Influencing a Person to Take Action
Loriana Sekarski
Loriana Sekarski is the founder and president of BONSAI, a consulting company that transforms leaders (and businesses) into the best version of themselves. Outside of BONSAI, Loriana serves as an adjunct professor at Washington University's graduate student program. Additionally, she's fine-tuning her passion project, TakeFlight, a program that addresses domestic abuse within the Christian community.
This is the second in a series on ensuring what you’re communicating about actually gets accomplished.
The first step, which we focused on in the previous article, is ensuring that people understand what you said. The next step is setting the stage so that they are motivated to take action. I think for many, this step of influencing is often overlooked.
The Crux of the Influencing Problem – Neglecting to Do It
The problem, from my experience as a coach, is that many leaders surprisingly lack natural tendencies regarding influencing. Almost every time I do a leadership retreat, I find leaders are shocked to learn that the influencing-focused talent themes are not natural strengths when we look at their Gallup results. Often some of the most powerful themes around influencing are their lowest talent themes, which means influencing their employees or volunteers isn’t even on their radar.
So does this mean they are doomed? Absolutely not! Leaders can influence through the other talent themes. The essential piece is to remember that you need to do it. People with influencing strengths just know by instinct that this is an important step.
If you don’t have influencing strengths, here’s my suggestion to ensure that this important step is happening. When planning your week ahead, ask yourself, “Who should we take time to influence/get on board/get recommitted to this week?” Add it as an agenda item for every meeting you lead as well.
The Key to Influencing – Knowing Your Team Members
The other common mistake is that leaders assume what motivates them will motivate others. For example, leaders might think:
- If it is logical, they will agree.
- If it says to do so in the Bible, they will do it.
- If it makes us a “winning” organization, they will be excited about achieving the goals we set.
Maybe some of these should be true, but clearly, they don’t hold true for everyone. For example, if the second statement were true, we wouldn’t need Organic Outreach. We have to focus on reality, and the reality is that different people are motivated by different things.
So how do you influence and motivate people? There are some things we know to be true. People are more likely to be motivated when they:
- Feel they make a meaningful contribution and understand how their role ties into the bigger picture,
- Are asked for their input and feel leaders understand reality, and
- Get to use their Gallup strength areas every day.
Recently I heard a leader say, “I don’t have time for this, I have my work to get done.” As a leader, this is your work. It is some of the most important work you do. Whether they are employees or volunteers (even more so), you need to be sharing the vision and helping them see how they support it. If you can’t articulate why their contribution is meaningful and tied to the larger objectives, then perhaps that specific role isn’t needed, and that employee or volunteer can be utilized elsewhere.
Asking for input is vital. Yes, it takes more time upfront, but you will save that time plus some in the long run. Leaders almost always overlook some aspects that can be improved. If you don’t ask or ask without any intention of really listening or taking action, you’ll fail to obtain vital information and will demotivate the team. People can easily detect a leader who is going through the motions and really doesn’t care about their ideas. Does this mean you always have to use the suggestions? No, but you should have a good explanation for why you won’t.
Become an Objective Investigator
Employees/volunteers are more engaged when using their strengths, and their strengths can provide clues to motivation. Even if you don’t know their actual strengths (though you easily could by using the Gallup assessment), you can watch for clues to discover some of them. For example:
- When do they seem more energized and what is it about the situation or work that is exciting to them?
- When do they quickly buy into an idea or plan and why? Is it about the content, how it was presented, etc.?
- What causes them to lose interest and no longer be inspired by the work?
- How do they process information? What is appealing to them?
One person may be inspired by having the best program possible, and another may be more energized by a person’s progress on their developmental journey. Another may be energized by doing something new and exciting, and yet the other may want to continue to perfect the old plan.
The key is to know your tendencies and the lens through which you view and respond to the world first. Then try to put that aside and figure out how other people do so. Then you can shape your language and actions to better speak to their needs and desires, which in turn leads them to contribute at a higher level. For example, if someone were to try to motivate me to work harder for a homeless ministry and their approach was focused on growing larger for the sake of scale, I wouldn’t be motivated. However, if they shared stories about how working differently changed someone’s life in that soup line, I would be all in.
Bottom line: Make influencing a weekly priority, be intentional about it, and customize your approach to fit the different needs of the people you work with.
