Building Professional Influence

Being heard and being able to influence others’ attitudes and behaviors is a sometimes elusive leadership quality that people feel that they may be born with or not.  In
reality, it is a skill set that can be learned.  When looking to effectively communicate, its important to be
clear on the outcomes you are looking to attain along with an awareness of how
your message may be best received by the other person or group.

Start off by thinking about why your idea/proposal would be important to the other party.  Make that the central focus of how your frame the message and/or presentation. 
This may seem obvious, but so many managers/leaders will talk about what
is important to him/her first, spending key time to make a case for what he/she
values.   For instance, if you
have a new efficiency initiative you want to implement and your staff are
working from overly full plates and would be resistant to “ one more thing” to
have to worry about, lead your discussion by acknowledging the current state of
stress and how this initiative will lighten the load. 

When preparing to communicate in a situation where you are looking to attain buy-in, also consider what your audience will most respond to both emotionally and intellectually. 
Will they need to know how an idea will lessen their pain or how much it
will enhance an already adequate process? 
Will enough of them tune into figures and statistics because they need and
want details or are you better off presenting the big picture in broad, illustrative
strokes, such as a graph that sums it all up?  Resist building your message just on what you would want to know.  If you are unsure, ask a few members of
your future audience to give you simple feedback about what gets and keeps
their attention.  Not only are you
likely to have greater impact, you will also feel more confidence going
forward.