By John C. Maxwell and Jim Dornan
Everyone is an influencer of other people: It doesn’t matter who you are or what your occupation is. In fact, if your life in any way connects with other people, you are an influencer. No matter what your goals are in life or what you want to accomplish, you can achieve them faster, you can be more effective, and the contribution you make can be longer lasting if you learn how to become a person of influence. Even though we have an impact on nearly everyone around us, our level of influence is not the same with everyone. Influence doesn’t come to us instantaneously. Instead, it grows by stages.
People are first influenced by what they see. For most people, if they perceive that you are positive and trustworthy and have admirable qualities, then they will seek you as an influencer in their lives. Modeling can be a powerful influence—either positively or negatively. And it’s something that can be done even from a distance. But if you want to make a really significant impact on the lives of other people, you have to do it up close. And that brings you to the second level of influence: motivating. You become a motivational influencer when you encourage people and communicate with them on an emotional level. To increase that impact and make it long-lasting, you have to move up to the next level of influence, which is mentoring. Mentoring is pouring your life into other people and helping them reach their potential. The highest level of influence you can have in others’ lives is the multiplication level. As a multiplying influencer, you help people you’re influencing to become positive influencers in the lives of others and pass on not only what they have received from you, but also what they have learned and gleaned on their own. As you move up to the higher levels of influence and become an active influencer, you can begin to have a positive influence on people and add value to their lives. The crucial thing to remember is that your level of influence is not static.
The need for integrity today is perhaps as great as it has ever been. And it is absolutely essential for anyone who desires to become a person of influence. A person is almost never able to move up in the organization if he compromises his integrity by betraying a trust. As important as integrity is to your business success, it’s even more critical if you want to become an influencer. It is the foundation upon which many other qualities are built, such as respect, dignity, and trust. It’s crucial to maintain integrity by taking care of the little things. Integrity commits itself to character over personal gain, to people over things, to service over power, to principle over convenience, to the long view over the immediate. Character isn’t created in a crisis; it only comes to light. Developing and maintaining integrity require constant attention. The development of integrity is an inside job. Ultimately, you are responsible for your choices. No number of titles, degrees, offices, designations, awards, licenses, or other credentials can substitute for basic, honest integrity when it comes to the power of influencing others. A good reputation exists because it is a reflection of a person’s character.
Integrity is your best friend. And it’s also one of the best friends that your friends will ever have. A person of integrity influences others because he wants to bring something to the table that will benefit them. The bottom line when it comes to integrity is that it allows others to trust you. And without trust, you have nothing. Trust is the single most important factor in personal and professional relationships. And it is the key to becoming a person of influence. Today with most people, you must prove your trustworthiness first. That’s what makes integrity so important if you want to become a person of influence. Trust comes from others only when you exemplify solid character. If you want to become someone who can positively influence other people, you need to develop the following qualities of integrity and live them out every day: Model consistency of character, employ honest communication, value transparency, exemplify humility, demonstrate your support of others, fulfill your promises, embrace an attitude of service, and encourage two-way participation with the people you influence. When you earn people’s trust, you begin to earn their confidence, and that is one of the keys to influence. In the end, you can bend your actions to conform to your principles, or you can bend your principles to conform to your actions. Integrity begins with a specific, conscious decision.
The best way to guard yourself against a breach in integrity is to make a decision today that you won’t sell your integrity: not for power, revenge, pride, or money—any amount of money. If you consistently do what’s right in the little things, you’re less likely to wander off course morally or ethically. A big part of integrity is following through consistently on your responsibilities. If you know what you stand for and act accordingly, people can trust you. You are a model of the character and consistency that other people admire and want to emulate. And you’ve laid a good foundation, one that makes it possible for you to become a person of positive influence in their lives.
If you desire to become an influencer in others’ lives, start by nurturing them. At the heart of the nurturing process is genuine concern for others. As you try to help and influence the people around you, you must have positive feelings and concern for them. Most people are desperate for encouragement. Even if a few people in their lives build them up, you still need to become a nurturer to them because people are influenced most by those who made them feel the best about themselves. Your goal is others’ growth and independence. If you nurture others but allow them to become dependent on you, you’re really hurting them, not helping them.
Before you can do anything else in the lives of others, you must show them love. Most people will do nearly anything for you if you treat them respectfully. Where love focuses on giving to others, respect shows a willingness to receive from them. Another important part of nurturing is giving people a sense of security. Everyone is incredibly hungry for appreciation and recognition. Remember people’s names and take time to show them you care. Few things help a person the way encouragement does. When a person feels encouraged, he can face the impossible and overcome incredible adversity. And the person who gives the gift of encouragement becomes an influencer in his life.
