How to Influence Upward, Downward, and Cross-Functionally at Work

If you want to climb the corporate ladder, you need to know how to influence all types of people in any situation.

But this is a skill that can be learned by anyone, because people are a system. And when you know how the system works, you can leverage it to your advantage.

In this episode, I'm going to teach you a simple three step framework that you can use to influence upward, downward, and cross functionally in your organization.

Hey everyone and welcome to my YouTube channel. If you're new to the channel and you don't know me, my name is Doug Howard, and I'm a leadership coach and mentor. What I do is I teach managers and leaders how to leverage people skills to increase your impact on your organization, on your team, and to advance your career.

In my last episode, I shared a story for how I used influence to get promoted from manager to director without even asking for the promotion. If you didn't see that episode. Go check it out HERE.

How to Intentionally Influence People using AEC Framework

In this episode i'm going to actually explain the framework that I use to pull that move off in my career and the framework is actually very simple.

It's called the AEC framework which stands for appreciate, empathize, and convert. Everyone in the world lives their lives through a first person perspective, which means that they care more about what they want than what you want. In plain English, they don't really care about what you want.

Now, this framework, the AEC framework, is built around tapping into our basic needs as humans. Two of our most basic needs are the need to feel appreciated, valued, and important. Followed by the need to feel heard, understood, and feel a sense of belonging.

Now, when I say basic need, this means that we need these things to survive. It's not a would be nice. We need these things. It's part of our basic human needs, just like food, water, and shelter. The only difference is that, with food, water, and shelter, that impacts your physical health, but the need to feel important and the need to feel understood, that impacts your mental health.

When people don't feel this way, it leads to depression or worse, but when you do make them feel appreciated and understood, you're literally giving them one of the best feelings in the world.

1 - Make the Other Person Feel Appreciated

Which is why the first step in this framework is appreciate. That's the A part of the AEC framework.

When you show someone that you genuinely appreciate them, it actually sends a signal to their brain that's telling them to pay attention to you. It's triggering that part of their brain that's related to their sense of identity.

Now, just think of that. You're sending a signal to their brain that gets them to pay attention to you. That is super powerful because... First, you can't influence someone unless you have their attention. But two, we live in a very busy and distracted world today. It's an ADD culture where there's clickbait, there's notifications, there's constant things just competing for everyone's attention.

So it's a lot harder to get someone's attention than it used to be, even just 10 years ago, but when you make someone feel appreciated, you are literally creating a physiological reaction that gets them to pay attention to you. You're basically automatically capturing their attention and what you're really doing is you're priming them to be influenced by you.

It's the same thing that happens when someone says your name, because this is all tied to your identity. Notice when someone says your name, it automatically grabs your attention when you hear it. The same thing is happening here when you make someone feel appreciated. The easiest way to show people genuine appreciation is to focus your undivided attention on them.

Examples for How to Show Genuine Appreciation for People

You can do this by asking them questions about themselves and then listening intently to their answers and asking followup questions about their answers and just keeping the entire conversation focused on them. Building a tight relationship is the key to creating a strong foundation for influencing them.

Here's an example of how you could use this in the workplace. Let's say you want to start increasing your influence over a cross functional leader, someone that you don't have authority over, or perhaps your boss. The easiest way to do this is to just go spark up a casual, friendly conversation with them, keep it unrelated to work, and just start with a simple, broad question.

Hey, I just realized I don't know too much about you. Where did you work before here? Or what role did you work in before this role?

Or you could ask them something more personal Are you originally from here? Do you have family here?

Base it on your comfort level and how comfortable you are with what type of question you're asking. But the idea is to just start it by saying, Hey, I just realized I don't know too much about you, or I don't know too much about your role, or I don't know too much about the things you work on here. Then ask them just a broad question about it. Now that's just a kickstarter question to get the ball rolling. But what you're really doing is you're creating an opportunity to show them appreciation.

So when they answer you... You want to follow up with simple follow up questions like, Oh, how long have you been in this role? Or how long have you lived here? Why did you move into this position?

Ask these as a, inquisitive. You don't want to be grilling them like a journalist or anything like that. But just have a natural flow to the conversation where you're asking questions like, how and what and why and where and when and just ask follow up questions to get them to expand a little bit more. What you'll find is that they quickly start opening up to you and they quickly start sharing more information with you because people like to be the center of your attention, so they'll naturally start feeling comfortable just sharing more information with you about themselves.

What you want to do is just focus your attention on them, listen to them closely, and when you find something that you can relate to and that you like about them, you want to just show your appreciation for that.

Oh, wow, I didn't know you liked that. That's really cool. I like that too. Or, I've always wanted to try doing something like that. Could you give me some ideas for where I should begin? Or, what's a good book I can read to learn more about that?

Just show that you're really interested in whatever they're sharing with you.

2 - Demonstrate Empathy to Make People Feel Understood

This appreciation part, when you do this, if you just get the ball rolling by asking people questions about themself, this is going to segue nicely into the next step, which is empathize.

