[0:08] As a leader, you depend on others to get things done, which means you have to be good at influence.

[0:16] This is Do Something Different, and I'm Rusty Gaillard. This is a podcast for highly ambitious, successful leaders who know in order to get to the next level of success, they have to do something different. We're talking today about influence, which is one of the top leadership skills. You think about leaders who have to be good at communication, strategic thinking, managing and delegating work, holding others accountable. But influence is one of the key factors. Many people confuse influence and authority. They are absolutely not the same thing.

[0:50] Positional power, being in a position of authority where you can instruct somebody what to do is not influence. It's a very transactional form of influence because in the end, people do the things that you ask. But the real art of influence is being able to change somebody's actions, their behaviors, their opinions based on what you have to say. It's your ability to impact and affect others. And that is a skill that you have to develop as a leader well before you're in a position of authority, because you need to be able to influence others around you, your peers, your business partners, your customers, all of the people around you. As a leader, you need to be effective at influence. So we are not going to talk today about this kind of positional authority. We're going to talk about transformational influence. You can think about influence

[1:41] really in these two categories, transactional and transformational. Transactional is much more about the authority and the ability to instruct someone transformational influence is about when you do not have authority how can you transform the way somebody thinks about something and what they're doing to align with what it is that you see is important.

[2:01] I was just having a conversation with a client earlier this week who is a technical expert. She is great at her job and she's kind of in the middle level of leadership on the technical side of her organization. And she delivers projects. She's highly trusted by people on the technical side and by her business partners because she's one of these rare people that can understand both worlds, the technology and the business. And she's able to deliver technical solutions that meet business problems and achieve the goal.

[2:32] She was feeling uncertain and anxious and a little bit stressed about what was going on in her company. Because the company is in a very top-down efficiency-driven mode. They are looking for opportunities. They're looking for cost-cutting. There was a riff not long ago, and they're looking for further opportunities for efficiency. She sees opportunities all around her because she understands the technology and what the technology can do, and she understands the business process. She sees where there's an opportunity to address issues on the business process and capture real efficiency actually reducing headcount so that you can be more effective and lower costs in the business through a technical solution when she has approached her business partners who trust her and she has a good relationship with all of them have pushed back on her they've pushed back and said we're not ready to do that kind of work we've got to do more internal alignment first we're not ready for that and they're saying it's going to be at least a year before we could tackle a project like that my client was invited to meet with the skip level people the the the managers of these business partners that she has to identify opportunities now she's feeling a little bit out on a limb she's saying well am i going to violate the trust of these business partners but at the same time these are real opportunities we could execute against them now and she's being invited to participate in those.

[3:55] What I said to her was, what a great opportunity to become more influential. Because she now has the opportunity to influence the company and drive real value in alignment with the company's strategic goals, creating efficiency without sacrificing quality. It's a wonderful opportunity. It's a great opportunity for the company and it's a great opportunity for her personally and her career and for her team. So it's a great opportunity to actually create immense value for the company. And she has to be very thoughtful about how she influences the people around her to be successful.

[4:35] When we talk about influence, sometimes people, if you've ever read the book by Cialdini, I think it's Robert Cialdini, he has written a book on influence. And he talks specifically about ways to influence other people. And I'm going to put these in the trans transactional category because they do tend to be more transactional. And you often see these things on sales and on clickbait and on social media. There are things like scarcity, you know, act now because tickets are selling out or reciprocity. And many of us have gotten this when you get something in the mail, perhaps a mailer, and there's a little free gift inside. Because if somebody gives you a gift, you feel more inclined to reciprocate that.

[5:18] Authority, which is people respond to authority. So if you come across with more authority, people are likely to agree with you more. Again, makes sense in the transactional category or the transactional world

[5:30] that we're talking about here. So these principles from Cialdini are not what true influence is about.

[5:36] They're great from a transactional short-term standpoint, and they are effective. There's been studies, they tap into your human psychological biases about how we make decisions and that's why they work but that's not the kind of influence you want to create for long-term transformational influence for long-term transformational influence you have to take a different approach because if you want to build the kind of relationship with someone where they listen to you they trust you and they change their behaviors and their actions their priorities their beliefs based on what it is that you're saying you need, transformational influence with that person, not these kind of short-term transactional things.

