While most people are complaining and blaming, highly influential people are aiding and investing. Here are 3 actions you can take right now to build incredible levels of influence and career success.
The Secret to Building Influence
Ask anyone to identify the top challenges they’re facing at work, and you’ll hear a lot of blaming going around. The usual responses include a lack of trust, high workloads, dysfunctional leadership, lack of management support, lack of employee experience, etc. There is always some amount of validity to the complaints, but if you let it, the blame can cloud your vision from being able to see the huge opportunities that exist to become a “make a difference” person. Successful people thrive in times of adversity because they do one thing most people don’t – they look for and seize opportunities to add value to others rather than seek to extract value from others. How do they do it? They consistently do 3 specific things that leads to powerful levels of influence. The good news is, with minimal effort, you can adopt these same three habits. When you do, you’ll build incredible levels of influence and drive your career success too. So get started today doing the following:
Practice Social Fusion
Think of a time when you connected people who didn’t know each other but knew you. That’s social fusion. You helped two or more individuals who had no prior relationship fuse a connection. Before social media, it was known as the practice of referring and / or connecting people. Now the dynamics have scaled dramatically allowing you to fuse relationships all over the world. In fact, as I was writing this blog in a hotel in Indonesia, a friend in Tulsa, Oklahoma had a question I couldn’t answer so I connected him with another friend in Angola. I created a solution using my professional network, and by consistently adding value like this with your network, you will build a reputation for being highly resourceful. Over time, this practice leads to awesome levels of influence and the satisfaction that you’ve helped others in very meaningful ways.
Feed Forward
Research has consistently shown that in almost all partnerships and relationships, every individual focuses on achieving the maximum amount of return for the least amount of investment. To build high levels of influence, you must think and act exactly opposite. Successful and influential people…
- See opportunities before others do
- Act on opportunities before others do
- Get access to additional opportunities before others do
All you have to do is simply help others before they help you. Peter Drucker famously said starve problems, feed opportunities. Do it. It works!
Make Interactions Memorable
Whatever the norm is, do something out of the norm to ensure people remember you. It doesn’t take a lot of effort, just a little creativity and thought. Use a creative tagline or elevator speech. Restate problems in cool ways that make them solvable. Use appropriate humor. Just do something that makes every interaction a positive memorable experience (PME). When you’re memorable for good reasons, you gain access and influence for the right reasons.
It doesn’t take much effort to connect others who can help each other. It doesn’t take a lot of effort to help someone without expecting anything in return. And it doesn’t require a lot of money to make every interaction a positive memorable experience. It also doesn’t take any effort to remain the same as everybody else. To build influence, do something different than the rest. Do these 3 things, and you will sufficiently establish yourself as someone who will increasingly be respected, appreciated, and relied upon. And you will have achieved it by being externally focused as opposed to selfishly focused. It works. I am living proof. So what are you waiting for? Go start adding value and growing your influence today!
For more tips and strategies on achieving and sustaining your success, visit my website at www.ictscorp.com, subscribe to this blog, and follow me on social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Facebook). By doing so, you will gain access to leading edge research on management and leadership development and have access to daily inspirational and motivational quotes that will drive your success trajectory upward. So don’t delay, follow me and think yourself to success today!
