5 Principles to Develop Influence as a Manager
Develop influence as a manager, or at any level, and you will be able to do more, deliver better results and be viewed as more valuable in your role. The greater your influence and the more you use your influence for the benefit of the team and business, the greater your personal rewards. Build your influence and you will have more opportunities, higher social standing, more pay, frequent promotions and more. Gaining these help you build further influence at work.
Influence is not authority. You get authority from your position. Influence comes from who you are, how you act and how you help others. Influencing others in the workplace is a skill that anyone can learn and improve.
5 Principles To Develop Influence As A Manager
- Build true expertise in what you do
- Become good at leading yourself
- Help others solve their problems
- Have the courage to use your voice
- Strategically build authentic relationships
As I go through these key principles in influencing others, I will share practical tips on how to develop your influence at work. Each of these actions will build long term and consistent influence over all types of people, which I think is essential to be an effective manager or leader. Short term techniques or tricks are often detrimental to longer term influence.
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Build True Expertise In What You Do – The First Action To Develop Influence As A Manager
You can’t do this overnight. You absolutely can do this step by step over time. Remember, you don’t have to be amazing at what you do, to influence others. You do have to be above average to build influence through how well you do your job.
Think about what skills you really need to get better at to become better at your job. Focus on and work at developing these. The average person goes home at the end of the day and wants to leave work behind. To get better, you only have to spend a bit more time than the average person each day working on your skills, knowledge and approach. Ask your boss for extra projects and experience. Work to build solutions to some of their challenges. Find a mentor or coach outside of work to help you. Join peer networking groups. There is so much you can do to help yourself build expertise.
Measure your progress by comparing to what you were like a month or a year ago. All those extra ten minutes and half hours add up over time. Be patient and keep at it. You will build true expertise quicker than you think.
Expertise creates influence. For example, think of all the questions and help you ask from those you view as experts around you. The more people come to you for help, the more influential you become at work. Others want your opinion, your advice and your help. Provide that expert help and you build trust, relationships, favours … and a lot of influence!
Become Good At Leading Yourself – The Second Action To Develop Influence
You are a true leader when others want to follow you. They don’t follow you because they have to but they want to. We follow those individuals that are better at leading themselves that we are.
The classic hero storyline is a person struggling with themselves. They fight and battle to overcome their fears, their limitations, their insecurities and their lack of confidence. They keep working at overcoming their self-imposed limitations. Finally they master themselves and find those around them want to follow them. The hero of the story becomes a great leader.
Leaders we respect and admire have battled with themselves and won. They know a lot about themselves. They are very honest with themselves. These leaders like themselves and have a lot of quiet self-confidence.
The better you are at leading yourself:
- The more likely you will give first to others before taking.
- You will listen and celebrate other people’s differences which builds deeper trust and better relationships a lot quicker
- The less likely you will be influenced by yourself, which leads to better decisions, actions and behaviours for the team’s best interests rather than just your own
- The less you will need others to confirm your self-worth, making you more self-sufficient, happier and self-confident
To Build Influence at Work
And throughout your life, work on:
- Learning who you are, what your hopes, dreams, ambitions, hot buttons, and dislikes are.
- Be clear about your own strengths and be happy to reveal your weaknesses
- Learn to listen to yourself and be mindful of what influences you, your decisions and your actions
- Focus more on helping others around you before helping yourself
When you can look at yourself in the mirror and be proud of who you are and how you conduct yourself, you are likely to develop a lot of influence as a manager.
3 – Help Others Solve Their Problems
Your success as a leader or manager is measured in how well you help others develop and become more effective in their roles AND how well you get everyone working together as a team. A leader or manager’s job is helping others be better and do better and thus deliver better results for the company that employs you all.
Anyone can build a lot of influence by consistently helping others solve their problems.
Something that I found out early in my career. The more I helped other people solve their problems, the more they helped me solve my problems when I asked for help. Getting a ton of people helping you solve your problems makes you very effective at your job and builds a lot of influence. As a result, I got a lot more done than my peers, even when I was making time to help others.