The E part of the AEC framework.

Once you've shown them appreciation, you've got their attention and now you need to make them feel heard and understood. This is where building relationships comes into play because then you can really learn what people want and what's important to them. You can also learn how you can support them.

To show you how this works, I want to ask you a question. How does it make you feel when someone misinterprets you or misunderstands you? Someone takes something you said out of context or they just totally misinterpreted what you meant. You said 2 plus 2 is 4 and they heard it as 2 plus 2 is 5.

How does that make you feel? Probably frustrated, angry. Maybe hurt or offended or definitely makes you feel disconnected or divided, but these aren't good things, right? You definitely feel distant from the person. Now, on the other hand, when someone makes you feel understood, how does that make you feel?

Probably establishes a little bit of trust. It maybe makes you feel comfortable or warm or maybe it makes you feel a sense of belonging or relaxed, or maybe you feel just at ease, or maybe in some cases you feel connected automatically with that person. That's what empathy is.

The Science of Empathy and How it Impacts Other People

When you empathize with someone, when you show the other person that you understand what they're going through, you make it clear that you understand what they meant and that you can see the situation from their point of view, it builds an immediate bond with that person. It's because of our DNA. We are hardwired to feel connected to each other and we have this need to feel like we belong to a community.

These feelings are hardwired into our DNA from our hunter gatherer days. It's because in those days, the individual was not equipped to survive on their own. But when you show empathy for someone else, it again creates a physiological reaction in that other person, and it makes that other person feel calm, relaxed, and comfortable.

On the other hand, when you make them feel misunderstood, you're making them feel isolated and that puts them into that fight or flight mode where they're going to have their guard up around you. They're not going to open up to you and they're going to look at you as someone to be cautious of.

This is all at a subconscious level. They don't realize this is happening. The main thing I want to point out here is that with this appreciation part and now empathy. You're creating physiological reactions in the other people that gets them to open up to you. This is a physical reaction, just like someone reacting to being ticklish they can't control it.

These are the steps to prime someone to being influenced. It basically helps them let their guard down and become willing to trust you. It's the foundation for building a relationship. Empathy might feel difficult to understand, but it is a skill that anyone can learn and you need to develop this skill because it is the key to influencing people. You can't influence people without understanding their perspective.

Examples for How to Show Empathy to Other People

The easiest way to empathize with other people is by asking the other person questions about their problems. After they share a problem with you, you want to start off by showing them that you understand the problem. Then offer your support with that problem.

So if someone at work tells you they're frustrated because their boss just dumped a whole bunch of work on them. Instead of just racing to the solution and telling them how to fix their problem, tell them that you understand their problem by saying something like, Oh, wow that has to be really frustrating because I know you take deadlines seriously. Can I help you with that?

A lot of times we just race to tell someone what they should be doing differently, or we tell them how to fix the problem, but what people really want in most scenarios is they want someone else to show them that they understand.

The easiest way to do that is just to repeat back the problem to them and consider their perspective. Why is that frustrating to them? Say it out loud and then ask, would you like some support with this? Now, whether they take you up on that offer, most people won't. Most people will say, no, I appreciate you hearing me out, but I'm good. I don't need any help. If they do invite you to help, definitely follow up with that offer.

We're actually doing something else here behind the scenes. Everything here is about creating a physiological reaction. When you offer someone support like this, after showing them that you understood them. You're sparking what is called the influence law of reciprocation. What that means is, you're leading off by giving a gift to someone, you're donating your support, you're donating your time, you're donating your attention. And the other person feels that as, Oh, wow, I need to reciprocate this action back to them. I need to give this person something back.

It's the same as if someone were to give you ten dollars, for free. You didn't ask them for it. They just gave it to you or they took you out to lunch. You're automatically going to feel like you need to repay that favor.

That same thing works here when someone offers help like this. So by offering that other person support and showing them that you cared. Now they're going to feel like I should care about this person and I should offer my support. These are the key components that are building up to influence.

Before I get to the next step, I just want to point out that, nothing in these first few steps has anything to do with your opinions, your ideas, what you want out of the situation. It's all about just building that rapport and, again, sparking those physiological reactions in the other person that gets them to relax, that gets them to feel important, to feel understood, and to just feel like they can trust you.

3 - Convert People to Your Way of Thinking Through Influence

Moving on to the third step. This is the C part of the AEC framework.

This is convert.

I want you to think of influence as a conversion because... That's exactly what it is. You're converting a direct report into an engaged team member. Or you're converting a difficult coworker into an ally. Or you're converting your boss into a partner.

When you do this conversion, you're tapping a direct line into that person's desires, goals, and aspirations, which accelerates their self motivation and their determination, basically you're creating intrinsic motivation.

In general, you're converting them to want the same thing as you so that they make decisions that work in your favor. The way you do this is by establishing a clear connection between what you want and whatever it is they want.

