How To Influence Others In The Workplace

Have you ever wondered how to have more influence of people in the workplace? Whether it's a colleague or an employee or someone you're managing, or even a supervisor or a boss, how you can show up with full, powerful confidence and actually persuade and influence others in any environment? If so, then watch this episode because you're going to learn two super powerful, simple, subtle things that can give you a tremendous amount of influence at work and anywhere else in your life. Welcome to another episode of the Art of Extraordinary Confidence. I'm your host, Dr. Aziz, best selling author and the founder of the center for Social Confidence. This is a show for you if you want more confidence. If you know on some level that confidence is going to get you to the next level in your life, in your dating life, your relationships, your business, your career, your income, your finances and your social life and just your general happiness. Being confident in yourself and liking who you are and being able to talk to anyone. This is a show for you. And today's episode is all about how to bring confidence into the workplace. Whether you run your own business or you're a manager or you're, you have people above you, it doesn't matter where you are. You can be a powerful force for influence because you're a leader. And we tend to think, well, I'm not, you know, I'm only a leader if I'm in a leadership position. And that's not true because leadership doesn't really come from the position that you're in. There are people that might have a leadership position, but they're not good leaders. And we've all experienced that, I'm sure. And there are also people who are not officially in the leadership position, but everyone kind of looks to them and they tend to make decisions, they tend to be asked for their advice and guidance, they tend to speak up and share their ideas and people pay attention to it. So it's really not about your position as much as it's about how you show up. And so that's the first thing. If you want to start having more influence in the workplace, you got to show up. That means you have to be able to put your ideas forward. You have to be able to talk to people, whether it's a boss or a colleague or in a meeting or in a small group or approaching someone one on one with a question or concern that you have. You have to be able to put yourself out there and speak up in that way. And if there's major confidence issues that are blocking that, oh, they don't want to Hear what I have to say. Oh, they don't like me. Oh, I'm not good enough. Oh, no one cares. I oh, I'm scared of confrontation. Then you're going to severely limit yourself and it's going to be really hard to influence or persuade people, let alone get ahead, let alone get promoted, let alone grow your own business or your division, wherever you are. So you need to break through that. And you know, some of the best ways to do that might be reaching out to me for confidence coaching, getting one of my mastermind groups where we help people rapidly boost through that or even one on one coaching with me. If that works for you and that could be a powerful experience. Also the confidence Unleashed program could be super powerful for you. Whatever it is, you need to get that handled if you want to get ahead. And today I'm talking about two super subtle things that you can do. This is already assuming that you have the confidence to go talk to somebody or speak up in a meeting. And if you don't get confidence unleashed or reach out to me or something, because that problem is not going to go away. You know, if you can't do it now and you haven't been able to do it for a couple years, you're probably not going to be able to do it a year from now, just from what I've seen. So you need to address it, you need to handle that problem. But if you're already able to speak up some or you already can approach your supervisor or boss, but you just want to have more influence, then here are some powerful things that I can share with you. One is how you approach someone and how you frame what you're going to say makes a huge difference. So let me share what I mean by the story. There's a client that I was working with and he was working in a company and it was a new division, working on a new project and he was new to it, so. New, new, new. And he kind of got there and was like, I don't really know my role, I don't know exactly what I'm doing. No one seems to know what they're doing. And so he goes and approaches the head engineer who's on the project and he starts to ask him questions like, what are we doing? How do all the pieces fit together? And he couldn't get any clear answers. And in fact, the more he heard, the more he's like, I think this is a mess. I don't think they know what they're doing. I don't think this is going to work out. And so he wanted to go to his boss, his supervisor, and have a conversation about this. But he was scared and he found excuses, and he stalled out for, like, two weeks. But we were coaching, and I was kind of like, hey, man, what's going on? We got to face this fear because this is not going to go well for your job at this company, let alone the success of this division is not going to progress. You have some valuable information. You are a leader. You need to step up and share this. So I was encouraging him, inspiring, challenging, helping remove what was in the way. And we got to the point where he was going to go talk to his supervisor, his boss. And I said, well, tell me how you're going to say it. And he's like, well, I'm going to tell him I've been looking at the current plan and that I have a different plan that I'm going to work on myself, and I'm going to share that with him, and I think it's going to be better. I was like, okay, well, that's