Time for a little clarity! Kathy provides a simple framework for understanding the difference between influence, persuasion and presence—the three skills that are often pivotal to whether a talented leader is successful or not…..and the three skills that are the reason for the creation of this podcast.
What you’ll hear in this episode:
Well, hello everyone! Today I’d like to talk about a question I get all the time.
Let me give you a little background first…….
As a leadership coach, I tend to work with clients who are already very talented and want to take their skills to the next level.
They’re ambitious and want to make a difference.
They want to become an even a smarter, more skilled leader, so they can take on bigger and bigger challenges.
And they want to work with me the way a high-performance athlete does with an athletic coach.
Which is to say we could end up working on anything, depending who the client is and the context in which he or she is leading.
It might be strengthening their strategic capability. It might be cultivating a stronger relationship with the Board. It might be how to inspire and motivate a team to take on a new challenge. It might be how to change the culture of the company.. It might be how to get ready for the first year of being CEO.
You get the picture. There are a lot of aspects of being a good leader and each client tends to have a unique aspect of leadership they want to focus on.
But no matter what particular goal a client has set for him or herself, I almost always end up working with them as well on some aspect of influence, persuasion or presence.
That’s because a leader’s success depends not only on the substance of his or her ideas.
Success ultimately rises or falls according to the level of skill the leader has in moving ideas forward and getting others to support those ideas.
And the skills of influence, persuasion, and presence the skills that we use to move ideas forward.
So no matter how talented a leader already is at this, he or she can always get better. It’s a relatively easy way to see your overall performance and success jump to the next level.
Now when I explain this to my clients, there’s always a lot of head-nodding and agreement.
Ambitious leaders completely get how crucial it is to move their ideas forward, and they’re eager to learn something new that will give them an edge in doing that.
But after all the head-nodding, the next question usually is: “So explain to me what the difference is between influence, persuasion, and presence?”
Weelll……….
You could write a books and books on that topic, if you chose to. In fact you spend a lifetime writing.
And because there are so many lenses through which you could look at these skills…….like psychology or linguistics, or management theory, or neuroscience, or even philosophy…….you could also get a lot of different views and even disagreement.
But generally my clients aren’t looking for the perfect definition of each of these categories.
Instead, they’re looking for a simple way of distinguishing between each skill so they know which skill they need to focus on and why.
And I suspect most of you listening to this podcast feel the same way.
So the purpose of this episode is to give you a simple framework for thinking about influence, persuasion, and presence so that when we’re talking about these categories in future episodes, you already have an understanding of these terms and aren’t scratching your head over the difference.
So let’s start first with the concept of influence.
The dictionary defines influence as “the capacity to affect others by intangible means.”
It’s not the actual ACT of affecting others. It’s having the CAPABILITY to affect them.
Translating that to the world of the workplace, when you increase your INFLUENCE, you are creating an environment where you are mor elikely to affect the decisions and behaviors of others.
You are creating an environment that make it more likely that your ideas will be heard and that they will be accepted and supported by others.
Notice that I said influence is about creating an environment.
When you’re working on building your influence, you’re not lobbying for a particular idea.
You’re instead working on your reputation and on how other people perceive you.
Just exactly HOW are you doing that?
You might be adding to your credentials. You might be reinforcing your title and role. You might be growing your expertise. And perhaps most importantly, you might be cultivating and strengthening your connections and relationships.
There are a lot of ways that you might be building the trust, respect and goodwill that other people have for you.
We’ll talk about particular strategies that you can use in many future episodes of this podcast.
And in the leadership coaching that I do and the courses that I teach, we actually develop customized plans for growing your own influence.
But for our purposes today, the important things for you to take away is that influence is the ENVIRONMENT that you’re creating to make it easier for you and your ideas to be taken seriously.
So now let’s take a look at the skill of persuasion.
When you’re trying to persuade, you’re doing something much more specific than creating an environment.
The dictionary defines persuasion as causing another person to DO something or to BELIEVE something through reasoning and argument.
So in the work world, this is a common activity, isn’t it?
You have an idea or a point of view, and you want others to support it.
In order to do that, you need to use the skill of persuasion.
Now, in the work world when we think about persuading someone, we often think about such things as data, logic, and best practices.
Knowing how to marshal these things to support your argument is definitely a great and necessary skill to have.
But there is a treasure trove of additional strategies that you can use to become even more persuasive than you already are. And chances are, you’re not yet using many of them.
You could be leveraging people’s emotions, for example, or finding new ways to link your proposal to the organizational strategy. You might restructure the organization of your presentation to increase its persuasive power, or shorten or lengthen it depending on the audience.
There are a lot of tips and strategies that will increase your persuasiveness.
But for now, your take-away should be that persuasion is the set of skills associated with convincing someone to do a particular thing or to have a particular belief.
Finally, what about that thing called “presence”?
Presence can be a tricky and confusing concept to grasp.
The dictionary definition of presence is “the bearing, carriage, and air of a person.”
If we go by the dictionary definition alone, we might think of presence as a superficial and unimportant thing. But in the work world, that’s not the case.
Presence is the combination of all the big and little signals we’re sending out as to whether or not we are a person to be taken seriously.
We are sending those signals out all the time, by the way……whether we’re doing that consciously or not.
It could be how we’re dressed. It could be our tone of voice or our posture. It could be behaviors that reflect our character like whether we act with courtesy or with integrity. And it could be the mindset and energy that we bring to the workplace.
All these are different types of ways in which we are signaling to others people who we are and what we stand for.
In future podcasts, we’ll explore the dozens of ways in which we can be sending these signals.
Wise leaders think very carefully about what presence they bring to the table, instead of shrugging this off and taking those signals for granted.
They know how they show up will be noticed……and people will draw conclusions about that.
They want their presence…..their behavior, body language and mindset—to be consistent with what they want to achieve, not to be inconsistent and undercut them.
With the right presence, they are sending the signal they want to send….”I’m believable or I’m strong, or I’m trustworthy, and therefore my ideas are worth listening to.”
So there you have it….a quick guide to the differences between influence, persuasion and presence.
Influence is the environment you create in order for YOU to be taken seriously.
Persuasion is the set of skills you use to have your IDEA be taken seriously.
And presence is the combination of all those signals you send out through your behavior, body language and mindset as to who you are and whether that’s consistent with what you’re trying to do.
When we grow our influence, persuasion and presence skills, we make it EASIER for other people to understand the value of our ideas ……and therefore make it EASIER for them to agree with those ideas and support them.
As a result, our win rate increases. And that, of course, is a very good thing when your goals is to make a meaningful difference in the world.
OK, my friends, looking forward to exploring some specific tips and strategies with you in the coming weeks of this podcast. I’ll catch you next time…….