#3 of 8 Surprising Habits That Block Your Influence

2 minute read

If you think that influence means persuading or convincing others, you’ve got habit #3: misunderstanding influence. This all-too-common mindset accidentally perpetuates mediocre performance and frustration.

Sure, you are influencing your manager Amy when you deliberately work to convince her to make a certain decision or respond in a particular way. Except those instances of purposefully persuading make up at most 10% of your influence.

When are you really influencing her? The other 90% of the time when you’re communicating with her over email or instant message, when you’re daydreaming or multitasking during a meeting, when you’re asking her questions, when you’re not making eye contact because you don’t want to turn your camera on.

You are continually influencing the people around you, at work and on the home front and everywhere in between. And a solid 90% of that is completely unintentional.

If you’re not generating the results you really want as you work with others, take a closer look at how you’ve been thinking about influence. Your influence and everyday impact on others is absolutely key to your performance and success.

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Wingspan partners with leaders around the world to strengthen their behavioral performance and communication. Our approach centers on creating more intentional outcomes by developing healthy behavior systems, more productive interactions, and more meaningful relationships.

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