Step 8

Promote Influence Skills

“Who shall set a limit to the influence of a human being?”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mari, a senior leader, was thrilled to be working with Patrick, who was slated to be developed for a senior manager role. Patrick was a product manager with an appliance manufacturer. Mari had been working with him for over a year, and they had made considerable progress with his strategic leadership and competitive insights.

Patrick had just been tapped to lead a team charged with identifying how to address the slumping sales level of their signature products. They knew customer interests were changing due to competitive products and demand for continuously enhanced features. The challenge for Patrick’s team was to determine how the core products could have a variety of adaptable new elements to retain and expand their customer base. Patrick’s was one of two teams charged with the same task, and he was worried about getting the funding to move their ideas forward.

Patrick reported to Mari that he and his team had conducted an in-depth analysis on the sales performance of two of their core products and identified customer response trends for the last 15 months. They had also researched similar products in the marketplace. After interviewing their customers and distributors, they uncovered rich insights about their customers’ changing needs. Patrick understood exactly what new features would surpass their competition. He had asked Mari to help with the next steps of taking this to the finish line so the new designs could get into the marketplace within six months. “Mari, I grew up as a design engineer. My skills are growing, but what do I know really about corporate decision making?”

Mari had to check her desire to jump in and resolve Patrick’s problem. She wanted to facilitate rather than simply give him her preferred solutions. During mentoring, he had made such great progress in other competencies; now it would all be put to a test.

What would you advise that Mari do? What would you do? We will unfold the possibilities through this chapter.

Whether your mentee is a product manager, stock analyst, trainer, social media manager, or software engineer, they will need to gain influence to get their job done successfully … we all do. This can be especially important after your mentee has gained skills from the mentoring and you want to boldly challenge them to apply those skills more broadly. As their mentor, you have gotten to know them, helped them understand their internal drivers, and built a trusted relationship with them. You are in the best possible position to promote influence skills. It is the next natural step in expanding your mentee’s growth, and another component that will make your mentoring masterful.

In a world of interconnectedness, every significant project, every important decision, and every operational change requires your mentee to influence others. For many mentees, in their day-to-day interactions, their points of influence are already in place and working well. But how is influence achieved when mentees take risks and broaden themselves, reach out to new connections, face new obstacles, and take on a more strategic focus? Seasoned mentors love this challenge; it can take their mentees to the next level of success, focusing on a number of important skills: becoming highly effective at interpersonal relationships, building credibility, communicating effectively, becoming a trusted partner, and more.

To influence is to have an effect on the decisions, direction, drive, and actions of others. I would add that to influence well, this needs to be done ethically and with the best of intentions. When influence is used effectively, your mentee does not need to rely on authority or power to get work done through others. In effect, you are demonstrating influence in this very process with your mentee. Influence is a useful tool to add to their skill set, and can be used in whatever role they take for the balance of their career.

Recognize Influence Opportunities and Challenges

Early in their mentoring, still as an individual contributor, Patrick told Mari, “I’m beyond frustrated. For two weeks, I’ve been pitching the idea to my manager that we need a cross-function team to address the issues uncovered by customer analytics, and it’s gotten nowhere. Yesterday, Roger made a similar recommendation, and the two of them are already working on the plans.” Mari thought about this, and at the time, figured it was a 50–50 chance that the boss was playing favorites (as Patrick assumed); or it might just be that Patrick needed to learn about influencing.

All too often, when successful in typical interactions, people believe they are doing a good job of influencing. It is when they are out of their element, however, that they really get tested. Unaware of their need to influence differently, mentees may view the obstacles as external and out of their control.

Here are a few telling signs that your mentee needs to increase their influence capabilities:

• feels their ideas are overlooked, even after repeated attempts

• expects logic and facts to sell their project, action, or idea

• pressures others with demands

• reports a weak relationship with customers

• does not value growing their network

• believes that getting results are best accomplished “by the book”

• expects to get an immediate response to requests.

Look for a repeated pattern. If you see a trend, as Mari did, initiate a conversation by asking about your mentee’s style of influence to get things accomplished with others. Gear your questions to raise insight from the inside out (Guiding Principle #6: Explore the internal world as a driver for external actions), helping them see that their preferred manner of influence is not the only, or necessarily the best, way. Help them understand that by trying new approaches, they may gain a handle on things they thought were circumstantial and out of their control. Use the sample questions in Tool 8-1 with your mentee to start the discussion about the need to influence.

