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Using scary tactics, micromanaging and shouting at your team might get you short term results but damages your reputation and career prospects in the long run.

You might think you’re delivering the goods to guarantee that promotion and meet all the requirements. Then when appraisal time comes along, you find you’ve been overlooked.

To your dismay, the boss tells you that you were found lacking in the skill of people management.

It’s then that you find out your team is scared of you. Instead of approaching you for help, they decide to play ostrich in the sand and delays in project completion happen.

Your attempts to get the work done are taken as aggression.

In some cases, you might be called in for counseling because your team is asking for a transfer or has complained about you.

That’s what happened to the client in my previous post who was finding it difficult to be an influential leader.

Sadly, many organizations still throw good professionals into the deep end with promotions based on technical skills without really focusing on developing other soft skills required for the new role.

If they do provide training, many of those trainings get missed because client delivery or some deadline takes priority.

Or it will be a 1-day workshop on Emotional Intelligence or some other topic to raise surface level awareness. When in fact, deeper focused study is required.

Modern day leaders not only need but have to be people oriented.

In my previous post, we established that influence is a better option to being a control freak. Let’s dive deeper into the topic.

True leaders know the power of influence. More importantly they apply persuasion to achieve the organization’s goals while also achieving team and their own goals.

This includes inspiring and encouraging the team to use their skills to their potential.

4 Skills of Influence Leaders need to master

In order to become a more effective leader there are 4 skills of influence that you need to master. These skills are:

1. Organizational savvy
2. Promotion of self and the team
3. Building trust
4. Utilizing networks

Let’s take a look at each of these 4 influencer skills in turn:

1. Organizational Savvy

I learned this skill quite innocently in my early days in the corporate world. In those days, if I wanted to talk to the boss, it helped to be friendly or on good terms with their secretary or executive assistant.

These are the gatekeepers who know the boss’s diary. They know how to slip you in for a 5-minute audience with the boss.

They can push approvals for your projects when client delivery requires escalation and queuing up is not possible.

Every business or organization has an organization chart that shows the formal lines of authority.

Organizational savvy professionals know that this is only part of the story.

To be a good leader you have to have this organizational savvy.

You need to know how to really get things done and who you need to approach and how to approach them. Without this you are going to struggle to achieve your organizational goals.

People within the organization will have their own agendas which can translate into dirty office politics at times.

You don’t have to play those games, but you do need to have a robust internal network within the organization.

Identify the main players if you do not know them already and navigate through the politics to get the right people on board.

2. Promotion of Self and the Team

If you think that self-promotion is a selfish act, then you need to change your thinking on this.

Leaders that are strong influencers know that when they promote themselves for genuine reasons they can cut through a lot of red tape.

Influential leaders using self-promotion in the right way not only advance their careers, but also help their people get greater visibility.

You will also be promoting your team in general so that their ideas and capabilities have more exposure.

Of course, you need to use the right tactics to get the best from self-promotion. I go in-depth on how to do this in my blog post on the topic and recommend you pick up the quick win tips in it.

3. Building Trust

In his book The Speed of Trust, M.R. Covey talks of 5 types of Trust, one of which is Relationship Trust, which means behaving in ways that inspire trust.

You can’t lead and influence people effectively without trust. Trust goes a long way to gaining cooperation from others. It is much more effective than forcing individuals to comply with your requests. Remember the client’s story?

With trust the people that work for you will do whatever they can to assist in the achievement of your goals. Without it they will do the minimum to get by.

Building trust is always a balancing act. To deliver extraordinary results you are going to have to push your people beyond their comfort zone.

You also need to listen intently to any concerns that they have and do what you can to help them with the team goal and their individual goals.

4. Utilizing Networks

In addition to being organizational savvy, a good influential leader knows that they can’t do everything alone. So, they get involved with existing organizational networks and use these to their advantage.

They will not just get involved in any network – they will evaluate how a network can help them achieve their goals first.

The bottom-line is, if you really want to be and be seen as an influential leader, you need to level up your leadership skills.

Coercing and intimidating your team might work to get a task done though it might not be of high quality.

Are you ready to step up and be the influential leader you can be or are unhappy staying in a place with no career advancement?

If yes, then I invite you to take this first step to becoming an influential leader. Click here to learn more.