Most people think influence comes with power, authority, experience, and position. It is true that these factors may affect your influence, but I have found they are not the most relevant. INFLUENCE IS ALL ABOUT COMMUNICATION. Communication is the very foundation of influence. However, when discussing the subject of communication the topic of influence rarely comes up. The impact of communication on influence becomes even more significant when one considers we can not communicate. Virtually everything we do professionally and personally communicates a message and therefore IMPACTS (positively or negatively) our ability to INFLUENCE others. Authors Boone and Kurtz in Contemporary Business estimate that leaders, “spend about 80% of their time (6 hours and 24 minutes) of every eight-hour day in direct [...]

What I know to be true is people are influenced by what you say, and how you make them feel. If your message and delivery are in sync, others will perceive you as trustworthy, credible, sincere and authentic. When your words match the way you behave, how you look and how you sound, your communication is the total package. What your listeners hear, see and feel is in harmony, consistency builds trust, which in turn builds influence. In reading Professor Albert Mehrabian’s work on communication, he states the following “When communication is unclear, when the message and the delivery are inconsistent, we pay more attention to nonverbal cues to interpret the meaning.” Here are two examples: when a customer service [...]