Given Patrick’s current situation, managing his team to make product breakthroughs, Mari used a set of questions to help him identify that he preferred to influence by having the data and charts do the talking. When she asked how he would get the marketing team on board with his product enhancements, he was stumped. “Well, they usually like a bit of a psychological angle with the end customer, but I’m not sure how to get that across,” Patrick admitted. Realizing he did not have a good answer, the discussion left him feeling panicked and wanting to learn more. If he expected this current project to be a successful step on his path to senior management, he would need to increase his influence, and bridge from his own approach to those of the decision makers and stakeholders.

TOOL 8-1

QUESTIONS TO START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT INFLUENCE

• What do you value most when others, such as peers, are asking for your buy-in or to take action on their behalf? • Can you provide an example of how you influenced someone on something important to you in the last month? • How do you identify who should be influenced by you? • Do you use the same approach for each person or team you are influencing? • What, typically, are your expectations for influencing another? • What do you find are varying ways that people are influenced? • How do you want others to feel as a result of your influencing conversations? • What does your style of influence tell you about yourself?

Foster Four Influence Skills

It wasn’t long ago that influencing others translated to exerting pressure, winning, and persuasion tactics. In fact, lots of “how-to” books were written on the subject, especially oriented to negotiations and sales. Influencing others definitely had an “I” centric connotation—getting what I want and getting it my way. However, that type of approach is extremely short lived. Without direct power over that person, how could you go back to those same people and expect them to cooperate a second time or a third?

Today, the benchmark is using a positive approach that is open, honest, and collaborative—no demands or unfair coercion. Your mentee can think of it this way: Would they be willing to fully share with their leaders, spouses, or even their parents, the steps they were using to gain influence? If they’re reluctant to tell the whole story because tactics were manipulative or less than honest, then something needs to change.

Mentees and mentors alike require an array of approaches for influencing, given the variety of people and situations. As shown in Figure 8-1, there are four types of capabilities that can fill your mentee’s influence portfolio.

FIGURE 8-1

FOUR SKILLS THAT INCREASE YOUR MENTEE’S INFLUENCE

Ensure Relationships Are Steeped in Trust and Credibility

To succeed in influencing others, especially regarding something significant, your mentee should not start that influence at the moment they make the request or proposal. The process of influence is deep seated and relies on a sound relationship already in place. Your mentee has a multitude of relationships with bosses, peers, customers, and stakeholders, and each has a different vested interest in their relationship with your mentee. To establish trustworthiness and credibility, help your mentee:

• Communicate openly, honestly, and discreetly. In this case, your mentee states their ideas, discloses their viewpoints, and has no secrets. They also know boundaries and keep confidential information private, so others are willing to share concerns and seek their input. There is a mutual respect between the mentee and those with whom they work. For example, if they give their word to provide feedback about how something is working, others can count on hearing back from them with the complete picture.

• Take actions consistently and with good results. Your mentee is reliable for getting the job done and follows through on promises made. They faithfully walk the talk. So when they make a request of a colleague, the colleague knows time spent supporting the mentee will be put to good use. Influence diminishes, and trust can be broken if the mentee fails to meet expectations. If this is the case with your mentee, they will have some repair work to do with that colleague (discuss the disconnect with the other person and talk about what will be needed or demonstrated to restore trust).

• Make expertise visible. Your mentee builds credibility by showing they know their job well. They demonstrate they have learned from experience and are prepared for a conversation on the subject at any time. When asked about something they do not know, they are honest about that, and use their resources to find the answer. Then, when working to influence a project team in a certain direction, the team is more confident that the mentee is ready and able to take things to the finish line.

Mari knows that Patrick’s reputation has been golden. He is viewed as a very talented design engineer, willing to find the best solutions, share his ideas, and follow through on the long list of actions to move the research and design forward. Mari feels certain he has this part of the equation—relationships steeped in trust and credibility—nailed down.

Be Responsive to Others’ Needs and Interests

If you had only a single opening in your busy week to give discretionary action to one of two colleagues, what would make you give to one over the other? There are probably a few factors, such as the nature of your relationship, whether one has done the same for you in the past, and even if you felt there could be damage done between you by not following through. One thing for sure: Over time, the person who has done the most for you will likely get the most from you. Called the “rule of reciprocity” by Alan Cohen and David Bradford, longtime experts in the field of influence, this type of exchange is at the heart in the majority of influence interactions (Cohen and Bradford 2017).

