People who are successful in organizations are good influencers. How do you know if you would be good at influencing others? There are certain characteristics that can help you be successful in this area:
- Trust – you need to be someone who has given trust in your relationships which will encourage others to trust you. Once you have that foundation in place there is a better opportunity to leverage that trust to influence others.
- Credibility – are you someone who has established credibility and knowledge in certain areas? When you are trying to influence others, they will be more open to your suggestions and ideas if they are comfortable that you know your stuff.
- Consistency – do you follow through on things? Do you make decisions that you stick with or do you tend to flip flop? If people align with you on your outcome, then they want to be comfortable that you won’t change your mind.
- Vision – do you know what you want your final outcome to be? Can you address whatever objections that you may get from those that you are going to be influencing? Can you explain why they should be on board with your plan?
Influencing others can help you move forward with your ideas and plans with the support of your peers, management and stakeholders. Your reputation needs to be in a good place and your behavior needs to demonstrate that this is who you are consistently. It is important that you have the above traits and show up with them each and every day, not just on the day of the influencing conversation.