Colin Gautrey

How to Realise Big Goals

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This article was first published on Sales Initiative on 23rd October 2014.

My bet is that if you have been a reader of Sales Initiative for a while, you are the sort of person who is ambitious, driven and motivated by great achievement.

No doubt you've done all the goal setting routines and got pumped up visualising your dreams. You might have tried affirmations and put up motivational pictures by your desk. I sincerely hope these things are working for you. I've read countless books on the topic of success, but I don't recall one that Read More

Failing to Attempt Influence

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There are many common mistakes when it comes to influencing. In the work I do, arguably the most common one I see is that of not knowing what you want to achieve (I covered this in the first article in this series, Exactly What Do You Want?). Another important one to watch out for is failing to attempt to influence once you've decided what you want to make happen. To avoid this danger, you first need to make sure you understand why it might happen. Then you can take steps to minimise the risks. Potential reasons Read More

Influence Processes and Goals

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As with so many things, having a clear and simple process to follow in order to maximise your influence with stakeholders will help you enormously as you strive to become an influential leader. I use my Stakeholder Influence Process to help guide my clients’ thinking and their action when influencing stakeholders (you'll find out more about this in Chapter 7 of Influential Leadership). The process isn’t complicated or profound, yet the output can be astonishing — and simple. The whole point of it is to gain clarity about the real world around what you are aiming to achieve — and then begin to make things happen (you can read  an introduction to the process here). The influence process begins with gaining greater focus on what it is you want to achieve. I have found that influence becomes much easier when you can be clear about what you want (to others and yourself). Sounds Read More

Exactly What Do You Want?

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If you want to be influential, you need to set specific outcome orientated goals for your influence. You probably have very clear goals and targets in other parts of your role, and influencing should be no different. For most people at middle to senior levels, influencing is a major part of their work. Often influence falters because other people do not understand in enough detail what they are being asked to agree to. Most people have a vague notion of what they want to achieve, and vague notions don't communicate very well. Greater clarity will help them decide to support you, or indeed, uncover specific reasons why they cannot support you. Either way, you will move forward on your goals more quickly. You will be surprised just how Read More

Realisation of Influencing Goals

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Once you begin to clarify your influencing goal, your mind may start to play tricks on you. One bright day you felt positive and inspired to reach for the stars. On these days, you feel totally empowered ― anything seems possible, nothing can get in your way, you are invincible. Feeling inspired, you lay down your goals with positive expectations. Next day, things look a little darker. Doubts have started to creep in. The old well-worn dialogue gets to work inside your head. What on earth were you thinking? How can you possibly achieve the goal you laid out only yesterday? If you are not careful, these Read More

How to Develop Influencing Goals

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Influencing Goals are a critical element of the overall stakeholder influence process that I advocate here. Many people when they begin to focus on their influence will stay too long having a vague aim about what they want to influence. This is okay, but is not as powerful has developing an extremely clear focus on exactly what you want people to be doing, thinking, feeling or saying differently as a result of your influence. Influence goals are usually the final step in the realisation of your main business goal or target. By developing a clear influence goal, you are actually answering the question: Read More

Deepening Influence Goal Specification

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A final piece of thinking in this step is how you will know you have achieved the desired influence. For many of the example Influencing Goals I gave earlier, it is clear from the wording that the board either signed off the proposal or they didn’t. But ones like becoming recognised as Samantha’s successor are a little more difficult. How would you know you are recognised as a successor? The more clarity you get, the more progress you will make. So if this applies to you, see if you can come up with some Read More

Exercise: Finalising Your Influencing Goal

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Start by making a list of the key challenges that you need or want to influence within your work or perhaps with your business partners. Likely candidates for this list include...
  • Projects you are responsible for either delivering or sponsoring
  • Disputes within your peer group
  • New product ideas that you want to gain support for
  • Units which are embattled and consensus over action is lacking
  • Projects that have stalled or are in crisis
  • Strategic change plans that have not yet reached implementation stage
  • Structural changes that are being contemplated
Consider the following Read More

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