• Get to know what is important to others. No one wants to give discretionary effort to a person who is interested in only their own goals; working together should be a mutual endeavor, with both parties understanding what the other is hoping to accomplish. That requires your mentee to listen, observe, and be nonjudgmental about viewpoints that are different from their own. For example, when influencing senior executives, your mentee needs to demonstrate an understanding of long-range goals. Similarly, the operations manager wants your mentee to consider the work flow and equipment challenges.

• Offer to help—no strings attached. If your mentee wants others to take action on their behalf, they should certainly be doing the same. Your mentee can start that cycle by being helpful to others. So, if your mentee’s colleague is stumped by a problem with a client, the mentee could sit down and brainstorm with them. Next time your mentee is struggling with a deadline, that same colleague might be the first one to help. When reciprocity really flows, we do not have a feeling of obligation; we are not thinking, “Well, he did that for me, guess now I have to do this for him.” At its best, we reciprocate because we feel valued by that person.

• Be influenceable! One of the core concepts from two other leading influence experts, Mark Goulston and John Ullmen, is to be influenceable. They explain that this is not giving in, giving up, or lacking commitment to your principles and excellent results. Being influenceable means your mentee goes into conversations willing to believe that they may be partially or totally wrong; that the other person may be partially or completely right; and that something valuable can be learned from the interaction. In the end, once others view your mentee as open and willing to bring in others’ viewpoints, there can be a meeting of the minds (Goulston and Ullmen 2013).

In this category of “responsive to others’ needs and interests,” Mari helped Patrick see he was not doing so well. To begin, he had a narrow range of targeted advocates that included customers, operations, and his team. He seemed disinterested in the functions that he deemed less important, such as marketing, purchasing, and even the top executive team. They did not feel valued by him. He rarely gave people in those functions the time of day; but now, he was going to need their help to move the project forward. Mari and Patrick discussed how he could start interacting with them—really listening to their needs and interests, suspending his judgment, and figuring out ways that his team’s ideas could be influenced by these other teams.

Expand Network of Advocates

Think for a moment about a person you know who has significant and positive influence not based on authority. Others are willing to be persuaded, encouraged, and inspired by this person. Does it seem they have a lot of folks around them who are willing to be engaged in conversation? Your answer is probably “yes,” which should not come as a surprise. The best of those who influence others build a cadre of advocates.

Mentees do not necessarily need to be people persons. They do, however, need to embody what we have talked about in this chapter—engender credibility, help others without expectation of return, listen to others and understand others’ interests, communicate authentically, and provide proposals for new actions that include benefits to their stakeholders. Here is what your mentee can consider while increasing a network of advocates.

• Build a personal board of directors. Many mentees tend to have advocates from their own field and their immediate circle. But the further they venture out, the larger their projects, the more that circle needs to expand. Your mentee needs to think bigger to develop further. As a proponent for this approach, Lisa Barrington advises that while this personal board of directors won’t ever hold a joint meeting, those individuals should provide diverse perspectives to broaden your mentee’s thinking, provide feedback, and challenge them in new directions (Barrington 2018). Your mentee can identify a short list of people to get to know better: those in their discipline with a broader scope of responsibility, those who are good at influencing, and current stakeholders who do not yet know them well.

• Prepare to make the connection. As your mentee identifies those to add to their network, it is wise to identify a reason to connect that works for each of them. The easiest connections will be with people they already know and want to know better. For example, for people serving on a project team from another department, the reason to connect will be that shared project. For others who do not know your mentee, it makes sense that there is a mutual introduction from someone (a manager, a colleague, or yourself), along with a purpose to connect that is beneficial for both. Your mentee can ask for 20 minutes; not so much time to schedule, yet still enough time to have a substantive conversation. If the other person does not want to meet with your mentee right away, help your mentee view that as a part of the process, and to not take it personally. Managing this disappointment is part of building resilience—also important in gaining influence skills. Your mentee can either try contacting that person again highlighting the purpose, or simply move to the next person on the list.

• Make the connection meaningful (built to last). With a purpose in mind, your mentee meets with the potential advocate. They could be asking the other’s perspectives on business, asking about experience in executing a certain program, and suggesting ways to support them. To help boost confidence, your mentee may write out a script for the conversation in advance of the meeting—not to memorize, but more as a talking aid and a motivator to actually have the meeting. They should also know that a one-time meeting is not enough; periodic follow-ups keep the connection alive, such as providing the contact with something of value (an article referencing a topic they discussed) or a simple update about how they used the advice.

For Patrick, this all seemed overwhelming at first, and frankly he wasn’t that interested in making the time to do it. Mari had him prioritize who he would visit based on the needs of his team’s project. Patrick turned a corner when the first person he contacted, an analyst in marketing, came through immediately with very useful data. In return, Patrick provided the analyst with a few contacts he knew in the distribution chain.