Only when you have a sense of peace about yourself and who you are will you be able to be other-minded and give yourself away to others. If you want to help people improve their quality of life, become more productive at work, and develop more positive relationships, then build their self-worth. Positive influencers understand the need for a sense of belonging and do things that make people feel included. Great leaders are particularly talented at making their followers feel they belong. Another thing that people gain when they are nurtured is a better perspective on themselves. For most people, it’s not what they are that holds them back. It’s what they think they’re not. People who have a great deal of self-respect and who believe that they have significance are usually respected and made to feel valued by others. The key to how you treat people lies in how you think about them. It’s a matter of attitude. Hope is perhaps the greatest gift you can give others as the result of nurturing because even if their self is weak and they fail to see their own significance, they still have a reason to keep trying and striving to reach their potential in the future. If you cultivate a positive attitude of other-mindedness, you, too, can become a natural at nurturing and enjoy the added privilege of influence in the lives of others. Here’s how to do it: Commit to them, believe in them, be accessible to them, give with no strings attached, give them opportunities and lift them to a higher level.
Faith in people is an essential quality of an influencer when working with others. Too many people have trouble believing in themselves. They believe they will fail. In our society today, most people feel isolated. People’s instincts are pretty good at knowing when others have faith in them. And truly having faith in someone can change her life. As you work to become a person of influence, always remember that your goal is not to get people to think more highly of you. It’s to get them to think more highly of themselves. People rise or fall to meet your level of expectations for them. Give them your faith, and they become confident, energized, and self-reliant. Having faith in people requires more than just words or positive feelings about them. We have to back it up with what we do. It’s tougher to believe in people before they have proved themselves. But that is the key to motivating people to reach their potential. You have to believe in them first, before they even believe in themselves.
The best way to show people your faith in them and motivate them is to focus your attention on their strengths. By emphasizing people’s strengths, you’re helping them believe that they possess what they need to succeed. One of the best ways is to help people remember their past successes. Listing past successes helps others believe in themselves. To give them a push and inspire them, you need to keep showing your confidence in them, even when they’re making mistakes or doing poorly. Some of the ways to do that is to tell them about your past troubles and traumas. Show them that success is a journey, a process, not a destination. It’s not enough just knowing that failure is a part of moving forward in life. To really become motivated to succeed, people need to believe they can win. Winning is motivating. Coming alongside others to help them experience some wins with you gives them reasons to believe they will succeed. To help people believe they can achieve victory, put them in a position to experience small successes. Encourage them to perform tasks or take on responsibilities you know they can handle and do well. And give them the assistance they need to succeed. Each time you cast a vision for others and paint a picture of their future success, you build them up, motivate them, and give them reasons to keep going. As an influencer, you have the goal of helping others see beyond today and their current circumstances and dreams. When you put your faith in people, you help them to expand their horizons and motivate them to move to a whole new level of living. Putting your faith in others involves taking a chance. But the rewards outweigh the risks. When you put your faith in others, you help them reach their potential. And you become an important influencer in their lives.
People of influence understand the incredible value of becoming a good listener. When you listen to others, you communicate that you respect them. Even more, you show them that you care. Be impressed and interested, not impressive and interesting. By becoming a good listener, you are able to connect with others on more levels and develop stronger, deeper relationships because you are meeting a need. It’s amazing how much you can learn about your friends and family, your job, the organization you work in, and yourself when you decide to really listen to others. Fresh, innovative ideas help us to find new ways to solve old problems, to generate new products and processes to keep our organizations growing, and to continue growing and improving personally. When you consistently listen to others, you never suffer for ideas. Practicing good listening skills draws people to you. If you consistently listen to others, valuing them and what they have to offer, they are likely to develop a strong loyalty to you, even when your authority with them is unofficial or informal. At first glance, listening to others may appear to benefit only them. But when you become a good listener, you put yourself in a position to help yourself too. Most people overvalue talking and undervalue listening. Good communicators know to monitor their talking-to-listening ratio. For some people, especially those with high energy, slowing down enough to really listen can be challenging. If you expend your extra energy by observing the other person closely and interpreting what he or she says, your listening skills will improve dramatically. If you’re tired or facing difficult circumstances, remember that to remain an effective listener, you have to dig up more energy, concentrate, and stay focused.
