Influence Anybody to Do Anything in 5 Steps! [Persuasion - Part 3 of 3]
Do you struggle to win people over and convince them to your way of thinking?
You might think influence is one of those capabilities where either have it or you don't.
The truth is that influence is a developable skill with a science behind it that anyone can learn. In this video I'm gonna show you how, so stay tuned.
Before I begin, you're probably wondering, who is this guy and why should I listen?
I'm Doug Howard. I'm a licensed structural engineer and engineering manager, and my biggest passion is helping engineers like you elevate your life personally and professionally. It's why I started this YouTube channel, which is 100% dedicated to helping engineers like you build the right skills that you need to take control of your career and become the best version of yourself. Subscribe to my channel if you don't wanna miss out on any tools, insights, or techniques that will put your engineering career on an accelerated path.
In this episode, I'm gonna give you a simple five step process that you can use to influence anybody, then I'm gonna show you how to use and apply it to real life scenarios by walking you through some examples.
What Influences People
There's a lot of engineers out there right now who are unhappy with their current situation.
Whether you feel like you're earning less than you're worth. Or feeling pigeonholed and trapped because you lack the experience to pivot your career in a new direction. Maybe you're just unsure where you want your career path to go.
If you're in this situation, it most likely boils down to one thing you never learned how to influence other people. We view influence like it's one of those abstract abilities that you either have or you don't, it's actually a developable skill that you or anyone can learn and master.
As engineers, we rely on rational logic and objective analysis to prove something works or why it's correct. When you're crunching numbers or slinging code, that's perfect, but when it comes to proving your point to another person, and convincing them to agree with you, logic and objective analysis doesn't really work so well because the average person doesn't use logic or facts to make decisions.
Most people use emotions to make most of their decisions. Which means people aren't really sold on who you are or what you want. They're actually sold on how you make them feel and how your idea or suggestion makes them feel, which means that in order to influence someone, you need to tap into their feelings. The easiest way to do that is by focusing on the other person.
This five-step formula creates a framework for you to do that.
Before I get into that, I wanna point out that this is the third and final episode of a three-part series on persuasion, and influence. In the first episode, “How To Influence Without Authority At Work”, I explained how influence works, why it's different than manipulation, and how to actually influence someone that you don't have authority over.
In the second episode, “The Most Important Skill For Persuading and Influencing People”, I explained the number one skill that you need to develop in order to influence people along with five exercises that can help you develop that skill.
If you wanna make sure you're getting the most out of the video, I recommend going back to watch episodes one and two first.
Influencing people and winning them to your way of thinking is the most efficient way to create your own opportunities instead of waiting for them to happen on their own.
You can use this five step formula in any scenario where you're trying to influence and convince someone to do something. Whether it's pushing for a raise or promotion, convincing the interviewer to hire you, or getting your boss to go along with your new idea. You can also use this formula with networking, building relationships, repairing damaged relationships, making friends, and enhancing your reputation.
Honestly, you can use this framework in any area of your life. Next time you want to influence someone, follow this five step process.
Clarify Your Intention
First, clarify what you actually want to accomplish. This may sound obvious, but you'd be amazed at how easy it is to let your messaging stray from the mission at hand when you're in the middle of negotiating or influencing someone.
It's human nature to get caught up in your own ideologies and what's important to you. Things like what you think is right and wrong, or what's fair and unfair. You get caught up in what's important to you, but clarifying your goal upfront and keeping it front of mind as you build your influence strategy is key because it helps you stay focused on the goal at hand. It prevents you from letting yourself get distracted by the points that only matter to you when you're trying to influence someone. Things that matter to you don't make a difference when it comes to influencing other people.
Remind Yourself This!
The second step is remind yourself that people are human.
It's human nature to assume that everyone else sees the world the same way you do, but people are unique and people have unique backgrounds, perspectives, values, and experiences that shape their view on the world and what they consider to be important and what type of things they can ignore.
People pay attention to what's important to them, regardless of whether it's important to you.
Consider Their Perspective
Step three is get inside the other person's head.
People pay attention to what's important to them and they ignore what's important to you. Get into the other person's head by asking yourself questions.
What does this person find important?