For example, if you want to get promoted. Don't go up to your boss and say, Hey, I deserve to be promoted because I've been here 10 years and I'm doing this job better than anyone else. Don't go that route because your boss isn't going to care about that. Instead, you should start by reminding your boss of all the problems that promoting you would solve.

When I say the problems, the problems that they see from their point of view and their perception. After you point out the problems, then you'd want to create a clear connection that you are the solution to these problems.

So an example of this would be approaching your boss with something like this. Hey boss, we've been missing 20 percent of our project deadlines over the last few months, and we've lost four clients because of it. If we continue at this pace, we could lose half of our repeat customers by end of this year. To avoid this, we need to have a manager who is overseeing the design team. We need someone to be making sure that everyone is staying on schedule. Do you agree?

So that's the first part. First, we want to make sure we agree on the problem. So that's why it's key to define the problem. Then ask, do you agree that there's a problem? And do we agree that this is the potential solution? Haven't mentioned yourself yet.

Then you would go into explaining that, you're interested in this role and why you would be a good fit for it after they agree.

If they don't agree guess what? It's a good thing we didn't bring up you for the promotion because it means we need to re evaluate our strategy and how to position this.

But the idea is, we gotta find something that the other person wants and then connect you as the solution to whatever that is. The thing you want needs to be the solution to what they want.

Now, like I said, the key is in how you present the message to them. Instead of telling them what you want or why you want it, you need to lead with speaking in terms of what they want. Then you need to connect the dots and show them how that the thing you want is the solution to getting what they want.

Rewind that again, if you need to hear that, but the idea is, you need to connect what you want with what they want.

In their eyes they're working for something they want, and that's the difference between them following your orders versus them going above and beyond without you even asking them to.

Build Influence Momentum by Starting with Smaller Asks

Here's a bonus tip on this, think of influence like momentum. And what I mean by that is, don't go for the moon shot right away. If you want the promotion. Don't just make that your first ask. When I say you have this appreciation and empathy formula first, start there where you make the person feel appreciated, then you empathize with them and make them feel understood.

But then the conversion part, what you want to do is start small. And then work your way up to whatever the big ask is. Because like I said, it influences momentum and we want to get them saying yes to something right away. We don't want to risk asking something too big and them saying no, because then it's going to be a lot harder to get them to say yes to something else because it's momentum building.

So we want to do is if your ask is to be promoted. Then instead of being promoted, maybe the first thing you should do is ask to take on some more responsibility, if that's something that, your boss will say yes to.

A few more examples of this would be, let's say you wanted to convert your team to a new software instead of proposing that you switch the whole team to a new software. Start by asking if it's okay to do a free trial version of the software. If you want a direct report to improve their performance, instead of, listing all the things they need to do to improve, start by finding something that's the easiest thing for them to improve.

Again, we want to make it as easy as possible for them to say yes and take action to whatever you're trying to influence them to do. Let's just say you want to work from home full time, what you could do is start by asking to work from home one day a week. Or maybe a one day a month. Start with something small so it doesn't feel as aggressive.

Once you get them comfortable with saying yes to you on the smaller asks, then you can start finding slightly bigger asks and keep making bigger asks that gradually work up to whatever the main ask is.

If you're asking for that software conversion and you've got the okay on the free trial version. After the free trial is up, explain what went well, with the free trial version to your boss and explain why it makes sense to continue exploring this further and the benefits of it and the benefits to your boss. Then ask, is it okay to start subscribing to one seat that we can use in a test environment instead of talking about swapping the whole department over, right?

The idea here is when they say yes you need to remind them why this went well, the smaller ask that is, then ask for something slightly bigger. As they continue saying yes, continually work your way up to the main ask, whatever it is. Now, like I said before, this is the fastest and the most effective way to influence anybody.

How to Influence People, Summary and Recap

To quickly summarize the AEC framework for influencing people, it starts with showing appreciation, making the other person feel genuinely appreciated by giving them your attention, listening to what they say, and asking them questions about themself.

Then it continues with empathy, showing the other person that you understand them and that you understand their perspective and by showing them your support and that you care.

Then the third part is convert. Again, that's what influence is. You're converting someone to want the same thing as you want, because when you do it this way, now you're creating an intrinsic motivation in the other person to actually want to do the thing that you want them to do, instead of you having to push them to do it. That's a big difference, because now you're getting momentum to work in your favor.

Then just to remind you, when you're trying to influence someone to do something, Don't go for the big ask right away. Start small, get them to say yes, make them get used to saying yes to you, make it become a habit to say yes to you, because then they'll want to say yes to you on future things, and then just gradually increase your ask towards that main goal.

Now, like I said before, this AEC framework, this is the fastest and the most effective way to influence anybody. If you want to learn more tangible ways to leverage the AEC framework to your advantage, you should check out my episode called How to Influence Without Authority At Work, because in this episode, I share specific examples on how to push cross functional teams to give you what you need.

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