How To Influence Others: [Use These 6 Best Tips & Techniques]
In this new article you’ll find out how to influence others.
Learning to influence others is a skill that anyone can learn. You don’t have to be a certain personality type, or super-confident to be an excellent influencer and negotiator.
This article provides key insights on how to develop these skills in a brief space of time that will enable you to convince others to your way of thinking, while winning new clients and customers on the way, encourage others to take action through positive reinforcement, make friends quickly and simply, gaining popularity.
Also, to use 10 tools that you can use to convince others of your argument and build stronger relationships and make more significant interactions with everybody you encounter.
How To Influence Others:
Be Nice
Being nice invokes a positive response from others.
This can be in the form of being supportive, empathetic, tolerant, generous and infectiously happy.
Rather than judging someone, take a minute out to understand where they’re coming from, what their values are and what makes them tick.
Having a better understanding of them will create better interactions going forward as you can present information to them in a way that they will be capable to digest more easily.
Refrain from criticising, complaining or condemning them or anyone else as this creates a negative image of you, which may result in them ignoring what you must say.
You may be tempted to ask someone else to change, but in the long-term it is going to be more beneficial for you to change your behaviour.
Work out what makes people tick and what their values are
Most people have basic needs such nearly as good health, food, sleep, enough money to lead a good quality of life, sexual needs, the health and well-being of their kids and the need to feel important.
The latter need is the one that most frequently can be the toughest to fulfil (assuming all other needs have been met).
This need drives people to seek success, drive expensive cars, dress fashionably, be seen at certain events and places and so on.
Once you can work out what will satisfy a person’s need to feel important, you can persuade others by using this knowledge to make them feel important.
Refrain from saying or taking any action that could chip away at someone’s sense of importance. For example, providing somebody who works for you with criticism can demoralise them.
Instead focus on what they’re doing well. This positive reinforcement makes them open to listening to any feedback on how to improve on their weaknesses.
Also remember that people can see through incorrect or false praise, which comes across as insincere or dishonest. Be positive, honest and sincere when providing positive feedback.
Help others achieve their goals
Helping others get to where they want to get to will absolutely earn you brownie points. It will also help you better understand them and understand what drives and motivates them.
Six Principles to Get People to Like You
When it comes to influence, building new relationships and creating positive interactions is critical (1).
These 6 principles will particularly create strong relationships that will make it easier to influence the other party:
1. Be genuinely interested in others. Create a sense of loyalty and sincerity by being genuine.
2. Smile when you first meet someone. Smile with sincerity.
People pick up on insincerity and a disingenuous smile. An earnest, warm smile will draw people to you and create a robust first impression in addition to an invite to come and talk to you.
3. Remember a person’s name in addition to something important about them. Note down their business, family or other interests so that when you meet them again you can recall this information and use it to kick-start a conversation with them.
Remembering these details a few person gives them a sense of importance and that you’re genuinely interested in them.
4. Be an excellent listener. Get people to discuss themselves.
It makes people feel that you’re genuinely interested in them and care. Look the person in the eye, giving them 100% of your exclusive attention.
Listening is a very important personal skill. By listening to an angry person you can help them release their emotion and feel better.
Interestingly enough people tend to find the person who was listening to them the most interesting, despite this person never having said a word!
5. Work out what the other person is passionate about. Focus your energy and conversation on this. People love to discuss the things that bring them joy.
Theodore Roosevelt was an excellent advocate of this. He was very knowledgeable about a wide range of information so that he could take part in a conversation about virtually any subject.
6. Let someone know that you appreciate them. Appreciation is all about making someone feel valued and important. This is an innate human need.
When someone feels appreciated, it boosts his or her self-esteem and feelings of self-importance. Be wary of false flattery or praise – people can see through this and this defeats the purpose of showing someone real, genuine appreciation.
How to Influence Anyone
There are 10 ways to convince others to your way of thinking:
1. If you want to win an argument, avoid it. Disagreements tend to switch people’s defence mechanisms on.
It also makes the person who has lost the agreement feel negative. Even if you win or lose the argument one person walks away feeling deflated and that’s a ‘loss’ in itself.
2. Show respect. When someone is making a point, don’t just dismiss it. If you dismiss it, you make them feel disrespected and unimportant.
The consequences are that they’re less likely to be open to your ideas or trust you.
3. Admitting when you’re wrong can be a gorgeous trait. If the other person felt that you were wrong but didn’t raise it, by you openly admitting your mistakes, it gives you both an opportunity to agree on this.
Funnily enough this gives you credibility.
They are now more likely to quickly forgive, be open to what you must say and supportive of your opinions.
In contrast if you don’t admit that you’re wrong, you are less likely to build any credibility with them and accordingly it may be more challenging to convince them to your line of thinking.
4. Even if you feel negative, start the conversation in a positive fashion so that they’re open to what you must say. Then discuss any negative feelings or thoughts that you may have directly with them.
5. Start by discussing a subject that you both agree on. If you start with discussing something you agree on or that you have already got the same opinions about then you are already on the same side making it easier to get them to conform to your new proposal or idea.
6. Let your clients talk when they’re complaining and listen to them out. By listening to them carefully, you can better understand what precisely their issue is, where they’re coming from and then suggest an appropriate solution.
Encourage your clients to openly discuss and express their ideas.
7. Encourage ownership. Get the other person to take ownership of an idea or proposal. This way they will be more invested in the idea and certain to follow through on it.
8. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes. See things from the other person’s perspective. It will help you better understand how best to encourage or persuade them, particularly if you know what’s important to them and what approach they’re using to tackle a problem.
9. Empathise/sympathise with the other person. This can be a strong way to get someone to open up to you and your ideas.
For example, you can say “I understand how difficult this is for you. I would feel the same if I were in your shoes.” That feeling of being understood helps the other person open up to you and trust you.
10. Inspire others and encourage them to discuss their aspirations and goals. People are driven by their sense of purpose and goals; and they’ll be motivated to hear what you must say and whether your goals are aligned to theirs.
Act like a leader
When you are managing employees or a staff member, motivating them to perform is a large part of leadership. Here are some clever strategies to encourage others to perform:
1. When discussing a performance issue with someone, don’t forget to sincerely praise them for the things that they’ve done well and show them appreciation.
They are more likely to be open to what you must say on improving their performance.
2. If someone has made a major mistake – make them aware of the error, however do so in an indirect manner so that they don’t feel ashamed.
3. Discuss your own mistakes too (2), it makes you humble and it’s more likely that the other person will be open to hear what you must say about their own mistakes.
4. Rather than asking someone to directly do something, see if they come up with the same task by explaining the issue to them and see what solutions/suggestions they come up with.
They are more likely to take ownership of their own suggestion.
5. Do not embarrass or disgrace someone directly; this is counterintuitive and will push them away, achieving little from both your perspectives.
6. Even if an employee or staff member is just improving barely, praise them. You will be surprised as to how much this will encourage them to continue to improve and perform.
7. Raise the other person’s profile, to the point that they need to live up to it and work harder.
8. Always encourage and appreciate others – it positively motivates them.
9. Also let others know that you appreciate them trying out your solutions.
I want to thank you for taking the time to read my article about how to influence others. I sincerely hope its contents have been a good help to you.
