Did you know that Influencing Others is a competency that you can develop? We define the Influencing Others competency as, "Personally affecting others’ actions, decisions, opinions or thinking." Who do you know who is highly skilled at Influencing Others?

With practice, you can grow and develop this skill just like other "hard skills" you might be good at like cooking, public speaking, employee coaching, or playing golf.

How do I grow as a leader: Influencing Others?

Those with a highly developed skill of Influencing Others exhibit the following:

• Utilizes the knowledge of others’ needs, wants, beliefs, attitudes, and behavior to promote a concept, product or service.
• Builds trust and credibility before attempting to promote concepts, products or services.
• Understands and utilizes the behaviors of others to personally affect an outcome.
• Uses logic and reason to develop rational arguments that challenge current assumptions.
• Identifies and addresses the barriers that prevent people from seeing the benefits.
• Adapts techniques to understand and meet the needs and wants of those being influenced. Understands the role self-awareness plays in influencing others.
• Leverages a person in an indirect but important way.
• Produces effects on the actions, behavior and opinions of others.
• Brings others to their way of thinking without force or coercion.

Behaviorally, it comes more naturally and requires less focus for some of us to influence others effectively. For the rest of us, it is a skill we may need to invest energy into developing in order to be more effective. Our Driving Forces will reward for some skills and not others. If your job or your environment demands something from you that isn't naturally present in your Behaviors or Driving Forces, you can develop it in your Competencies. 

What about you? How developed are you at the competency of Influencing Others? What about the people on your team? Is this something you want your team to be strong in?