“We’ve been ranging over a lot of current topics lately, and for so many of them we feel we’ve visited them before – everything old is new again. Here is what we’ve been finding out about influence and how we’ve been making it new again.”

How do you observe yourself or your colleagues influencing each other? What kinds of influence do you see as critical for lasting positive changes?

Highlights

00:01:40
Sharon is working with the leadership of a large non-profit with an enormous number of volunteers, who do the real work of the organization.
00:04:00
Working with volunteers is all about building a sense of community and purpose to motivate people to do what needs to be done – all through “influence”.
00:06:15
Power and influence are orthogonal.
00:08:05
Compliance and influence are also different things.
00:10:20
Motivation comes from within – it doesn’t get applied from outside. You can’t inoculate people with it.
00:15:55
The model Sharon’s looking at currently looks at 6 types of influence.
00:20:20
Convincing, selling, and so on, is also not influence. And influence will get you more mileage.
00:22:23
Benefit must accrue on both sides for change to last – this is real influence.
00:24:30
You can give feedback if you can do it with caring and respect. If you don’t care and respect the other person, don’t bother. The same is true of influencing – do I care about this person?
00:28:00
An important element of influence is creating an environment that supports what you want to have happen.