Influence for Impact
Hodges L. Golson, Ph.D.
Published by H. Lloyd Publishing at Smashwords
Copyright 2011
ISBN: 978-0-9835974-1-4
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Kind Words for the Book
“I’ve always found MPG’s methodologies to be professional, valid, useful and cost effective. Dr. Golson’s book, Influence for Impact, is a natural offshoot of their work and offers valuable insights and practical suggestions. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who must work with people in organizations.”
– David Dorman, Chairman of the Board, CVS Caremark (Former CEO, ATT)
“Dr. Golson has developed and clearly articulated a simple but comprehensive guide to personal influence and hence, effectiveness in organizations that is grounded in solid research and in his extensive practical experience. He has created an essential handbook for leaders at all levels in organizations.”
– Robert Miles, Ph.D., CEO of Corporate Transformation Resources and author of Leading Corporate Transformation and Corporate Comeback
“Dr. Golson’s work combines in-depth research with years of practical experience. His insights make this book a valuable resource for anyone who wants to succeed in today’s complex organizations.”
– Marie McIntyre, Ph.D.., CEO of Executive Counselors and author of The Management Team Handbook and Secrets to Winning at Office Politics
CONTENTS
Chapter 2 – A Widely Shared Obstacle
Chapter 3 – First Foundations: Characteristics of the Effective Persuader
Chapter 4 – The General Laws of Influence and Persuasion
Chapter 6 – Sales School for Non-Sales People
Chapter 7 – Organizational Survival Skills and Practical Advice
Chapter 8 – Conflict, Confrontations and Difficult Interactions
* * * * * *
These ideas and observations are based on data from over fifty years of research in social psychology and other disciplines on influence, persuasion and attitude change. In addition to the academic research, I was able to draw on my practical experience (having personally conducted over ten thousand psychological assessments) as well as the insights of some of the smartest people I know: my clients and colleagues.
People who make their living persuading and influencing others use these techniques and ideas consistently and naturally in the course of their work. But that doesn’t mean this knowledge is applied widely or effectively by those who need it most. This is the target audience of Influence for Impact – people who are busy doing their jobs day in and day out, and who assume their good works and results will speak for them.
What Do Successful People Look Like?
Leaders often ask, “What are the characteristics of high performers?” Success competencies are a function of the knowledge, skills, abilities, and personal characteristics that enable a person to perform well in a particular job. Although there are many different specific success profiles for different jobs, there are similarities in people who do well across jobs and companies.
There are two basic types of competencies. The foundation competencies are built into the system for the most part. These are the innate abilities and the enduring behavioral patterns we get through the luck of the draw from the gene pool and from our early learning and background experiences. This is the raw material we have to work with. The surface competencies are the result of later training and experience in schools, early jobs, and other learning experiences. People can develop a wide range of surface competencies depending on the types of foundation competencies they possess.
At the Most Basic Level, Peak Performance Depends on Four Foundation Competencies—the I-Competencies. They are described in greater depth in Chapter 3.
The Intellectual Competency. Some facets of this competency can be developed (e.g., by learning the use of various analysis and problem-solving techniques, by learning to reorient one’s perspective more toward the global and strategic), but there are critical components here that are seemingly hard-wired. Training and coaching in this area is usually not a good investment.
The Interpersonal Competency. The subset of this competency that we call “influence” is the focus of this book. This is the success factor that straddles the gap between the foundation and surface competencies. Although some of the facets that make up this competency are seemingly hard-wired into the structure of personality, it is the one competency in this group that can be significantly developed with appropriate analysis, diagnosis, effort, and training.
The Integrity Competency. People can learn to be more consistent and to follow through with details and commitments more appropriately, but if they have a basic problem getting others to trust them, nothing else matters much. This is a very difficult area to change if the problem is rooted in basic values and personality structure rather than in naïveté or ignorance of appropriate norms and behavior.
The Intensity Competency. This is also a factor that is quite difficult to change. Our levels of stamina and energy can certainly improve with better health habits, but this performance factor also includes the basic drive and motivation toward accomplishment. Unfortunately, some people lack these basic characteristics, and there seems to be little we can do to make significant changes here over time if the problem lies in basic constitution or chronic passivity.
