How to Influence Your Manager & The Leadership Team

If you want to enter the management ranks and progress, a big part of your future success will depend on you learning how to influence others at work, how to influence your manager and potentially how to influence the leadership team. Unfortunately, just having an opinion doesn’t count for much – everyone has an opinion. To influence others at work, you need to back up your opinion with evidence that your opinion will lead to improvements or better outcomes.  Putting yourself in the other person’s shoes is a critical first step when using influencing skills. This gives you insight into how to position your proposal in a way that helps them.  Most people understand that trust is a key factor to influence your manager and to influence your stakeholders. Without trust, most other influencing tactics fall flat. Likability and professional competence go a lot way to build trust and significantly increasing your ability to influence others at work.  “How to Influence Your Manager & The Leadership Team” details 9 tactics that teach you how to increase your influence at work and 3 communication factors that will further improve your influence.  If you are thinking about how to influence without authority at work, then a give before you take approach - spotting opportunities to help others and building up a “favour bank” can work wonders.  I also cover 4 other key influencing tactics which add weight to your opinion and I have successfully used a lot to influence my manager and many others over the years.  Building your influencing skills is critical to progressing your career through the management ranks and into leadership positions whatever business you work in.  Try out each of the tactics in “How to Influence Your Manager & The Leadership Team” and practice them regularly. You will end up using these tactics naturally and you influence at work will only increase.