing others, you should at least be aware of the possibility of influencing them through automatic behavioral responses and consider using them when it is ethical to do so.
The automatic behavioral responses that Cialdini describes are:
- Reciprocating – people try to repay, in some way, a benefit given to them. This means, if you want someone to do something nice for you, do something nice for him/her first. For example, free samples have the power to increase sales because they tap into the reciprocation response. In one study, tips were increased by 14% if the waiter or waitress gave a second chocolate to the customer at the end of a meal.
- Consistency – people who commit to a choice or position, tend to behave in ways that are consistent with their commitment. For example, you can increase sales if you ask for a commitment at the point of contact, over the phone or in person and you can increase sales further if you ask the buyer to describe the reason he/she is willing to commit.
- Social proof – people behave in the way they see others behave, believing that if other people are doing something it must be the right thing to do. Remember the story of the emperor with no clothes? We all tend to do as others do and it takes real strength to stand out from the crowd.
- Liking – people prefer to say yes to people they know and like. This is the principle at work when someone has a successful Tupperware party–the fact is that a lot more Tupperware is sold among friends than via any other distribution route.
- Authority – people tend to comply with the instructions of those deemed to be legitimate authorities. Do you remember the Milgram studies? In these studies volunteers were asked to give an electric shock to fellow students who made mistakes when reciting words. People continued to give these shocks even as the fellow students started to scream in pain. The explanation for their behavior was that they were following the orders of the researcher in a lab coat that oversaw the process. In other words, they complied with an authority figure.
- Scarcity – people place a high value on not missing an opportunity whether it be an opportunity to buy something or to have an interaction. This is the principle at work when you respond to a sign that says “last day of sale” or “only a few left”. It is also what’s going on when you feel compelled to take a phone call in a meeting for fear of missing something that’s important.
When you choose to trigger an automatic behavioral response is up to you. The ethical use of this strategy ultimately pivots on whether your intent is to manipulate or guide. Generally speaking, if you trigger automatic behavioral responses because of genuine good intentions for others and without regard for the outcome, you’re on sound ethical ground. Otherwise, you’re probably flirting with being unethical. After all, being genuinely likable is a powerful advantage when you are trying to influence others. On the other hand, acting likable only when you see an advantage to you, flirts with being anti-social or sociopathic behavior.
Strategy 7 – Maintain and sustain relationships through regular contact
OK, you’ve successfully established rapport with someone, deepened your relationship using basic relationship care-taking techniques, are truly empathic, used the strategies of reasoning and re-framing and appealed to their self-interest and triggered, when appropriate, the automatic behavioral responses described by Cialdini. You’re in a great position to influence the person. BUT… you must maintain and sustain your hard-won relationship or it will wither from inattention.
This should come as no surprise, but people who are most influential in their interpersonal interaction, regularly nurture and cultivate their relationships with others. The social technology of today (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) can help but can also be a distraction and an ineffective substitute for the personal interaction that sustains relationships.
I often find myself repeating the Maya Angelou quote, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” If you follow the strategies outline above and are positive in your interaction, regular contact tells people they are significant to you and that alone makes most of us feel good.
Before closing, it is important to note that the seven influence strategies presented here are meant to help you influence others in interpersonal interaction without the leverage of formal authority, political status, wealth or fame. Certainly if you are in a position of formal authority or have some other leverage over others, these strategies will work for you even if they are not all you have to work with. Masters of influence can be influential without the trappings of wealth, fame or fortune, however. Think about it.
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