How To Expand Your Influence Skills
Having the data or being “right” doesn’t win hearts and minds. We work with humans. And humans are emotional creatures. Build your influence through getting comfortable with managing emotions.
Do you want more influence at work? Do you want to shape the opinions of others? Most of us were told that we need to be data-driven and have a logical foundation for all decisions. This is how we build influence — data, data, and more data. However, the reality is that having the data or being “right” doesn’t win hearts and minds.
We work with humans. And humans are group-oriented emotional creatures. We love stories, and we are deeply affected by the feelings of others. We feel emotions and then use logic to rationalize them, not the other way around. We see this type of justification everywhere:
When a hiring manager likes a candidate, they’ll come up with all kinds of reasons and exceptions to bring that person on board. And vice versa.
An executive gets excited about a project that has little data or research backing it, but resources it anyway as a “strategic bet.”
A manager enjoys working with a team member and rationalizes it as a great culture fit or unique skill set.
Despite its importance in the workplace, many of us are taught to minimize emotions at work. Over time, due to a lack of exposure and skill, we find emotions uncomfortable and begin to avoid them.
Early in my career at McKinsey, I had a manager ask me pointedly: “I know you disagree. Why do you go to such lengths to avoid conflict with me?” I was agreeing with her to keep the peace, rather than working together toward the best solution. I feared anger.
When we are uncomfortable with emotions, we rationalize the feeling by telling ourselves it’s best to avoid emotional conflicts and play it safe. We avoid pointing out a potential issue to minimize irritation from others. We hold on to our questions to avoid embarrassment or confusion. We diminish excitement and optimism about a project to avoid feeling disappointment.
Instead of practicing the skills to handle emotions, we popularize the narrative that we need to take emotions and people out of consideration to make the best business decisions. This is simply not true.
Emotions Are Essential To Decision-Making
We are humans, not robots (or AI). Leadership is about emotions and logic, data and relationships. Leaders who rely solely on logic and data are missing more than half the picture.
They are less effective at inspiring and rallying teams. They take longer to make decisions, missing critical time-based advantages. They tend to play it too safe and small, never quite making it big. Emotions tell us where to focus and what to change, often much faster than any logic or data. When it comes to moving with urgency, embracing emotion is critical.
Suppressed emotions will come out in unexpected, inconvenient ways. Perhaps you held on to some resentment for a colleague talking over you at a prior meeting, and now you are not willing to support another team member in a critical project. Perhaps you didn’t raise your hand for an exciting new task due to fear of disappointment, and now you feel anger that someone else is moving to a new opportunity. Perhaps you held back your questions on a controversial project all week, bottling up irritation that leads you to snap at a team member venting about their difficulties.
Without the skills to manage emotions, leaders are seeing half the picture and are constantly taken by surprise by the reactions of their teams.
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Noticing Your Emotions
The first step is to work on handling our own emotions, so that we approach work challenges and decisions from a place of confidence and curiosity, rather than fear of emotions.
The first step is to notice and reflect on what is driving your actions. Take a moment (in the moment or when you have space) to ask yourself:
How do you feel about this decision in your heart? What emotions does it bring up for you?
Are you moving toward something you want, or away from something you fear?
If you trusted yourself fully, what would you do differently?
When we recognize and name the fear, it decreases its power and control over our decisions. This gives us room to speak up in leadership meetings, to engage in important debates, or to take on a more risky new project. When we notice, listen to, and process our emotions effectively, we move forward with clarity and confidence.
Leading Others Through Their Emotions
Imagine this: you prepared thoroughly for a tough leadership review, nailed all the questions in the meeting, and reached alignment in the meeting. And a week later, your stakeholders are off doing something completely different.
What happened?
Your stakeholders were logically persuaded by the data and group opinion. But left to their own emotions, they felt and then acted differently.
When you want to get buy-in for your ideas, refocus the team after a reorg, or introduce a new tool or process, help others process their emotions as an essential part of the plan.
Create space that welcomes emotions: Devote the time and energy to encouraging people to voice their illogical thoughts, unwarranted worries, or silly questions.
Validate their concerns: Acknowledge the stress, anxiety, fear, pain, or confusion. Try to bring additional context, different possibilities, or clarity
Shift to Agency: Encourage people to consider what they might do to move forward. What questions would they want answered? How might they experiment with the new reality?
Leadership is about staying calm when others are jumpy and fearful in a crisis, facilitating a constructive debate among passionate stakeholders, or helping a group of people make sense of change. It is the combination of data and logic with emotional congruence that truly allows decisions to stick and teams to move forward.
That’s all folks! See you next week at 3:14 pm.
Yue
As a Communications leader of 25+ years, you've nailed it in this post. For me, communication at work is about building belief and therefore trust. The people I see do it very well done exactly what you're written about here - build credibility, provide evidence through data and evoke emotions, usually through hope or fear. As humans, we connect through stories. Just look at the notes that go viral here. They are usually stories that connect to our hearts in some way.