[6:18] Like my client in this example that I just gave, she had built up this relationship and now it was an opportunity for her to start influencing the leaders and get them to see things differently and do things differently in order to capture these efficiency benefits. So how do you do that? I want to give you what I describe as the triangle of influence. And there's three key components on that triangle. It's perspective, partnership, and relationship. I'm going to break those down. Let's start with perspective. Perspective is about understanding the other person's perspective, putting yourself in their shoes. And one of the simplest and best ways to do this is to ask questions.

[7:01] I've done many exercises when I've done group and team trainings where I ask people to use questions to understand the other person. And I will tell you, it is surprisingly difficult for people. It's understandable. Most of us want to be the one with the answer. When somebody says, this is a problem that I have, it's way more likely as a leader to give them an answer rather than to follow up with a question to go deeper. But if you want to be effective at influence, you really need to understand their perspective and understanding their perspective requires more questions to go deeper. The problem is you get to the position where you are as a leader by solving problems, by having solutions, by answering questions. So when somebody brings a problem to you, your first inclination is to solve it or to give them an answer or point them in a direction where they can go. And I encourage you rather than doing that to ask questions, to ask questions, to go deeper. Oh, that's an interesting problem. Tell me more about that. What is the impact of that? How long have you had this problem? What have you tried to address it? There are many questions you can ask to dig deeper on the problem that's presented to you so that you understand their perspective. Perspective is everything because in order to influence someone, you have to know where they're coming from. And that's about perspective and questions is your way to get there.

[8:30] So that's perspective. The second part of the second leg of the triangle is partnership. And partnership is fundamentally about finding where is their common ground? Where can you agree on something? Where can you operate as partners rather than as adversaries? A lot of people come into influence thinking, well, they're there and I'm here. We've got these different perspectives and I got to try to convince them to see it my way.

[8:55] Rather than seeing it as an adversarial or a conflict kind of situation, can you see it as a kind of situation where you're actually aligned and have different perspectives right now, but you share a common goal? If you can find that common goal, that's where the partnership comes in. Oftentimes, in order to find that common goal, you just have to take a somewhat more elevated perspective. What I mean by that is thinking about, if you both think about it from a company standpoint, oftentimes the company has some pretty clear goals. And even if you're in different organizations, you can align behind those goals that the company has. Sales and marketing are classic organizations that don't get along. Marketing is too fluffy and they're overpromising and sales is focused on closing individual deals and they need to perhaps even make some accommodations or changes in order to do that. But marketing may not agree. So these two organizations can be at head, can butt heads. They can be at odds.

[9:55] But fundamentally, both of them want to grow the business. And if you can take that kind of partnership perspective, elevate to that level and say, we do have a common goal here. What is that common goal? Why is it that we're doing this? Take a clue from Simon Simic. Start with why. Why am I bringing forward this idea? Why am I wanting to influence this person? What is my motivation behind it? What is the big goal that I'm trying to achieve? And if you can think about that and find a way that the other person can align with that goal and be on board with it, now you have a partnership. You may still have a disagreement on how you achieve it, but you've got some alignment around what the goal is. And once you have that, then you can work about that how you get there. But at least you've got alignment on where you're going, why you're doing the work that you're doing. That's what partnership is about because you're much more effective when you've got that point of commonality. The third leg of the triangle is relationship.

[10:56] Relationship, you're always more effective influencing those people that you know, like, and trust. And you're more influenced by those people, the people that you know, like, and trust. You may have heard the phrase that you're most influenced by the five people who are closest to you. And in fact, I've heard people say, if you want to understand somebody's health, somebody's income, somebody's satisfaction with life, just look at the five people that they spend the most time with because those five people have an outsized impact on you.

