Your boss tells you that you need to learn influence skills. Later, you research influence skills and are overwhelmed by dozens of blogs and articles, each listing myriad tips. You’re at a loss for how to know what influence skill to develop. The Influence Dimension Pyramid below differentiates six kinds of influence competencies to make sense of the mayhem and point to optimal learning resources.

Substantive Influence: Content and Expertise

Your ideas need a sound rationale, business validity and compelling evidence. This influence dimension relies on formal education and training, but also upon keeping up-to-date through more informal, continuous learning efforts, such as courses, reading, coaching and mentoring. But beyond your actual idea’s efficacy, people must also know and trust in your general credibility and expertise. How can you broadcast your knowledge, results, talent and strengths effectively? Ben Franklin once said that unrecognized strengths are like sundials in the shade. A Fast Company article suggests finding new opportunities to showcase expertise, exemplified by a successful financial officer who conducted weekly meetings with every department.

How can you gain subject matter expertise and then share it? Substantive Influence is the “engine” propelling your influence. The remaining dimensions provide the “steering” for your sound content, so that you reach your influence destination — attitudinal and emotional shifts, behavior change and buy-in.

Core Interpersonal Influence

Daniel Goleman, the emotional intelligence (EQ) guru, found EQ to be more than twice as important for job performance and advancement than intelligence and technical competence combined. The Influence Pyramid correlates with what Goleman’s identified as five EQ elements. Two elements, empathy and social skills, fall within this Interpersonal Influence dimension. Are your speaking habits assertive (i.e., firm voice, strong body language), passive (i.e., poor eye contact, a slumped posture) or aggressive (i.e., fast-talking, scolding gestures)? Instead of trying to influence through an endless monologue, strive to foster true dialogue that employs active listening with empathic paraphrasing (i.e., “You sound really frustrated that…”) and open-ended questions (“How does that fit for you…,” etc.).

Style-based Influence

This dimension focuses on understanding communicating, working, personality, thinking or decision-making styles. The goal is to leverage your style strengths, manage your style limitations and adapt to others’ styles for influencing and cultivating harmonious, productive working relationships. The Interpersonal Influence dimension espouses “the golden rule” (“do unto others as you what have them do unto you)­­, treating and managing all people with respect (i.e., empathic listening), honesty (i.e., assertive speaking) and fairness (i.e., win-win conflict management). However, Style-based Influence aspires to “the platinum rule (“Do unto others as they would have you do unto them”). In other words, speak their language. Books and workshops on any of these popular models will fortify your influence: Social Styles, DiSC®, Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI ®), Hermann Whole Brain Thinking Model or Enneagrams.

Presentation-based Influence

This dimension hones presentation skills and presence in large-group formal presentations, during committee selling, or when informally expressing ideas in a small group.

Attend a workshop or read about these three components of presentation mastery:

1. Content organization: This includes informational and persuasive templates, along with visual aids. A classic content format consists of an introduction (i.e., attention-getter and preview), body (i.e., points and evidence) and conclusion (i.e., summary and memorable close). Thought leaders Rob Davidson, Kenneth Acha and Sola Kaye suggest a simple format when answering impromptu questions — PREP: Point, Reasons, Example and summary Point.
2. Delivery: This combines body language and voice with engaging, credible and impactful language. Practice a powerful stance and posture, emphatic and descriptive gestures, and a vocal pace of seven to eight on a 10-point scale. It has been claimed that individuals speak at a rate of 175 to 200 words per minute, even though people are very capable of listening and processing words at a rate of 600 to 1,000 per minute. Therefore, if your speech rate is too slow, your listeners’ brains will race ahead, mentally finishing your sentence for you, and tuning out.
3. Presentation anxiety management: Practice presenting in a safe, supportive environment to reduce presentation anxiety.

Strategic Influence

This dimension factors in the dynamics of organizational politics and power dynamics into the influence equation. Political savvy as a competency was rarely on the leadership map two decades ago but is mission-critical in today’s often complex, turbulent and volatile organizations. And by politics, we’re not talking about sucking up to the C-suite or engaging in petty gossip. In this case, being political means being business savvy.

Business savvy involves networking, stakeholder analysis, understanding informal power, knowing the unwritten rules, selling your ideas, managing buzz about you and your team and presenting or challenging ideas tactfully while respecting ego. Harvard professor Eric Douglas discusses research that found that 40% of new managers and executives failed in their jobs within the first 18 months of starting new positions and that key reasons included “failing to establish a cultural fit” and not having the “required political savvy.” Even more alarming is a Forbes article, “Why Most New Executives Fail,” which reports research on 2,600 Fortune 1,000 executives revealing that 50% to 70% of new executives fail within 18 months, and that a key reason is “they have difficulty adapting to politics…”

Self-influence

This dimension is a thread across all levels of the Influence Pyramid. It entails awareness and self-control of your self talk, that little voice inside your head. Self talk has a profound impact on yourself, others, your job, your company, the world, the future … and your influence capability. Besides the EQ elements of empathy and social skills within the Interpersonal Influence Dimension, Goleman identified the remaining three EQ elements to be self-awareness (understanding your feelings and reactions), self-regulation (controlling and managing your impulses and emotions) and internal motivation, all within this Self-influence Dimension.

Your self talk has a massive impact on your influence success, so monitor and alter any internal self-statements that prompt negative feelings and performance. Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” Are you often tuned into self-sabotaging, counter-productive thinking about an upcoming performance appraisal, negotiation or a meeting in which you’ll express your opinions? Try imagining your mind as a television, and switch channels to a positive, and less pessimistic, upsetting program. Consider the following example of negative versus positive self talk:

• Negative self talk: “I shouldn’t push too hard with my viewpoints. I’m a rookie compared to the other people in the group. They’re so much more experienced than I am.”
• Positive self talk: “I’ve done my homework on our industry, I’ve documented my marketing strategy evidence, and I bring fresh energy to the issue. I’m confident about my ‘ask.’”

Conclusion

The Influence Pyramid model is not meant to encourage you to become a hectic eclectic frantically tackling every kind of influence skill all at once. Rather, it’s a simple cognitive framework for differentiating the otherwise overwhelming subject matter of influence skills. Conduct an informal self-assessment screening of your comfort, confidence and competence with each Influence Dimension to guide your learning and improvement, and use your influence skills to improve your standing as a key partner to the business.