What do they place a high value in? What are some things that this person desperately wants? What's something that this person wants to avoid?
Connect Your Wants
Once you figure out what they want, move on to step four, which is find a way to establish a connection between what you want and what they want.
The only way to influence someone to do something is by getting them to actually want to do it. The easiest way to do this is by identifying what that person considers important, which you did in the previous step, but now that you've got this, you need to find a way to relate what you want as a means to getting the other person what they want.
Find a way to connect what you want with what they want.
Your Messaging
The fifth and final step is plan what you're going to say and how you're going to say it. Construct your messaging in a way that resonates with the other person so that you can motivate and influence their actions.
People aren't really influenced by facts. People are self-interested and influenced by their own feelings, which means you need to speak in terms of the other person's interests, by delivering your message with a heavy emphasis on what that person wants. Meanwhile, you need to draw very little attention to what you want out of the situation.
The best way to do this is by leading with what's most important to them and describing it in their language. Once you get comfortable with talking about this topic, then bring up what's important to you.
Doing this helps the other person become comfortable with talking about the topic with you, and then that gives you an opening to bring up what's important to you or the outcome you want. As you're doing this still make sure you're always talking in terms of the other person's interest. If possible, find a way to translate the outcome you want as a solution to their problem or what they want.
I'm gonna show you how to apply this framework to real life scenarios in a moment, but do you have any questions on what I just covered? Let me know in the comments.
Real Life Example 1
Let's apply this framework to the scenario I covered in episode two of this three-part series on influence.
This is the scenario where you are responsible for arguing in defense of a student who has been accused of violating a school's drug use policy and the student is facing expulsion.
First step is clarify what you want to accomplish. In this case, you wanna prevent this student from getting expelled. That's the goal, which means anything that doesn't support this outcome is irrelevant. It's important to clarify this because when you're making an argument or trying to persuade someone, it's human nature to get caught up in your own values, ideals, personal reasoning, and how you think the decision maker should handle the situation.
This causes you to spend too much time speaking about the things that don't matter to the other person.
Keeping your outcome front of mind helps you stay on course during your negotiation.
Next, remind yourself that the decision maker is human. Let's say the decision maker is the dean of students in this story. Acknowledge that this person has a completely different perspective. Remind yourself that if you really wanna win this person over to your way of thinking, you're gonna have to talk in terms of their interests.
Step three is get inside the dean's head. Now this example, let's say you're not able to meet the dean in person before you have to make the argument. This leaves you having to make assumptions about the interests and perspectives of the person. It's probably safe to say that the Dean cares a lot about education, right?
It's also probably safe to say that the dean cares a lot about the safety and wellness of the student body, future success of the school, his legacy with the school.
Are you finding these tips interesting and insightful and helpful? Let me know by hitting that like button.
I'm gonna go through steps four and five together, which are establish a connection between what you want and what the dean wants, and then step five is plan what you're going to say and how you're gonna say it.
I'll give you a few examples. First, let's argue on behalf of student safety, which is something that we think the dean probably cares about. You could say that students experimenting with drugs is not new or unique to the student, if the punishment for getting caught is automatic expulsion, students are just gonna go to greater measures to not get caught. Which makes the problem worse and puts the student body at greater risk overall.
You think Education will hit home better than safety. Say something like this, by expelling students for an uncharacteristic first time offense, not only are we doing a disservice to the student body, we're also straying from the mission of this school, which is to educate students.
But if we make the punishment less severe by assigning the student to a mandatory drug counseling program and probation period where maybe they need to meet a minimum GPA or something like that. Not only do we maintain our ability to educate every student, but we're also helping them learn from their mistakes instead of leading them down a path of more mistakes.
Notice how I didn't mention anything about why the specific student we're defending should be exonerated. If you were actually in this scenario, you'd most likely wanna build your case around the student's character. Grades, work ethic, proven track record, and future goals.
You'd wanna point out that this is the first time they've ever used drugs and that it's the first time they've ever gotten in trouble really at all. Those are all valid points to you and the student. But unless these points are important to the dean, it doesn't really matter. I use this student expulsion scenario because it's an easy way to illustrate the influence process, but this example probably doesn't do you any good in the real world.
