Note that there are four common ways that people can and do influence without integrity. These include: avoiding, manipulating, threatening, and intimidating.

We have personality style preferences for how we perceive and process information that predispose us both to use certain influence strategies naturally and to be more receptive to some than to others. However, each influence tactic requires a unique set of skills, which can be learned if you don’t come by them naturally. In choosing a tactic, you need to know what situation requires as well as how and to what your listener responds. For example, does your listener make decisions based on logic or based on people-centered values? Do they value affiliation and a participatory approach or do they respond more to legitimate authority?

Influence skills include a number of verbal skills such as asserting, probing, persisting, speaking conversationally, and willingness to ask for favors. Yet, equally important are non-verbal skills such as conveying energy and enthusiasm, using a compelling tone of voice, using authority without appearing heavy-handed, sensitivity to others’ feelings and needs, and building rapport and trust.

As a leader, it behooves you to have an accurate assessment of your influence effectiveness. You can do this best through a formal 360-degree assessment or short of that, ask your colleagues and friends for feedback, both positive and constructive, on how they perceive your influence skills.

(c) Copyright 2003. Manya Arond-Thomas, all rights reserved.

3. Testing Your Assumptions — Assumptions are all those things that we think we know about how reality is, whether for ourselves or for others. We carry multiple sets of assumptions that act as lenses or filters for our perceptions. Because each of us has a unique life experience, we each carry a unique set of assumptions although we do, of course, also have shared assumptions which serve to glue us together. Effective communication demands that we test our own assumptions as well as clarify those of others. Only then can we know that we are speaking a shared language of meaning. Different assumptions in and of themselves don’t create problems so much as need to be right about our assumptions!

4. Balancing use of inquiry with advocating your own position and interests — Growing out of ability to listen, inquiry is about asking questions and holding an attitude of curiosity. Questions that seek to understand (as opposed to questions that seek to interrogate) create doorways into new levels of understanding and learning for both speaker and listener. Inquiry, by its very nature, can deepen your ability to think systemically because questions often reveal relationships among parts that make up whole.

Organizations and businesses need to create effective communication cultures in order to thrive. The competitive edge in business will be maintained by those who are continually learning how to improve. Leaders who understand and employ these high-impact communication strategies will create robust and resilient organizations that cannot only adapt to new challenges and changing conditions of these uncertain times but can actually thrive.