[11:30] We are heavily influenced by the people that are close to us. So if you want to be effective at influence, you have to have a strong relationship with someone. How do you build a strong relationship with someone? Clearly, there's time involved and so on. But I'm going to give you two specific things that you can do that can boost the strength of your relationship with others. Number one is to practice candor. Because people trust you if they know where you're coming from. If you have hidden agendas and you're not saying things and you're hiding and you're gossiping behind people's back, they're going to be way less likely to trust you. And if they don't trust you, you're never going to have a good relationship. So if you want to build trust, candor is one way to do that. Find a way of expressing in a non-confrontational way your direct opinion. Tell people where they stand with you. Tell them when you disagree with them. Tell them when you think they're not doing a good job. when people can trust you to be honest with them that is going to strengthen the relationship often oftentimes we're afraid that it's going to weaken the relationship because we think oh i'm being critical they're not going to like me you need to find a way to express these things by investing in the other person i will have a whole separate conversation on candid conversation and how to do that effectively but your willingness to wade into those difficult conversations builds trust with other people because they know you can handle it. They know that you're investing in the relationship and they know exactly where they stand with you.

[13:00] A complementary piece with candor is vulnerability. And when I talk about vulnerability, I'm not talking about the inappropriate sharing of personal items or things that are going on outside of work. I'm talking about a willingness to step forward and have conversations that maybe feel a little risky or a little bit uncomfortable, or to make suggestions that you think, oh, it might be safer to keep my mouth shut. But to find a way to step forward and bring your best ideas and show up as your best self on a day-to-day basis because let's face it there's risk associated with that i get it you know always we always worry about how other people are going to react is if i say this is it going to damage my reputation are someone is someone going to think less of me taking action even when you have those thoughts that's what vulnerability is about because it's a willingness to take a little of a risk, an appropriate risk in the business context, sharing something of yourself, sharing your best ideas, sharing your opinions. So it's this combination of candor and vulnerability that people start to build trust with you because they see you're willing to do things that are difficult because you're moving, you're stretching yourself to be more open and share your best ideas and give feedback to others. They know where they stand with you. That builds trust. And trust, of course is the foundation of any good relationship.

[14:22] So these are the three elements or the three legs of the triangle of influence. They're perspective, partnership, and relationship. So let's talk about a simple example about how to apply those things or how they might show up at work. When I worked at Apple, one of my roles there was leading the global sales forecast. So I was working in finance. We partnered with the sales team to build a forecast and we updated it every week. What products we're going to sell in what regions all around the world. I partnered with regional teams because of course there were teams all in different in Europe and in Asia and in the Americas that were building their forecasts. And I was the central global, I had the global perspective and I was working with each one of these teams. They would build their forecast, we would roll it up. But there was always negotiation because I would look at their forecast and say, yeah, that's not right. You're sandbagging. The sales team or the finance team is being too conservative, they're not raising their forecast based on what they can actually sell. Or sometimes it was the opposite situation where their forecast was too high. The salesperson didn't want to get a black eye and lower it. And so they're saying, I'm not going to cut the sales forecast. But it was clear there was no way they were ever going to hit that number.

[15:32] These kinds of dynamics were much more common in the regional teams because the regional teams were sitting close to the salespeople. They were partnering with the salespeople to build this forecast. I'm sitting here removed from that dynamic in the headquarters office and looking at these numbers saying, this doesn't make any sense. So I had to be able to influence those regional teams to change their forecast to make it more accurate so that we could roll up a number that made more sense.

[16:01] How did I do that? Well, number one perspective, I understood their perspective because my partners were primarily the finance team, but their partners were their local sales team. They had to maintain that relationship. That was their perspective. There was a pull on both sides from them, from me, from the corporate office and from their salespeople saying, this is what I want to do. So there was, I understood that perspective and I had some compassion and understanding for that. I also built a partnership with them. And we continue to talk about what is our goal here? Why are we doing this forecast? How is, what is the value of this forecast? We're trying to get the best number that we can at the corporate level. And when we both can align behind that single partnership perspective, then we made all of the other conversations much easier because I understood the dynamics. I understood their perspective and we were aligned on what our goal is. We were partners in trying to build the best forecast that we could. And of course, relationship matters. So this was just how the day-to-day, the things that we do day-to-day in order to build relationship. And that included face-to-face meetings. These were people around the world, but we did find opportunities to meet face-to-face, having the difficult conversations, being willing to be vulnerable, being willing to say, I think that you might be sandbagging on this, but doing that in a way that's not confrontational and adversarial, but it's willing to call people when you see something that doesn't look right.