It'd be pretty weird if you were in a scenario where you had to randomly defend a student from being expelled from university. It sounds like the plot to some bad eighties movie or something. It's tough to give examples that you can apply to every scenario, but if there's a specific scenario where you need to influence someone but don't know how, let me know in the comments and I'll create an episode solely dedicated to covering those specific topics.
Real Life Scenario 2
Here's a more realistic example for you to try.
Let's say you've been struggling with a specific work task for awhile. For example, designing welds. You continue making the same mistakes, but instead of giving you clear feedback on how to do it the right way, your boss keeps giving you the same red marks. Every time you approach your boss on this, he tells you something like, “I don't have time right now. I'm too busy. Just do it my way. It works because I said so.”
Sound familiar?
You're sick of dealing with this problem, so let's influence your boss.
Step 1
First, clarify what you want to accomplish.
You want clear direction and feedback from your boss so that you can stop making the same mistakes on your weld designs.
Keep this end goal front of mind as we continue building your influence strategy, then go to the next step, which is remind yourself that your boss is human. This helps you empathize with your boss.
I'm sure you can think of a few times where stress brought out the worst than you. Maybe you've blown people off who were looking for your help, you probably gave yourself a pass for being short, rationalizing it because you were too busy to help.
Step 2
If that's the case, you should also consider this with your boss, Remind yourself that your boss's values and priorities are probably a lot different than yours because your boss has a unique background perspective instead of values that shapes his view on what's important.
He's human, he's only gonna pay attention to what's important to him, regardless of whether it's important to you.
If you wanna learn more ways to influence your boss, check out my FREE PDF download, “How to Convince Your Boss To Let You Work From Home”.
Step 3
Step three, get inside your boss's head.
Consider your boss's perspective. What does your boss want? If he's saying things like, “I don't have time. I'm busy. Just do it my way”, means your boss wants more time and he wants you to do the weld design his way. Now that you know this, move on to step four, establish a connection between what you want and what your boss wants.
Learning how to carry out the weld design your boss's way in itself is giving your boss half of what he wants. Point out that once you're doing it his way, it'll also save your boss a lot of time because he won't have to spend as much time checking and red marking your work. Let's construct your messaging around that in step five.
You might want to say something to your boss, like, “how do you expect me to get this done right when you never take the time to explain this process to me?”, but you're not gonna do that because we already clarified what you want to accomplish at the beginning of this.
If your goal was to just tell your boss off and make yourself feel good about then go ahead and say that. But if your goal is to get trained on weld design, then you'll want to go about it this way instead.
Final Steps
First, make sure to approach him at a time when he is not busy and he doesn't look stressed out. Say something like, “Hey, I know you're super busy, but do you have a minute?” If he says no, ask him for a better time to circle back to him. If he invites you in, then continue by saying something like this, “I can see how busy you are every day, and I feel bad because I keep wasting your time by making the same mistakes on my weld designs. I wanna save you time but I'm struggling to figure out how to do it the right way on my own. Would you be able to spend 30 minutes with me sometime this week explaining the process and showing me how you do it?”
Your boss will most likely make the time for you, or he'll connect you with another person or a resource that can help you get what you need.
Communicating with intention of influencing someone is like speaking a new language.
It can feel awkward at first, but it gets easier with practice. I recommend practicing this formula in a low pressure situation like asking for a ride or asking someone to pick up lunch for. Instead of just directly asking someone to do take a step back and practice applying this five step formula with your goal being to get the other person to want to help you. Practice doing this with requests for small favors for a while. As you build more confidence in your ability to influence people, start working your way up to bigger asks, like asking for a raise or a promotion.
The whole point of developing this ability to influence people is to save you time, stress, and energy in your life. If you're struggling to recognize opportunities to use this influence formula, spend a few minutes brainstorming things that you want to happen or things that you need some help with.
Then consider who would be able to help you with it and then begin putting together your pitch.
If you're like me, you probably had a bunch of “what if” scenarios pop into your head while I was walking through these examples. What do I do if this happens? Or how do I respond if the other person says this?
If you had any what ifs while watching this episode, please let me know what they were in the comments and I'll be sure to comment and reply to each of them. Thanks for watching.