Communicate Requests With Clarity and Enthusiasm

Importantly, your mentee’s influence will also come through their words and conviction. When your mentee requires others’ buy-in, budget dollars, cooperation, or specific resources, how do they get a compelling message across? Sometimes this is done in a single conversation. For larger asks, there may be multiple conversations or presentations, to the same people or to other groups.

• Be clear about the objectives. After laying much groundwork to build influence, at the point of communicating a request or ask, your mentee’s appeal should be straightforward and transparent. Vague or half-baked communication saps momentum built up out of the starting gate. They cannot meander their way into the explanation; the purpose and benefits need to be sound. Suggest that your mentee state the headline of their request in no more than two sentences. Have them practice with you.

• Satisfy intellect and reasoning. Your mentee should diligently research the facts and factors that make their case compelling, whether it is a massive competitive market analysis or observations of office operations. Even with their expertise and credibility, these well-formulated and reliable facts need to be of importance through the eyes of those to whom they are making the request. Speak to the audience’s interests—whether their priorities are in long-term benefit, immediate application, cost savings, revenue generation, or staffing needs. The “ask” is made attractive based on the mutual benefit and value.

• Engage others on an emotional level. Communication also needs to appeal to emotions, grab the other person, be optimistic, and portray a better result or future. Your mentee’s authenticity, conviction, and confidence can be magnetic. Enthusiasm lifts, inspires, and attracts followers. Stories and real examples stir others and complete the picture. But it cannot be a one-way conversation; your mentee needs to enlist others by listening and responding. As an example, a client of mine who was presenting a proposed onboarding and retention program to senior management showed all the estimated cost savings and nonfinancial benefits for the organization (that is, the logic). Then, she showed them something else: She had researched and captured the actual stories of two professionals who had recently left the company. She identified the cost of every aspect of their journeys, from recruitment to training and more. She painted a detailed picture, then summed up the associated costs and impacts for each individual case and said, “Now, let’s multiply these examples by the 250 people who have left us in the last 18 months.” The executives were wowed.

In the area of “communicate requests with clarity and enthusiasm,” Patrick had a lot going for him. His research was comprehensive, and he certainly had his facts, figures, charts, and tables in order. In his prementoring days, that was the extent of what he did to influence management. For this effort, Mari helped him appeal to the more humanistic side—telling stories, sharing customers’ excitement, showing video from focus groups. He made the meetings and presentations into a two-way dialogue, engaging stakeholders throughout the discussion, not just at the end. Mari had even suggested using humor, but he would need more practice to make that sincere. These latest presentations had the executives viewing him differently, as a more persuasive leader.

As with Mari, your conversation about influence might carry over into several meetings or become an ongoing thread during your mentoring relationship. Tool 8-2 presents questions that can help you determine your mentee’s skills with the four influence capabilities.

TOOL 8-2

UNDERSTANDING YOUR MENTEE’S INFLUENCE SKILLS

Strengthen Influence Progressively

If your mentee is working on a priority project and suddenly realizes they need to influence several people in the next two days, it may be difficult for you to help them complete that task. Strengthening influence skills is not done in a dash … it’s more like a marathon.

Consider my sister-in-law Stephanie, a master of influence in her executive role at a West Coast hospital—and a marathon runner, with over two dozen marathons to date. Watching her over the last couple decades, I have seen her consistency and deep dedication to growing both sets of skills. While her accomplishments are visible, the behind-the-scenes work is not seen by many.

Stephanie does not simply rely on what she learned in the early days; she has increasingly added more skills to address the multitude of nuances that can arise in the race. Early on, she learned the core skills: when to take short strides, when long, and how to pace. Over time, she concentrated on more sophisticated tactics, such as focusing on the excitement of running up hills because the elevation lifts her, training in harsh weather for mental fortitude, and spreading her arms open to avoid the inevitable shoulder hunch that occurs after a few hours of running. So whether she lands in Anchorage during the rainy summer season or New York on a chilly fall day, she can be confident in her readiness for the conditions that await her. Getting to that level and breadth of expertise was certainly not a quick journey.