[17:29] This is how I practice this art of influence in this kind of dynamic where there were pushes and pulls and politics and different perspectives and different agendas. But that's the exactly where influence comes to play.

[17:44] How do you apply this? Let's talk about application because these three legs of the triangle of influence, which is perspective, partnership, and relationship. If you think about those three legs, I gave you some tips on how to apply those, but I want to give you some really tactical things that you can use here. Because oftentimes when we think about influence, we think about, I'm here to tell the other person, to convince the other person to change something. But if you take the focus, if you make the focus of an influence interaction, if you make the focus on you, you've got your focus in the wrong place. It's not about you. It's about them. You need to make the focus on them. Think about a sales situation. If someone is trying to sell you something, if they're really doing a hard sell on you, it's uncomfortable. No one likes to be sold, but everybody likes to buy. Everybody likes to make a decision that says this is something that's important to you. So the way you do that is through this kinds of transformational influence skills. This is about taking their perspective, building partnership, building that sense of alignment, and strengthening the relationship over time. So I'm going to give you some very tactical tools that you can use in order to do this beyond this concept that I've shared already. The first one is to ask more questions. So I already shared that as a tool under understanding their perspective.

[19:12] But it's something that most people don't do. Just notice next interaction you have. How much you're talking with statements versus how much you're asking questions. A single good question can be far more influential than any statement. I've actually gotten a lot of feedback about that when I posted it on LinkedIn. Asking a good question can be way more impactful and way more influential than stating something. So pay attention in your next meeting. How many statements are you making? How many questions are you asking? How can you get better at asking questions? Second tactical tip I want to give you. Avoid starting all of your sentences with I. See if instead you can shift it around and talk about the other person. Oftentimes in meaning, you'll hear someone say, well, I think, or my perspective is, or what I recommend is, and that's all great. But can you talk less about yourself and more about the other person? It sounds like what you're saying is, here's an example. It sounds like what you're saying is A, B, and C. And perhaps if we were to do X, Y, and Z, that would support your goals.

[20:30] That's different from saying i think that x y and z would be the best way to achieve your goals, that's about you try just notice if there's what and again this is somewhat subtle but this is a very tactical practical thing that you can do which is to start fewer sentences with i make it more about the other person make it more about your shared partnership objective about what you're trying to accomplish the third simple tactical tip i want to offer is yes and you've probably heard this from the world of improv this is pretty common but a lot of people say no or but they'll say well that's a good idea but i think a b and c try to take no and but out of your vocabulary when you're working on influence and focus instead on yes and, And so, well, that's a good idea, but could turn into, that's a good idea. And I think we might be able to evolve it to be even more impactful. If you notice, there's a slightly difference on there, because anytime you say, but it's kind of a little bit of a slap in the face towards the other person. So yes, and can be a very powerful tool. So try these three tactical things, asking more questions, pay attention to how much you do that. Don't start your sentences with I. talk instead about the other person or about your shared objectives and use yes and.

[21:51] These are some simple tools that you can apply around influence but once again it's in the application of this not the knowledge of it that you make a change and you're not going to go from zero to a hundred just by listening to this podcast you have to go out and practice this so take these tips take this triangle of influence perspective partnership and relationship take these tactical tools that i gave you asking more questions don't starting the questions sentences with i using yes and instead of no but take these practical tools and put them into application try it pick a meeting that's coming up on your calendar that's a point where you want to be influential and say, this is the tool I'm going to practice in this meeting. Try it, see how it goes and just reflect on it. Notice, notice how hard it is to change some of these habits. These are habits. They're all habits about the way you communicate, the way you think about influence, the way you approach these situations. That's fine. They're habits, but you can improve. And when you change these

[22:55] habits, you can improve and you can accomplish amazing things. It only requires one mental shift and it's a willingness to do something different.