Guys, welcome to my Wednesday Morning Leadership. This is Val Campbell. Today I'm going to talk about how to develop influence.
And you know, John Maxwell famously said, one of my favorite sayings, "Leadership is influence, nothing more and nothing less." And it's one of my favorite topics, and I hope to shed some light on it for you today.
You know, as Maxwell notes, everyone has some level of influence. I'll maybe touch on this a little bit, you know, and that's why he points out that everyone is a leader. But just because you have influence doesn't mean you're a good leader, and I think he's a hundred percent spot on with that. And I'm gonna say two things about that. You can see the quote behind me here: "The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority." I think there's too many people who have authority that really aren't being effective in their influence. I'm going to hit on that a bit with point one.
But I just want to be clear that there is a big difference between real influence and manipulation. And here's what I'm talking about, okay? Because it's important. You know, again, as we said, leadership is influence. And influence is the ability to affect someone else's behavior because of your either real or perceived authority, knowledge, or relationship with that person. You see, real leaders, real leaders in power, they build up, they inspire others. But manipulation is the power to influence someone else to your advantage, or really for your sole benefit, and it's often done without the other person's knowledge. So there's a difference there.
So a couple questions to start off here: So how do you influence? And what are some of the needed skills? So the lists are many. I've chosen this one of seven, and so I'm gonna talk about that. So seven tips to develop your influencing skills. And what we're talking about here is you really gotta have a combination of communication and interpersonal skills, which I call people skills, to help you get the results you need. So those are critical. You've got communication and interpersonal skills; those are critical.
And the first one here I'm going to talk about is rapport. And this one is huge. That quote I just gave you about leadership today is about influence, not authority. I think too many people with authority don't necessarily have rapport with you. And maybe they're in a position, leader, they're your boss or manager; they really have to take time to develop rapport for you to want to follow them. They do have leadership because they're in a position; they're positional leaders. But here's what rapport is, guys. Here's what I'm talking about; this is so critical. It's a close and harmonious relationship in which the people or the groups, or let's say teams, that are concerned understand each other's feelings or ideas and they communicate well. Right there, there's some synergy there, right?
But I think not developing rapport first is a critical mistake. And I'm going to tell you why. Here, you create rapport with a person that you're trying to influence. And it may sound like common sense, and common sense isn't so common, but if they like you and trust you, there's a greater possibility that you will be able to persuade them, right? You can't truly influence someone without rapport. I'm going to get onto this a little bit further too, but on social media, we see far too many people. I see far too many people trying to make connections with me that have spent no time trying to build rapport. They don't want to build rapport; they just want to kind of try to influence me and, again, get me to buy something or invest something or get involved in some deal.
Guess what? I think if you don't build rapport first, it's going to be almost impossible. In my book, that's a door closer. If you don't build rapport with me, I really don't care what you want to offer me or sell me or anything else. Nothing else matters. Take some time to build rapport, okay? It's so critical.
And that delves right into number two, which is the skill of listening. Okay, I can spend a lot of time talking about this, but listen and show that you're listening. Okay? If someone feels valued, they're more likely to be persuaded to your point of view. Okay? That should make sense. And that requires empathy: the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. So I think listening and empathy go hand in hand. I think to really listen, you have to have empathy for somebody else. And again, that's the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
Because otherwise, what they're saying, if you say you're listening, it's going in one ear and out the other. But if you have empathy, you're able to understand and share the feelings of others.