Stereotyping others can be a huge barrier to listening. It tends to make us hear what we expect rather than what another person actually says. Nearly everyone has emotional filters that prevent him or her from hearing certain things that other people say. Your past experiences, both positive and negative, color the way you look at life and shape your expectations. Probably the most formidable barrier to listening is preoccupation with self. If you don’t care about anyone but yourself, you’re not going to listen to others. But the ironic thing is that when you don’t listen, the damage you do to yourself is ultimately even greater than what you do to other people.
To become a good listener, you have to want to hear. But you also need some skills to help you. Here are nine suggestions to help you become a better listener:
- Look at the speaker,
- don’t interrupt,
- focus on understanding,
- determine the need at the moment,
- check your emotions,
- suspend your judgment,
- sum up at major intervals,
- ask questions for clarity, and
- always make listening your priority.
The key to success is understanding people. If you can’t understand people and work with them, you can’t accomplish anything. And you certainly can’t become a person of influence. When people don’t understand others, they often react by becoming fearful. Unfortunately, fear is evident in the workplace when it comes to employees’ reactions toward their leaders. Yet in a healthy work environment, if you give others the benefit of the doubt and replace fear with understanding, everyone can work together positively. When fear isn’t a stumbling block to understanding, self-centeredness often is. One way to overcome our natural self-centeredness is to try to see things from other people’s perspectives. The next logical step after leaving behind self-centeredness is learning to recognize and respect everyone else’s unique qualities. Once you learn to appreciate other people’s differences, you come to realize that there are many responses to leadership and motivation. As you learn more about people and get to know others well, you soon begin to realize that people have a lot in common. To foster understanding, think of what your emotions would be if you were in the same position as the person you’re interacting with.
Knowing what people need and want is the key to understanding them. And if you can understand them, you can influence them and impact their lives in a positive way. If we were to boil down all the things we know about understanding people and narrow them down to a short list, we would identify these five things: Everybody wants to be somebody, nobody cares how much you know until he knows how much you care, everybody needs somebody, everybody can be somebody when somebody understands and believes in her, and anybody who helps somebody influences a lot of bodies.
In the end, the ability to understand people is a choice. Whenever you look at things from the other person’s perspective, you’ll receive a whole new way of looking at life. And you’ll find new ways of helping others. Another quality that you need if you want to understand and help others is personal empathy. Reach out to others with a strong hand but a soft heart, and they’ll respond to you positively. If you have a positive attitude about people, believe the best of them, and act on your beliefs, then you can have an impact on their lives. But it all starts with the way you think of others. To make an impact on others, find out what people want and then help them get it. That’s what motivates them. And that’s what makes it possible for you to become a person of influence in their lives.
To become a person of influence and to make a positive impact on people, you have to come alongside them and really get involved in their lives. But if you want people to be able to really grow, improve, and succeed, you have to take the next step with them. You have to become a mentor to them. The mentoring process offers people the opportunity to turn their potential into reality, their dreams into destiny. And that’s why it’s important for you to become a mentor in the lives of the people you desire to help. You need to lead them in their areas of personal and professional growth until they are able to work in these areas more independently. Helping others enlarge themselves is one of the most incredible things you can ever do for them. Anytime you help people to enlarge themselves in any area of their lives, you benefit them because you make it possible for them to step up to a new level of living. When they expand their horizons, improve their attitudes, increase their skills, or learn new ways to think, they perform and live better. And that increases their potential. Enlarging helps them become better equipped, and it increases their capacity to learn and grow. If the people you are working to enlarge are a part of a group, then the whole group benefits from their growth. People are often willing to grow only enough to accommodate their problems; instead, they need to grow enough to achieve their potential. If you want to do more for others, you have to become more yourself. That’s never more valid than in the area of mentoring. You can teach what you know, but you can reproduce only what you are. In your preparations to take on the task of helping others enlarge themselves, the first thing you need to do is improve and enlarge yourself because only when you are growing and enlarging yourself are you able to help others do the same.
As you think about the people you want to enlarge, keep the following guidelines in mind: Select people whose philosophy of life is similar to yours, choose people with potential you genuinely believe in, select people whose lives you can positively impact, match the men and women to the mountains, and start when the time is right. Once you’ve found the right people, keep in mind that you need to get their permission before you start enlarging them. Enlarging others can be rewarding and fun, but it also takes time, money, and work. That’s why you have to commit yourself to the process and make it a top priority. Whenever you look at people you desire to enlarge, try to discern what they are capable of doing. That will help you to see their potential. To add value to the people you enlarge, travel ahead of them in your mind’s eye and see their future before they do. You become able to cast a vision for their future that helps to motivate and enlarge them. And when you add to that vision your faith in them, you spark them to action. As an enlarger of people, you are to help people want to grow, and one way to do that is to tap into their passion. Show them how it can activate their potential to the point that they will be able to realize their vision for their lives. Passion can help them make their dreams come true. Passion is the fuel that helps people nourish and protect their dreams.