Our clear experience is that there is a process of selection (some of which is self-selection) that weeds out people with significant gaps in any of these four competencies. However, it is also our experience that there are many people who ascend to the middle executive or key individual performer ranks who have some spottiness in a variety of these dimensions. As the Appendix shows, the most frequent developmental need is in the influence/persuasion facet of the interpersonal competency. The bad news is that it takes a little effort to develop this set of skills. The good news is that they are developable, in contrast to some of the deficits associated with the other success competencies.
Context – the World of the Consultant
As psychologists who work in the real world of business applications, we rely as much on observation and practical experience as on academic research to help our clients, but our practice is based on scientific research. Our primary reasons for being in business are to help our clients get the right people in the right jobs and to help people on the job meet their full potential. To do that, we employ all appropriate tools at our disposal. The most important and useful of these tools is the psychological assessment. It is a cornerstone of our work. The assessment consists of a structured interview that covers the person’s background, educational and work experience, self-perceptions, insights, and general goals. It also includes standardized testing and personality inventories. Psychological assessment is a unique and valuable source of data, which can be used for the selection of and development of people. Although the effectiveness of the psychological assessment has been validated in many ways over a wide range of environments, the Appendix to this paper offers clear return-on-investment data further illustrating the usefulness of this tool.
The impetus for this book was the observation that many, if not most, successful executives have sometimes-significant gaps in the soft skills of influence and insight. We come to these conclusions after many thousands of psychological assessments on high-level executives, developmental assessments for people in high-potential programs, and extensive experience coaching successful leaders.
The explicit assumption of this book is that you’re interested in improving your ability to get what you want by gaining more power in the organization. We intend to help you do this by presenting what psychologists have learned about interpersonal skills, persuasion, and influence in a useful, practical format.
Some of the seminal insights about influence and persuasion generated by early academic studies are still very applicable. Much of this research focused on questions of compliance and conformity and on finding ways to change attitudes and behavior. It sought to answer troubling questions about how seemingly normal people could make such bad decisions in response to authority (e.g., Nazi Germany). However, insights from social influence research have been used to help all sorts of people and organizations present their messages more effectively. Although this material is written primarily for people who need to increase their impact in their organizations by further developing and applying skills of influence and persuasion, these observations, research findings, and suggestions can be of benefit to anyone, even seasoned salespeople. They can help anyone who wants to increase his or her ability to understand, persuade, and influence others.
One of the keys to establishing credibility (a cornerstone of influence) is trust. If people don’t trust you, you’ll eventually have no ability to influence them, unless you’re the boss. And if you’re a boss people don’t trust, you’ll soon realize that they can be very clever in finding ways to help you fail. Therefore, we assume you realize that although the research, principles, and suggestions presented on the following pages can be used in a manipulative manner, it will only erode your effectiveness over time if you use them that way. Besides obvious ethical considerations, and from a purely pragmatic viewpoint, if you’re perceived as manipulative or untrustworthy, you’ll be toast in a short while.
A Self-Assessment
Before we know where we are going, we need to be sure we know where we are. As a first step to increasing your powers of influence, you need to know where your gaps and strengths are likely to be. To facilitate this process of insight development, please complete the following brief self-diagnostic instrument. As with all self-descriptive instruments, the accuracy of your results will depend on the accuracy of your self-perceptions and your willingness to answer in a straightforward manner.
Read each statement and determine how much you think it describes your behavior on the job. Be honest with yourself or this is a waste of time. If you’re unsure about some of the answers, get input from others who know you at work and who have had a chance to observe your behavior. The responses are:
0 = Usually Not True
1 = Sometimes True
2 = Usually True
3 = Always True
After scoring yourself on the items, record the total number of points for each factor in the spaces immediately below them. At the end, add all of the scores of the individual Factor Totals and record that figure in the Sum of All Factor Totals space.
Factor A
___ I find appropriate ways to make sure people know about my credentials and expertise. If I don’t have expert credentials, I enlist the aid of those who do, or I find authoritative sources that agree with my position.
___ I pay attention to the image I project. I typically dress the part of the authority figure.
___ I actively try to be a good resource of accurate data and information. I show the logic, data, and reasoning behind my position to help people understand and accept it.
