Influence and persuasiveness, have always been recognized as important skills, often associated with those in sales, marketing, politics, and law. Today the ability to influence is seen as an essential criterion for successful leadership.
What changes companies is leadership and if a leader wants to shift a company’s thinking they need influence.

To action change, we need managers and staff driving the process, and for this happen you need to be able to influence them. If you want to partnership with a company, that requires influence. If you want to impact society, that requires influence. If you can influence systems, you can influence culture. Influence can change anything.
Maintaining respect is a basic minimum requirement, but what leaders need is to be able to affect the emotions, opinions and behaviors of others.

Managers and bosses have faced a complete remodeling of long stranding leadership principles in the 21st century, however being an influencer, is a skill-set which places leaders at a uniquely powerful level.

How do you influence consistently?

Influence operates congruently with integrity. The world today is transparent, there are no more secrets and manipulation as a management tool is over. Whatever is not uncovered this week will be public in the next few months or years. Today’s communication needs to be authentic and must add value.

Facts and figures cannot alone influence people, such an approach lacks one critical component. Human emotion. Its human emotion that put stories together. As leaders we need to think almost like a psychologist and really understand our teams and customers.

Tony Robbins offers this free 2 hour video course focused on helping people master influence.

We must never forget that people are emotional and that to powerfully connect, we need to meet them on an emotional level. Our core communication strategy should be based on satires that influence emotion.
Stories powerfully connect us to our listeners. When we share our own real-life stories or the stories of others our audiences feel that they get to know us as authentic people –people who have struggled with problems and who have figured out how to overcome them.

Morgan in his book, Power Cues,  says “the best storytellers look to their own memories and life experiences for ways to illustrate their message. What events in your life make you believe in the idea you are trying to share?  There may be a tendency not to want to share personal details at work, but anecdotes that illustrate struggle, failure, and barriers overcome are what make leaders appear authentic and accessible.” Morgan reinforces “the key is to show your vulnerability,”

Influence can happen without leadership, yet will be fleeting.

Being a leader has more to do with who you are than influence. Influence can happen without leadership yet will be fleeting. The magic formula is impact + grow + leadership = influence. Create areas of impact and growth for others in your life/business as you walk out being who you are as a leader. This combination creates organic influence and leaders become beacons for change. – Jen Kelchner, TeenTrep.co

When an influential leader enters a room they bring with them a certain feeling and energy.

Passionate people inspire others to passion. To move another, you need to be moved. Influencers persuade others by their authentic drive and unique energy, but often we lose our passion and become only intellectually driven.
We have to get ourselves into the emotions we want to create.

We need to bring the level of energy we want others to follow through with, ourselves. Because the implications of being an influential leader are profound.