360 Degrees of Influence by Harrison Monarth

Author:Harrison Monarth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Business, Personal & Professional Development
ISBN: 9780071773553
Publisher: McGraw-Hill

Build Confidence When It Counts the Most

Because perception management is such an outward-facing strategy that depends on your accurate read of what others need and value, it connects to the issue of confidence in risk taking. It affects your offering of ideas, mounting challenges, or merely creating an opportunity to grab some face time. Before going there, you’ll want to take both the contextual dynamics of the situation and the personality and immediate priorities of the targeted party or audience into account.

Successful managers are not archetypical. They come in all sizes and shapes and, more important, from all points on the personality scale. Some are effluent and aggressive extroverts; others are more thoughtful and introspective by nature. Your perceived confidence, then, is not merely one of cultivated extroversion, but rather the adjustment of your natural style to those you work with and under. In the case of a specific influencing approach with a near-term goal, this assessment becomes a critical variable—you need to know what values, beliefs, and predispositions you’re walking into in a personal sense as much as you need to have your act together for the pitch itself.

Wharton management professor Adam Grant led a study showing that introverts are just as likely to succeed as extroverts. The variable isn’t as much their personality on this issue as it is that of subordinates, not all of whom are sensitive to the difference. Extroverted managers often collide with equally extroverted and proactive staff, whereas the same extroverts’ management of an introverted staff has a high likelihood of smooth sailing and increased profits, according to the Wharton study.

This matching of -verts, if you will, becomes a variable in the success equation. In a study of a large national pizza chain, the evidence showed that proactive workers responded better to more introverted leadership, presumably because they felt they had the latitude to create and innovate. When the situation was reversed—more passive workers reporting to an assertive boss—this too yielded higher results than when the social factors and personalities were level across the team. Putting opposite personality types on the same team can, however, also lead to conflicts and resentment when managed poorly, igniting power struggles and polarization.

Clearly, a keen understanding of others’ personality and communication style is the key to making relationships work, including the optimal pairing of introverts and extroverts in teams and leadership. The power of influence is available and attainable for both personality types.

Another study illuminates the true source of response and behavior when these dynamics start to dance. As told in an article by Joseph Grenny, coauthor of Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, the Harvard economist Felix Oberholzer-Gee conducted an experiment in which he offered folks waiting in line at the airport a cash incentive in return for their consent to cut in front of them. Predictably, more people who were offered $10 accepted the proposition than did those offered only $1. But less predictable, and the catalyst for closer examination, was the fact that the $10

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.