Here’s the thing….you can’t just order people to “be more creative” or to “get motivated” or to “start loving your job.” The human brain doesn’t work that way. But you can lead them there through influence. Leadership is powerful when it is highly focused on the idea of inspiring and influencing others to build mastery in identifying top priorities and knowing how to solve them. It is so much more than just leading, doing, and teaching it all while the community listens and follows. Which, of course, you already know…But the word influence has been coming up a lot for me lately. Sometimes too much actually… as I peruse instagram stories (sometimes for hours!) and I fall into the influencers trap of buying things I don’t really need. But as I studied the influencers it brought me back to my leadership. What is it about influencers on social media that convince people to engage, commit, buy products, trust, and follow?
I decided to take a deep dive into the power of influencing in leadership and I uncovered a lot of interesting findings about how to develop influence in leadership. In fact, in a previous blog post, I talked about Brendan Burchard’s 6 high performing habits and one of them was influence. He says we have to have influence if we want people to trust us enough to listen to our messaging or buy our product. As leaders, our influence and how we walk the walk make all the difference in how our community activates under our leadership. Most people don’t really know how to influence. To influence someone is to have the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something, or the effect itself. To me, influencing is teaching others how to think and shape their mindset. I wanted to share a checklist of criteria that really develops influence with the intention and purpose of inspiring others to engage, commit, solve problems, be inspired, and empower. Check it out below!
Approach Hard Conversations with the question, “What more would you like me to do?” I know…I am hitting you with a hard pill to swallow right off the bat. However, by starting hard conversations with concern and empathy it makes sure that you never make the concern smaller. In fact, you make it bigger. You make the tent bigger so more people can come to the table offering multiple perspectives. These perspectives will insulate you and broaden the dialogue. It will help to diffuse and offer concern. It will influence them to think beyond themselves and how they could not just make the issue better through their own actions but how they can build support around them rather than you always having to come up with ideas to solve their problem or be on the defense.
Include Storytelling In Your Messaging. Start with sharing stories with examples and insights of how they should think (Burchard, 2017). The five most commonly used stories are probably these: inspiring the organization, setting a vision, teaching important lessons, defining culture and values, and explaining who you are and what you believe (Shawbel, 2012). Leaders who tell stories also communicate a compelling vision around desired beliefs, behaviors and results. If they want to see a behavior demonstrated more often, sharing stories about people who exhibit the desired behavior provides a clear example. It also provides evidence that these behaviors are already taking place, encouraging others to adopt the new behaviors as well. This is a critical shift in helping teams shift the way they act and think. It is so important to be reflective on telling the right story in order to achieve a specific outcome or idea that you want them to adopt. Of course the story must also be compelling and right to the point. Practice and refine it before telling it so that it is streamlined and purposeful with lots of hooks and connection to a desired behavior. Next, encourage your community to share stories too! This builds influence too and empowers them to influence others through their own stories so it is a win win! For example, storytelling is useful when heavy influence is required like leading change, or making recommendations to the boss. Story telling is also good for delicate issues like managing diversity and inclusion, or giving people coaching and feedback in a way that will be received as a welcome gift. It can help bring out more of people’s creativity, or help them rekindle the passion for their work (Shawbel, 2012).
Learn ways to focus on shaping the mindset. When you do this, you are influencing, so studying ways to effectively do that will definitely help. Think about ways you could influence people to think about their job, their career, their mindset, their habits, their mission, their relationships, etc. High performers think of themselves as thought shifters. Encourage them to be reflective on their own habits and how they think of themselves. This all starts with your own authenticity. When you lead in ways that come most naturally to you, you start to stand out from the crowd and people begin to take notice. People gravitate towards those leaders who are most authentic and have the self-trust to be themselves – not what others want them to be. But the best leaders are the authentic ones who define the culture and set the standards by which you evaluate and assess other leaders (Llopis, 2015). This helps to teach others how to think about what they do too.
Analyze the hard stuff with your community but also ask what went right. So often, we always address and focus on the gaps but your influence will expand even further if you notice the little things that are going right. Notice the work that people do, celebrate it, and highlight it. The power of applause and validation feeds your influence because it puts you in a place where people will want to root for you. They will be more motivated to work hard and engage because they know their work will not go unnoticed. However, expect that there may not be anyone who will clap for you. Most days you are not going to have people clapping for you so you have to learn how to clap for yourself and for those in your community. Who doesn’t love applause? Right!
Be present and open about your own passion and purpose. If you are lit about what you are doing it will inspire and fuel the fire of others. If you are approaching your messaging with listless energy then that is what you will get back. However, if you approach it with fire and passion and are genuinely excited about the work that is happening, the purpose will become clearer and people will also be more motivated because of your energy. Be hungry for results and they will be too. You remember authentic leaders the most because they unleash their passionate pursuits and unique ways of thinking in everything they do and how they do it. Being authentic is a mindset from which you define your distinction, multiply your influence and allow your leadership to get discovered (Llopis, 2015).
Every time you meet with your community be open about the outcome that you expect by the end of your time together. Tell them what you expect them to know, learn and do by the end of the meeting. Be clear about the next action steps and set deadlines to create urgency. This also plays a role in influence because people like clear roadmaps and clarity. They want to know what is expected for them without the ambiguity. Being assertive and direct can also fuel influence because they know you are not wasting their time and there are clear targets along the way. No one wants to read between the lines so clarity of outcomes expected are key!
Role model everything. Model the expectations and be open about the work that you are doing alongside them. Reveal the discernment of decisions that you are making. Listen and include their voice in decisions as well. Model the method that you are using to achieve decisions or results. Write, think out loud, show them templates, create, etc in front of your community whenever you can. Being vulnerable can risking your own significance can lead to great influence because they see you learning and doing the work alongside them instead of in front of them. Take risks. The leader that does not seek to be significant cares primarily for recognition, while the leader that seeks to be significant cares primarily for respect. Recognition explodes and subsides, respect reverberates and multiplies. Significance allows your leadership to be more sustainable than success itself (Llopis, 2015). Modelling, in my opinion, is the best way to develop influence, risk significance, and shift a community to become high performers.
So there you have it! My list of ways that have worked really well for me when it comes to being a leadership influencer. This checklist is always in my leadership playbook and has gained way more players to want to be on our team. In fact, by doing these actions, it has not gained followers but rather action takers who also influence. Try choosing one or two of these actions and implement them into your leadership messaging. Commit to it and stick with it and, over time, you will see the power of your influence and how it motivates others. Studying social media influencers is fascinating and has lead to some real revelations in how influence plays a heavy role in leadership. Happy influencing!
Ok….now….I have some really exciting news! I will be hosting a free masterclass called the 3 Secrets to Motivating and Inspiring Teachers on Feb. 22, Feb. 23 and March 2. In this free masterclass, you will go from having a disengaged, overwhelmed community to using these 3 actions to lead an engaged, action taking community who has renewed passion and purpose. It is my favorite of the masterclasses that I do! You can sign up here now! I will see you there!
Speaking of influence, we would love to have you join our leadership community to learn alongside you! Click here to join our private facebook group called Principals and Leadership! Follow me on insta @evenifyoumiss1 and Facebook at Jacealyn Hempel. I will see you there!
Llopis, Glenn. Embrace a New Mindset by Facing 8 Critical Realities, Forbes, 6 Jan. 2015.
Schawbel, Dan. How to Use Storytelling as a Leadership Tool, Forbes, 13 Aug. 2012.
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