Colin Gautrey

Preparing to Influence Others

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No amount of strategy can avoid the need at some point to actually do some influencing. Okay, you may have developed a great strategy which involves getting others to do the heavy lifting; however, you still have to influence them in the first place. Put another way, if you are not out there influencing, you’re probably missing some great opportunities or, you will lose out on the credit later. Much of what follows depends on you having a clear notion of where you are going. In an earlier article (Influence Processes and Goals) I suggested you should use the Stakeholder Influence Process to guide your influencing work. At the very beginning 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

Benefits of Using the Stakeholder Influence Process

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If you give it a half decent go, you will quickly start to notch up the benefits. Over the years, I have seen people achieve remarkable advances in a very short space of time in so many different areas. For example, clients have been able to…
  • Focus their time on what will make the biggest difference to their success.
  • Reduce the risks of failure and be more prepared if those risks start to materialise.
  • Dramatically increase buy-in, getting more people to actively support their work.
  • Deliver their projects in record time, with fewer problems and enhanced benefit realisation.
  • Pull out of the detail so they could take a more strategic view.
  • Achieve much more with much less.
  • Become more confident, assured and less stressed.
  • Attract the attention of the talent spotters at the top of their organisation.
  • Move forward their career, sometimes several steps at a time.
The Stakeholder Influence Process is also useful in a very wide range of pursuits. Over the last Read More

Stakeholder Influence Process Introduction

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The Stakeholder Influence Process is a sequence of steps which will help you work out what you need to do to achieve your goals when they are reliant on the agreement of other powerful people. It provides a simple framework to think through the situation you wish to influence, your goal, or the project you are managing. It will help you to figure out who is onside and who may be out to get you. From that you can start to develop your strategy to accomplish your goal. This will probably involve engaging with people you may have overlooked before. Before starting the process, you may have considered them to be minor players or not even interested. Some of them may not be interested in what you are doing, but the Stakeholder Influence Process may uncover opportunities Read More

Create a Benefits Register

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If you have been able to get clarity in your own mind on what you are aiming to achieve, you will also have recognised all or most of the benefits you will realise from success. This is natural and to be expected, although it holds within it a risk that you may alienate your stakeholders. Generally, stakeholders will not be too interested in how you are going to gain; instead, they want to Read More

Focus Influencing Goals on Influence

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It may seem a little odd as a title, but it is vital that you make sure the goal you are going to use as a focus for the Stakeholder Influence Process is about influence rather than things happening, or milestones. You are no doubt very accustomed to defining goals at work based on projects which have to be completed, agreements which need to be signed, etc. What I want you to do with influencing goals is to take one step back to consider what you have to influence in order to Read More

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