Exerting influence

The importance of exerting influence is the topic of our fourth and last article based on my interview with Joel A. Garfinkle, author of ‘Getting Ahead – Three Steps to take your career to the next level’.

The two pillars that support influence are perception and visibility. Without them, you can’t begin to influence. With influence comes impact, which is ultimately what makes influence so different from perception and visibility.

Your ability to have impact when working on the areas of perception and visibility is limited; however, you enjoy unrestricted impact when you begin to work on your influence.

Influence means gaining others’ support to move situations and projects forward. You are able to sway opinions and have people embrace your ideas and perspectives. They go along with what you want and are loyal to your ideas. You motivate and arouse interest in others to do what is deemed important.

Use your powers of persuasion

But what if I am limited by my role or don’t have the level of seniority or the platform to be heard? Many people would make the same effort and make the false assumption that you need authority or power to have influence. This isn’t true. Many people have managed to persuade others without any formal authority or title.

Power is not necessary. Authority is not necessary. A title is not necessary. What is necessary is influence and the desire to be influential. No matter where you sit within the organization or in your life, you can make an impact.

Here are three things you can do right now:

1. Get things done. People know they can count on you to accomplish even the toughest assignments.

2. Become a ‘go-to’ person. Others seek you out for advice to accomplish the most essential tasks and to make important decisions.

3. Gain buy-in for your ideas. Your established credibility and respect will prompt people to embrace your ideas and to want to be a part of what you are doing.

Successful influencers are better than others at building strong alliances and wider bases of support, leveraging allies to gain support for their ideas.

More people come to rely on them, they lead up, gain the respect and have their opinions sought out by their superiors. They gain results from others by inspiring others to impact bottom line results. 

Herein lies the power of influence.

Increase your visibility

In the third of our series of articles based on my interview with Joel A. Garfinkle, author of ‘Getting Ahead – Three Steps to take your career to the next level’, we discuss how you can go about increasing your visibility.

The importance of visibility may not seem obvious. Perhaps working hard and producing results have been sufficient during your early career experiences for others to take notice and compensate the good work you’ve done.

You may have received past promotions based solely on merit and hard work. Your perception improves and your career may for a time move ahead nicely, you are successful but you’re stuck with nowhere to go. Talent and ability to perform take you only so far. Be warned: if you don’t proactively leverage and utilize visibility, your career will stagnate.

Start working on your visibility plan

So, what steps can I take to become more visible? Here are four things you can do:

1) Identify and obtain exposure to key decision makers in your company. Make a list of all the key players and create a strategy to become visible to each of them. You might need an introduction from another colleague to contact these individuals for advice, support or mentorship.

2) Get to meet the senior executives in your organisation or department. Don’t be intimidated by a person’s title or reputation. After all, they were all where you are today at one time in their careers! Reach out to them and make sure they know who you are. They will genuinely appreciate the initiative.

3) Proactively seek out the answer to a leader’s question. When someone in a position of influence lacks clarity on a situation or is pondering something new but isn’t able to get the answer he or she needs in that moment, that’s your cue to provide the answer.

4) Get a mentor or several mentors. These individuals can use their networks of executives with whom they liaise regularly to introduce you to top executives. As your mentors get to know you and your work, they’ll come to see that connecting you with these influential individuals will benefit everyone.

Once you have increased your visibility, you’ll become known and valued in your company. Influence is now possible. That’s the subject of our final interview.

Improve your perception

In the second in our series of articles based on my interview with Joel A. Garfinkle, author of ‘Getting Ahead – Three Steps to take your career to the next level’, we look at the importance of improving your perception…

If you fail to make yourself recognized at work, you run the risk that your peers and management may not actually know who you are, the great work you’re doing and the impact you are having on the company or the overall value you bring to the organization.

The Perception-Visibility-Influence or ‘PVI’ model will help you as employees to reveal yourselves as effective players. Once you improve perception and gain visibility, you can then start to influence outcomes and compel others to see you as a vital component of future management.

Increasing perception is vital to success. First of all, let’s start with a definition. Perception is what someone notices, sees, or is aware of. When you perceive, you often unconsciously observe what is happening without being consciously aware of the content that’s forming in your mind.

You often form opinions when you have preconceived ideas about a topic or person you’re observing, even if what you observe isn’t real or true. Perception takes the prior knowledge you already have and filters your observations through this lens.

Improve your perception – ask for feedback

The question that I myself and many of you may have often put to yourself is how do we know or how can we find out how others perceive us? To do this, you need to start by asking for feedback and proactively look for other opportunities to gauge how others perceive you.

For example, you might ask a colleague after a contentious meeting, ‘‘How did I handle the problem with Paul? Was I too defensive or was I overly aggressive?’’ Once you’ve established the appropriate level of perception, you’ll have gained a solid reputation and foundation of respect.

If you fully leverage the PVI model, you will become more valuable to a company, as its level of production and overall contribution will enhance bottom line performance.

You next task is to increase your visibility so that the people who matter know who you are and are aware of the contribution you are making. This is the second step that we’ll take in our next article.

Joel A. Garfinkle's PVI model

In the first of my series articles based on my interview with Joel A. Garfinkle, author of ‘Getting Ahead – Three Steps to take your career to the next level’, I introduce his three-pronged PVI model: improving perception, increasing visibility and exerting influence.

Won’t my work/professionalism speak for itself? That is the question as our old friend Hamlet would have said. By simply letting your work speak for itself, you’re not doing anything to help improve perception, increase your exposure or visibility with senior management. Therefore, the executives at your company won’t know how valuable you are and therefore your career won’t advance as you would like it to.

Here are four things you can do today:

1. Write down and share your accomplishments. Once you’ve done that, then you need to update management on the particular project you’re working on, including how your work is affecting its progress.

2. Prepare notes ahead of meetings. If you know that you’ll be speaking at a meeting or event, take the time to jot down what you want to say beforehand. When you have something prepared, it makes it more likely that you will speak and that you say what you mean.

3. Schedule one-to-one meetings. These are great opportunities to talk about your work and how your input and results affect your company.

4. Volunteer for events. Participating in a committee or helping to host a conference or charity event provides you with an abundance of networking opportunities. You will meet new people, talk about your work, and put your name and face in front of people who wouldn’t normally notice you.

Whether you are a new employee, a middle manager or senior executive, perception and visibility will be constant determining factors throughout your career journey.

The single biggest change you will find at the lowest rung of the ladder compared to the highest echelons are performance and influence: the former will be most important to your success when you start out while the latter assumes huge importance at the highest level.

If you apply the principles of the PIV model, you will be making significant career strides. In the next of our series of articles, we look at that all-important first step – improving your perception.