Just like Stephanie, your mentee needs to build muscle and multifaceted skills. Strengthening influence requires discipline and conscientiousness to build a range of approaches that work well in many situations. Tenacity, testing oneself in a variety of settings, and tracking impact produces enhanced results. Help prepare your mentee for the mix of influence circumstances they will encounter as their career expands. Consider these approaches for maximizing influence skills over a period of time:

• Recognize that influence is an iterative process and often takes multiple rounds. The more complex the project or request, the more people, methods, and time required. Consider the executive who wanted to make a massive overhaul to systems that were at the heart of research data management for her company. She conducted round after round of meetings, visits, and inquiries to influence a set of strategic decision makers. She hit many brick walls, but kept plugging away. She found out she needed to tailor her approach for different players and had her advocates weigh in with advice and feedback. In all, the influence process took two years and ended with the complete buy-in for the changes and implementation she recommended. Some things, your mentee just cannot rush.

• Explicitly seek out influence opportunities to practice skills on a regular basis. For example, encourage your mentee to step in when the team needs to garner attention from a line manager. By using those skills consistently, they will be ready and confident when they need to use them for the next big effort. (Stephanie says, “Never let the muscles atrophy between races, even if marathons are 10 months apart, so that you never have to build the muscle up from zero.”) Anticipate what specific action will be required for each influence situation, such as getting more resources from management, recommending innovation, or making department improvements.

• Facilitate understanding that the difficulties encountered could be with the mentee, not the others. With each new skill, it may be necessary to go inside to learn behavior on the outside (Guiding Principle #6: Explore the internal world as a driver for external actions). For example, when Patrick first tried adding storytelling to his presentation to the executives and it went flat, he was quick to conclude that the technique was simply the wrong approach. Mari had him replay the scene to help him understand that his nervousness and lack of conviction meant he had not leveraged the story to sell his key points. This technique is tough for a numbers-driven guy. Before the next time, some rehearsal with Mari was in order.

• Track progressive results of new behaviors. Identify what worked well and why. Consider progress relative to the four types of influence skills and underscore strengths and gaps. As your mentee progresses, look for the types of results that demonstrate increasing influence. Tool 8-3 lists sample behaviors to guide you and your mentee.

• Anticipate setbacks and be tenacious. There are no guarantees, and not all attempts will be successful. There will be disagreements and roadblocks. Your mentee will need to overcome others’ objections or even lack of interest. Tenacity will be called for in the face of obstacles, and rerouting or trying a different method (Guiding Principle #5: Drive risk taking for new mindsets and behaviors). Each of these setbacks can be turned into lessons. Consider an example. No one in Jared’s department had told him that the requests for analytics after the customer survey launched would be so overwhelming. His focus had been on the design and execution of the survey, for which he had gotten lots of positive feedback. But once department heads heard that the results were in, there were demands for slicing and dicing the data in countless ways. He even had to cancel a long weekend he had planned as a respite after completing the survey. His early excitement about the requests evolved into feeling paralyzed by the workload; then he reached out to his mentor, Isaac, in between their regular meetings. In his discussion with Isaac, he identified how he could both prioritize and put boundaries on how requests would be handled. Though it was a painful lesson, he learned that these projects have multiple finish lines, and to plan for all of them at the front end, not as they occurred.

TOOL 8-3

PROOF THAT INFLUENCE SKILLS ARE INCREASING

• Mentee understands and incorporates the needs and ideas of others into the plan. • Mutual give-and-take is apparent in mentee’s mutual discussions and actions. • Others are enthusiastic about working with mentee when asked. • There is increasing interest in mentee’s vision of the project and its potential impacts. • Mentee’s network of advocates throughout the organization has increased. • More people are now seeking mentee’s counsel and support. • Mentee’s work and ability to manage changes are progressing positively; no drama. • Mentee’s requests or proposals are clear, compelling, and engaging. • Mentee is asked to be part of more wide-reaching decisions.

Turning back to our main story, in the end, Patrick benefitted greatly from having Mari guide him through building his influence skills. For a high-performing professional who believed doing excellent research and thoughtful work would get him ahead, it was eye opening and time consuming to see just how much influencing encompassed: building relationships, gaining credibility, garnering goodwill through good deeds, and broadening his communication approach. Yet, these skills will serve Patrick in many ways—not just for influencing the results of his product enhancement project. These skills have also enhanced his ability to work collaboratively across the organization, deepened his appreciation of executive management’s perspective, and increased his positive career trajectory.

You can do the same for your mentee. With the skill development in other areas they have garnered from your mentoring, advancing their influence skills will be the next essential element to propel their career.

The Next Step

The last five chapters have explored how you can advance and perfect the skills of your mentee, capping it off with greater ability to influence. Next, we’ll look at how you can advance and perfect your skills, handling the stickiest of situations that can otherwise frustrate and immobilize mentors. Learn more about addressing the challenges mentors face in step 9.