As you explore how you can help others enlarge themselves, you need to address any character issues they may have. When examining the character of others, remember to look beyond their reputation. Help others learn to conduct themselves with integrity in every situation, and they will be ready to grow and reach their potential. If you start by putting your energies into correcting people’s weaknesses, you will demoralize them and unintentionally sabotage the enlarging process. Instead of focusing on weaknesses, pay attention to people’s strengths. Weaknesses can wait—unless they are character flaws. To enlarge others, help them take growth steps that stretch them regularly without overwhelming or discouraging them. We suggest that you include the following four areas in the development process: Attitude, relationships, leadership, and personal and professional skills. To help people grow, no matter what area you’re addressing, put resources in their hands. Expose them to enlarging experiences. Once you’ve gotten people of value growth enough to start enlarging themselves, you’ve broken through a strong barrier. But the next step is to get them to keep growing on their own.
Most people need help working through some of life’s difficulties. The people in your life with whom you have influence need your help, especially the ones who are trying to go to a new level, start a new venture, or enter a new phase of life. They need someone to lead and guide them. Most people need guidance on a fairly continual basis until they can get their lives together, and then they can be encouraged to make the trip under their own power. You’ve got to take the trip with them—at least until they are on the right course and can learn to navigate on their own. A good navigator helps people identify their destination. To help them recognize the destination they will be striving for, you need to know what really matters to them, what makes them tick. To do that, find out these things: What do they cry about?, What touches their hearts?, What do they sing about?, What gives them joy?, and What do they dream about? Once you, as the navigator, assist others in identifying a vision for their lives, you need to help them find a way to make it a reality. And that means plotting a course and setting goals. A good rule of thumb is to set your goals in concrete and write your plans in sand. People who have not yet experienced success often have no idea what it takes to get from where they are to where they want to go. As the navigator, you are to show them the best course. A good navigator recognizes the blind spots in others, gently identifies them, and helps people overcome them. When you are navigating for others, remember that they can’t make the whole trip in a day. They have to grow into their goals and take things one step at a time. Help them identify attainable goals that will give them confidence, and they’ll make progress.
Few things are more discouraging than being blindsided, especially when someone who could have helped you stands by and watches it happen. That’s why thinking ahead for others is part of your task as a navigator. They need to realize that everybody has problems. Not only do people overcome obstacles to become successful, but even after they have achieved a level of success, they continue to face problems. The higher people go—personally and professionally—the more complicated life gets. You should try to help people understand that money is no substitute for the basic problem-solving skills they need to develop. Financial problems are usually a symptom of other personal problems. As you look ahead and help people, realize that while problems can cause pain, they also provide an excellent opportunity for growth. No matter how focused they are or how well they plan, people will still get off course. Help the people within your influence to ignore the critics and keep their eyes on the big picture. Show them that the best way to silence critics is to solve the problem and move on. Coach them not to be overwhelmed by challenges. Time, thought, and a positive attitude can solve just about anything. There are a couple of keys to the most effective method of problem solving. The first is recognizing that the simple way to solve a problem is better than the most clever one. The second element in effective problem solving is the ability to make decisions. Help others to realize when they need to make course adjustments, find simple solutions that they think will work, and then execute them without delay. Continually encourage the people you help. Finally, a good navigator takes the trip with the people he is guiding. He travels alongside his people as a friend.
Connection is a very important part of the process of mentoring others. When you connect with them, you are asking them to come alongside you and travel your road for your and their mutual benefit. You can connect with people and lead them only if you value them. When you let people know that you don’t take them for granted, they turn around and do the same for you. You can never tell people too often, too loudly, or too publicly how much you love them. If you desire to accomplish something great and really want to see it happen, you need to possess a make-a-difference attitude. Believe you can make a difference. Believe what you share can made a difference. You have to believe that what you have to offer others can make a difference in their lives. Believe the person you share with can make a difference. Believe that together you can make a big difference. If you want to connect with people and take them with you to a higher level, recognize the difference you can make as a team, and acknowledge it at every opportunity. To be effective, leaders must be initiators. If they don’t go to their people, meet them where they are, and initiate the connection, then 80 percent of the time no connection will be made. Anytime you want to connect with another person, start where both of you agree. And that means finding common ground. At the same time we need to acknowledge that we’re all different. As you connect with others, recognize and respect their differences in motivation…you just need to know what’s important to them.