good. That's a start. Because it's being assertive. But just notice how that sounds. You know, let's say the engineer's head engineer's name is John. John wants to do it this way. I don't like that. I'm going to do it my way. Now, that doesn't. If it was a supervisor or boss, I mean, he might be into that, but it might be like, oh, this guy's a maverick. He wants to do it his way. He's not a team player. I don't even know why he wants to do it his way. So there was no framing. And this is super important. You may or may not know this term, but framing is just the idea that if you have a picture or a photograph and you have no frame around it, just imagine holding a picture and you're looking at it. I don't know. Most people probably don't have printed out photos anymore. But just imagine back in the day before our phones had everything on them. You're looking at a picture and you're looking at it. And then did you ever want to make a gift for someone? So you go down to, like, the Walgreens and buy, like, a cheap frame. And I used to do that. Like, here, mom, here's a Mother's Day. It's a picture of me framed, and you put a frame around it, and it's kind of cheap, but it looks totally different, doesn't it? It's like a nicer thing. And same thing, if you have like a poster or a piece of art and you put a real nice frame around it. Whoa. And all of a sudden, like, wow, what an amazing. And you look at museums, they got incredible frames around all their art. So framing what you put around, whatever the thing is, it makes a huge difference. So whatever this client of mine puts around, what he says to his boss, and whatever you put around what you say makes a huge difference on whether it influences people or not. And so what I suggested was. Well, before, when you were telling me what was happening, that was really valuable. It's like, well, I went and talked to engineer John here, and to me. So this is how I would put that all in the frame. Like, listen, boss man, I want to chat with you about the project. I went and talked with John the engineer, and I have some concerns. And that's another secret tip. Super powerful. You want to influence people. Concerns, powerful word. Write that down. Use that in your life and in your communication, especially in a meeting. Powerful. Because what does concern mean? It means danger. There's some danger. And what grabs people's attention more than danger? Nothing. That's why every article, every newspaper, every headline for on the news, on the Internet, everything on tv, the news is what Danger. Tonight at six, you're gonna die. There's a hurricane, we're running out of water. You're like, oh, shit, I better watch that. Better click that. So it's danger. It gets us. And it's the same thing when you're influencing people. It's like, I have some concerns. Now, this isn't Raising Chicken Little or Raising the Flag and Danger Singles when they're not there, but when they are there, don't be afraid to shy away and say, I have some concerns. And you're also saying it in like, a casual. You're not being like, I'm freaking out about the project, man. You're just saying, you know, I talked to John and I have some concerns. And that's enough to just get people's attention. If I was a boss or a supervisor, I'd be like, wait a minute, what are those concerns? Tell me more. So now you got their attention. And then I would lay it out and say, well, it seems to me. And then share what the concerns are. It seems to me that the project is disorganized. I don't know how all the pieces fit together. I don't think anyone knows how all the pieces together. I haven't seen that. And I think it is incredibly important that we Figure that out. So now you've laid out the concerns and the person's going to be interested, and then you come in with your solution, then you're the hero. So he says, and I've been thinking about a solution. What I could do is I could sit down for two days and map out an alternative kind of big picture thing that I think would really put us in the right direction and then share that with you. And if he framed it that way, totally different level of influence, because the person's gonna be paying attention, they're gonna be interested, they're gonna notice the concerns, and then they're gonna want the solution. Very different than saying, I don't like John. I'm gonna do it my way. So how can you use this? How can you speak up more? How can you approach people when you need to? What are some things that my client did that were leadership roles? Well, he went and talked to John. He actually talked to a number of people around the whole department. And he never used to do anything like that before. Used to be like the guy who just sit in his office and wait for someone to give him an order. But we've been working together for a while, and he was getting more confidence and he was seeing like, this is not going to work for me. If I want to really excel in my career and kick ass in this new position, I got to show up differently. So maybe that's something you can do. Start talking to people, start interacting with people. He was also willing to go approach a boss or a supervisor. And a lot of people are super scared to do that and avoid that and to their detriment. If you can just go approach them and say things like we were talking about here, not only do you get better results, but they see you differently. They start to see you as a leader. And when people see you as a leader, good things happen. So share below how you're going to apply this in your job, in your career, in your life. What did you learn? What did you take away? What's the most valuable thing that you got from this episode? Please share below any questions you have as well. And until we speak again, may you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. Talk to you soon. Sa.