Go Out Of Your Way To Help
Go out of your way to be helpful. Look for opportunities to proactively help others or make their lives at work easier. Teach others to solve their own problems, which is another great investment as a manager. Get resources in place when others need them. Use your influence to get the help others need quicker. Use your influence to find out what is happening around the business and pass this on when it helps provides context and direction.
The more you help, the more those around you will feel obliged to help you, plus you will be strengthening relationships and your influence.
People are more likely to allow themselves to be influenced by those they like, those they trust to keep their interests in mind and those that have helped them in the past. Use reciprocity to build your influence in the workplace.
Have The Courage To Share Your Voice – The Fourth Action To Develop Influence As A Manager
To lead others is to have the courage to do something different, to try new things, to take risks.
A great place to start building your confidence in leading is to share your voice: your opinions, ideas and your solutions to problems. You can start small with groups you know and with small problems. Then build towards solving bigger more visible problems and speaking with more and more senior people.
Doing your homework first will give you the courage to share your voice and start building your influence. Everyone has an opinion. Not that many have a considered and researched opinion. The more homework you do, the more compelling and valuable your ideas and solutions are likely to become.
The more valuable your ideas and solutions, the more others will want to hear them. As more people want to listen to you, the more influence you have.
When you share your opinion, ideas or solutions, work out why your approach is valuable to the business. How does it increase revenue, reduce costs, increase efficiency, increase scalability, improve customer relations, save time etc? Can you quantify the benefits to the company using financial data? Do you have alternative options you have discounted? Why have you chosen the option you have? How easy will it be to implement your solution and what resources might be required?
Do Your Homework
Do your homework. Understand and define the problem and then work out different practical ways it might be solved. Work out how you are going to communicate your solution clearly, concisely and in a compelling way.
The more you practice this process, the quicker and easier you will find doing it. The more you go through this process, the more valuable your opinion, ideas, and solutions will become and the more influence you will build as a result.
The Fifth Action To Develop Influence As A Manager Is To Strategically Build Authentic Relationships
The actions we have already discussed will be a massive help in building good relationships with colleagues and bosses.
For managers and leaders, focus on building good trusting relationships with all team members. You will be relying on your team to help you deliver great results.
There are tons of actions you should take to build good relationships. Some of these include:
- Being open and honest with your team
- Communicate and share information to help your team work more effectively
- Work hard to help solve the problems your team members have
- Be nice, friendly and approachable
- Ask and persuade a lot more than telling your team
- Listen to team members, and proactively demonstrate you value them by implementing their good ideas and solutions
- Be flexible, fair and reasonable.
- Put in time and effort to proactive develop the skills and experience of your team members
The more your team respects, likes and admires you for what you can do for them and how you do that, the more they will help you and the team achieve goals.
Outside of your team, work to build strong relationships with your boss, your boss’s peers, leadership team members and all the stakeholders and supporters of your team. Also build relationships with individuals that are influential within your organisation. We allow those we trust and like to influence us a lot more than those we don’t like and trust as much.
The more influence you build, the more effectively you will be able to manage and lead others.
In summary
Use the 5 actions or principles we have been through today to develop influence as a manager. Each of these are vital principles to put into practice to enable you to be very effective in your role as a manager and leader.
The best way to build influence is to help others do better and be better. If a person does not reciprocate and help you in return, concentrate your effort on those that do help you when asked.
The 5 actions or principles to develop influence as a manager are:
- Build true expertise in what you do
- Become good at leading yourself
- Help others solve their problems
- Have the courage to use your voice
- Strategically build authentic relationships
Don’t forget to visit us at enhance.training for resources and courses to increase your influence and effectiveness as a manager.
If you have any questions on “5 Principles to Develop Influence as a Manager”, please email me at support@enhance.training and I will get back to you.
The more influence you build at work, the quicker you get help and persuade others to help or do what you need. When you are influential, helping you is a higher priority than helping others with less influence. Influence makes you a lot more effective in your role.
Influence is not authority. Your position will give you some influence. The best ways to build influence are through timeless social laws such as reciprocity and relationships.
Anyone can build influence in any job. Influencing others is a set of skills that anyone can learn. Anyone can become good at influencing others.
Put these principles into action right now and look forward to a more influential life in the workplace!
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