Everybody has a key to his or her life. All you need to do is find it. Here are two clues to help you do it: To understand a person’s mind, examine what he has already achieved. To understand his heart, look at what he aspires to do. Turn the key only when you have the person’ permission, and even then use that key only for his benefit, not your own—to help, not to hurt. Once you’ve initiated a connection with others, found common ground, and discovered what really matters to them, communicate to them what really matters to you. And that requires you to speak to them from your heart. Being genuine is the single most important factor when communicating with others. To really connect with others, you need to find a way to cement the relationship. To build bridges that connect you to people in a lasting way, share common experiences with them. Look for ways to build bridges with people within your influence, especially during times when they experience adversity. You can’t make a significant impact in people’s lives until you personally connect with them. Only then can you take them on a journey and really make a difference.
The ability to empower others is one of the keys to personal and professional success. When you become an empowerer, you enable others to reach the highest levels in their personal and professional development. It’s sharing yourself—your influence, position, power, and opportunities—with others with the purpose of investing in their lives so that they can function at their best. It’s seeing people’s potential, sharing your resources with them, and showing them that you believe in them completely. The act of empowering others changes lives, and it’s a win-win situation for you and the people you empower.
The first requisite of empowerment is having a position of authority over the people you want to empower. The second requirement for empowering people is having a relationship with them. When you value people and your relationships with them, you lay the foundation for empowering others. Relationships cause people to want to be with you, but respect causes them to want to be empowered by you. The last quality a leader needs to become an empowerer is commitment. When you empower people, you’re not influencing just them; you’re influencing all the people they influence. That’s impact! You need to believe in others enough to give them all you can and in yourself enough to know that it won’t hurt you. Your goal should be to hand over relatively small, simple tasks in the beginning and progressively increase their responsibilities and authority. The place to start when empowering people is to evaluate them. Your job is to see the potential, find out what they lack to develop it, and equip them with what they need. Even people with knowledge, skill, and desire need to know what’s expected of them, and the best way to inform them is to show them. People do what people see. Model the attitude and work ethic you would like them to embrace. You have to help others believe that they can succeed and show them that you want them to succeed. Once people recognize and understand that you genuinely want to see them succeed and are committed to helping them, they will begin to believe they can accomplish what you give them to do.
The real heart of empowerment is the transfer of your authority—and influence—to the people you are mentoring and developing. People become strong and effective only when they are given the opportunity to make decisions, initiate action, solve problems, and meet challenges. As you begin to empower your people, give them challenges you know they can rise to meet and conquer. Public recognition lets them know that you believe they will succeed. But it also lets the other people they’re working with know that they have your support and that your authority backs them up. Although you need to publicly praise your people, you can’t let them go very long without giving them honest, positive feedback. Meet with them privately to coach them through their mistakes, miscues, and misjudgments. Your ultimate aim should be to release them to make good decisions and succeed on their own. And that means giving them as much freedom as possible as soon as they are ready for it.
When you influence leaders, you indirectly influence all the people they influence. The effect is multiplication. Whenever you help others become better leaders, you raise the bar on their potential. As you develop leaders, you’ll find that your resources increase in value. Not only does it make an organization stronger when you develop leaders, but it gives that organization a strong future. Being able to lead others begins with leading yourself well. You can’t reproduce what you don’t have. Effective developers of people are always on the lookout for potential leaders. Great developers of leaders think of the welfare of the team before thinking of themselves. Everything rises and falls on leadership. Reproducing leaders is the most important task of any person of influence. About 20 percent of all leaders live on the lowest level in the development process. They’re in the scramble stage—they spend most of their time scrambling to find people to replace the ones they lose. The next stage in the development ladder is survival mode. In it, leaders do nothing to develop their people, but they do manage to keep the people they have. About 10 percent of all leaders work at developing their people into better leaders, but they neglect to build their relationships with their people. An organization on the synergy level has great morale and high job satisfaction. Many people who reach the synergy level never try to go any farther because they don’t realize they can take one more step in the development process, and that’s to the significance level. Leaders on that level develop and reproduce leaders who stay in the organization, work to reach their potential, and in turn develop leaders. And that’s where influence really multiplies.
An Executive Book Summary prepared by
Thomas L. Law, III, DoM
Tarrant Baptist Association
Fort Worth, TX
(For more summaries by Dr. Law, go to www.TarrantBaptist.org)
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