Using Influence Management as Building Blocks for Your Career and Increasing Your Performance at Work  

Getting work done on time and with the cooperation and support of your peers, managers and cross-functional teams requires a skill known as “influence management.”  Influence management is the art of driving decisions and steering people diplomatically, without having a direct leadership relationship. Like building blocks, once you learn and apply the key skills of influence management to your career, putting one in place then another, you will be amazed at what you have built and the work you were able to achieve. In addition, new doors and career opportunities will open up to you.

Building Blocks of Influence Management

Influence management is not one capability, but rather multiple skills interwoven and applied to a mission or goal. Making the effort to practice and improve these skills over time pays dividends and results in increased performance at work and new leadership opportunities that may not be offered otherwise.

So, what are the foundational building blocks of influence management?

Collaboration
Collaboration happens when individuals work together towards a common goal. And, of course, influence management requires collaboration!  Interacting with teams and stakeholders puts you in a position to persuade them to your way of thinking or to help drive consensus toward a single action or decision. What takes collaboration to the highest level is having a clear understanding not only of the team mission, but also having knowledge of the individual team members. What are their business goals and priorities? It’s helpful to build personal relationships to understand what motivates and inspires them.

Communication
At its most fundamental, influence management requires excellent communication skills. Practice presenting facts and data. If you can convey information to people in a meaningful, relevant way, you will be well on your way to building a case to help drive decisions. Communication, whether verbal or written, should always be top-notch and all your facts should be triple-checked for accuracy and relevance. Beyond that, they should be presented in a meaningful way. A series of slides with tables of data may be interesting, but to make it compelling you need to tell a story and provide context to all that information.

Consensus
With excellent communication and collaborations skills under your belt, you also need to develop the skill of driving compromise, and the key to this is understanding competing priorities and finding the middle ground when possible. Not all teams will work in perfect accord, and that’s okay. Recognizing different opinions and approaches can help identify the best path forward and will provide important insight into others’ objectives.

Authority 
Some people believe that they have no influence, and that they’ll only ever be able to develop influence management skills when they become a manager or team leader. The fact is, though, that title or position can be a source of influence, and anyone willing to work on the task can develop influence management and can assume a position of authority even without being the boss! Indeed, any VP will tell you that they still need to work at building influence even with their executive title. It’s not free, nor does it come easy. You do need to establish credibility and demonstrate impact time and again, and that takes effort.

Authority also comes with expertise. Specific domain knowledge or an understanding of the inner workings of an organization empower you to develop a strategy, socialize recommendations and plans, gain buy-in and drive results. Lacking confidence to share knowledge and put ideas forward may limit your impact and ability to gain influence. So, act as-if. That is to say: act as if you have a position of power; act as if you are the expert; act as if the decisions you’re driving will affect your own business – they will, after all, affect your career and the company you are working for!

Putting It All Together for Career Success

As you collaborate with larger teams and with multiple levels across organizational boundaries, you will need to look for ways to drive to a win-win.  With a keen eye on achieving the team’s mission, having a win-win approach allows you to find a mutually beneficial path forward for all who are involved. In order to recognize how to simultaneously fulfill the needs of the organization and individual team members and stakeholders too, focus on building relationships. By consulting with the individuals involved, you can learn more about their priorities and their communication styles. For example, if you are trying to get buy-in from an executive, you need to understand her style and approach. If she loves details, you’ll need to include them. If she favors a high level briefing, then you’ll need to frame your mission, recommendations, and expected outcomes summarily.

Building influence and practicing influence management are required to be accepted as a leader. The more you invest in developing these skills and applying them to your work, the greater your sphere of influence will become, and the more you will be recognized and sought after for your skills.