Influencing

Skills and Techniques for Business Success

Palgrave Macmillan, 2006

15 min read

10 take-aways

Audio & text

What's inside?

How to be influential: Start with confidence. Mix in knowledge, understanding and strong communication skills. Add power.

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Recommendation

Everyone wants to be influential, but how do you gain power you can wield? How do you get a group’s attention when you need it? More importantly, what primary skills do you need to be taken seriously when you want to sway the actions of another person, a team or an organization? Fiona Elsa Dent and Mike Brent answer these questions and more in this straightforward book. They balance practical information with pertinent academic research as they show you how to gain influence and explain why their strategy works. Their book provides a solid framework for learning and using persuasive skills in business and social settings. It includes tests and exercises to help you get the most from each chapter. getAbstract recommends this strategic book to readers who want to influence others.

Summary

Crucial Skills

Managers need two skills to do their jobs and to train other people. First, they must be strong communicators and, second, they have to know how to influence other people. Influence is the ability to change another person’s beliefs or behaviors. It is not the same as manipulation, which frequently involves deceit, ignoring another person’s opinions or forcing someone else to suffer a negative outcome. Persuasion is related to influence, but it involves getting other people to disregard their own preferences.

The way people see you affects their willingness to let you influence them, so a large part of your ability to exert influence stems from their knowledge of and reaction to your strengths. The pivotal characteristics of a strong influencer include: good communication and listening skills, confidence, an aptitude for understanding others, knowledge about the topic under discussion, and the facility to formulate good arguments and address objections with calm expertise.

Influencing others is critical for career advancement. It is increasingly important as companies become more global and managers must work with more culturally diverse employees...

About the Authors

Fiona Elsa Dent, director of Executive Education at Ashridge Business School in the U.K., writes about self-managed development, influencing skills and the use of psychometric instruments in management development. Mike Brent, an Ashridge faculty member with experience at many international companies, writes about coaching and leadership.

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B. F. 4 years ago

I can write this book in just a couple sentences. Know what you're talking about. Don't be a douche. There, I just wrote the entire book.
D. D. 1 decade ago

Good job
D. B. 1 decade ago

...also look at Influencing with Integrity by Genie Laborde.

Fiona Elsa Dent and Mike Brent