___ FACTOR A TOTAL
Factor T
___ I always follow through and meet my commitments.
___ I never exaggerate or oversell, and I acknowledge the validity of other points of view when they have merit.
___ I never betray confidences.
___ FACTOR T TOTAL
Factor L
___ I try to develop acquaintances and friends at work, finding shared interests and common ground.
___ I try to make people feel good and to show them that we’re a lot alike.
___ I show an active interest in people and encourage them to talk about themselves.
___ FACTOR L TOTAL
Factor R
___ I do small favors for others whenever I have the chance.
___ I always try to do something helpful for the other person first.
___ I let others do me favors, even when I may not need them.
___ FACTOR R TOTAL
Factor C
___ I try to get others to agree with small requests before asking for a larger commitment.
___ I get others to state their opinions and/or to agree with my requests or ideas in public when possible.
___ I present my case in such a way that the other person will realize he’s being consistent with his previous positions by agreeing with it.
___ FACTOR C TOTAL
Factor S
___ I show how my ideas or position will help the other person avoid some sort of loss.
___ I make sure others see that my information is new or in short supply and consequently that they need to make good use of it before it’s widely known.
___ I appeal to their fear of losing something to help me persuade people to my point of view.
___ FACTOR S TOTAL
Factor SC
___ I try to find out as much as possible about the people and groups that are important to the other person before making my case.
___ I try to get active participation from others in the problem-solving and decision-making process.
___ I show how my solutions will be well accepted by the peer groups that are important to the other person.
___ FACTOR SC TOTAL
___ SUM OF ALL FACTOR TOTALS (See below for interpretation.)
0–21: Finish this book ASAP!! Then read it again.
22–42: Looking OK but you may need a little polish in a few places.
43–63: Why aren’t you out selling?
OK, so this isn’t a rigorous statistical tool. However, it will help bring some things into focus for you and help in the self-diagnostic process as you read the following chapters. Keep your individual factor scores handy for later reference.
* * * * *
Everything you do in an organization is about getting results. It’s why organizations exist. The real measure of success in an organization is how well a person achieves results. To do so, one must be able to influence others. Even the most solitary individual contributors need to have influence so that their contributions will be accepted and therefore have an impact on results.
Power is a resource that can be used to change the behavior of others and to get results. Influence is the application of that resource. Power can come from your position in the organization (if you’re the boss, your power comes from hierarchical authority). Power can also come from your own personal characteristics and behaviors (e.g., charisma or expertise).
You can gain influence by being able to solve problems cleverly, being able to recognize and explain good solutions developed by others, and being able to persuade others of the merit of your own solutions or ideas. You can also gain influence by being a good colleague or subordinate and by helping others to get their own needs met. If you do these things consistently over time, you will be seen as a resource for others, and therefore you will begin to be able to influence them more effectively. As your influence increases, your power to have a greater impact on the results of the organization increases.
As a prelude to the exploration of ways to increase your own influence and power within an organization, it will help to clearly understand how results are achieved. The Cycle of Results described below offers a conceptual framework for doing so.
The Cycle of Results
The Goal: Primary Importance
Work is accomplished in a series of steps in a predictable cycle. Before anything can be accomplished, there must be a goal that provides the vision of the accomplishment. This is the absolute cornerstone of achieving results. Author, former business school dean and corporate transformation expert Robert Miles notes that the clear and compelling goal is the first step in the implementation of transformational vision. The importance of the goal can’t be over-emphasized. Many textbooks have been written and much research has been published on this topic. This is the first and most important step in the Cycle of Results. Its importance to influence is obvious—we need to know what we want the other to think or do before we can know the best way to get him or her to accept our ideas. The goal frames our efforts and channels them in the right direction.
But goals need to have certain characteristics to be effective. First, they must be clear. Everyone must understand them. If goals are fuzzy, the plans will be fuzzy, and therefore the results will be fuzzy. For instance, “Our goal is to be a world-class service provider” sounds nice, but how do you know it when you see it? What are the metrics and definitions? Or “I’m going to lose ten pounds.” Sound familiar? This is a little better because it includes a measurable result. But it still doesn’t offer enough definition about when or how this will be accomplished and consequently will probably end up in the dustbin of good intentions like so many other resolutions. Goal clarity gets everyone aligned and moving in the same direction.