Colin Gautrey

Influential Leadership: Chapter One

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influentialleadership2This text is taken from the original draft manuscript of Influential Leadership: A Leader's Guide to Getting Things Done and is provided here to enrich your learning on the Influential Leadership Programme.

Chapter One: Building Your Purpose and Passion

You can only be an Influential Leader if you have an ambitious purpose, and get moving.

To become an Influential Leader you need to develop a clear long-term vision and also be realistic about how you are going to free up time to begin making progress. That means you have to also focus on your short term objectives and make sure you don’t miss anything critical. The grander your purpose, the more influential you will become – provided you are also making progress at the same time. Read More

Exercise: Analysing Stakeholder Influencing Style

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Once you have understood your own preferences, it is important that you start to assess the degree of distraction which could be caused by different styles with each of your key stakeholders.
  1. Use the grid below to note down your scores and also to make an assessment of three of your stakeholders. If they were to complete the Influence Profile, what Read More

Exercise: Developing Your Influencing Style

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The ability to flex your influencing style up and down each of the dimensions is very useful if you want to become more influential. This is sometimes easier said than done and it really helps if you can make it as comfortable to achieve as possible. Reflect on your scores. Which one would you most like to be able to change? If you could flex your behaviour to the other end, which would be most useful to you? Which is most difficult or uncomfortable to change? Select one end of one dimension to focus this exercise on. Then use the questions below and/or get some Read More

Exercise: Understanding Your Influence Profile Report

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The questions that follow have been designed to help you understand your Influence Profile in more depth so that you make good decisions about which skills to develop further. It is quite likely that your facilitator will work through these with you; however, it would be useful to consider these questions yourself and note down your thoughts. Read More

Behavioural Summary of the Influence Profile

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Below you will find the high-level behavioural descriptors for each dimension of the influence profile. People will generally prefer to either avoid or favour the behaviours in each dimension, but they will do this to varying degrees. The descriptors below are designed to give you a clear idea of the typical things which people will do depending on their influence preferences. Your job is to try to see where you and your stakeholders prefer to behave, so that you can begin to make decisions about how best to adapt your behaviour to minimise the distraction which could creep into your communication with them (don't forget to extend this with the exercise on style clues and evidence and see how the scoring works). Read More

Are You Too Nice to Get Ahead?

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Many people rising through the ranks gain their success and promotion by getting the best out of others. Motivating, encouraging and, well, being nice. They consider the goals and dreams of others and find ways of harmonising their own goals with others' so they can get a great result for everyone. However, it is not unusual at elevated levels for them to be told by their boss, "You're too nice". Many of the nice guys I've coached who have had this levelled at them (and there have been quite a few) find it hard to come to terms with this feedback. To accept Read More

Key Principles of the Influence Profile

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The Gautrey Influence Profile is highly effective at helping people to learn how they prefer to influence. This awareness leads to decisions about when and how to adapt their behaviour to suit a particular stakeholder. It helps them to learn how to become more effective at influence. Although the main purpose of this article is to help trainers, coaches and managers to prepare for helping others to understand these concepts, it will also be of interest to anyone who has done or is thinking about doing the Influence Profile. Read More

How to Upset People without Being Offensive

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Let’s face it, sometimes people need shaking up a little. Everyone gets stuck in a rut and needs to be helped out with a little shock treatment. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating you running around creating enemies. What I am saying is that sometimes too many people are too cautious about sharing what they really think. Being too tactful risks the accusation that you are not moving fast enough, are hedging your bets or being too timid. In which case, use the list below to find ways to appear slightly less tactful and diplomatic — while avoiding taking it too far and upsetting people! On the other hand, if you are already rather good at upsetting people (perhaps you’ve been told to learn how to be more tactful), use the list as a self-assessment to heighten your awareness and eradicate some of these behaviours! Read More

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