The Ability To Influence Others | How To Do It

The Ability to Influence Others

What has been interesting about working with influence tactics and earning my graduate degree focusing on psychology of influence and persuasion is the theme of first changing yourself before changing others.

Here are some examples I have seen over the last 5 years:

1. In sales many teach to be confident in yourself, being sold on yourself and your product before you can sell others.
   
2. In a positive psychology course we learned that to make others happy you generally need to make yourself happy first.
   
3. My favorite sales author Jeffrey Gitomer stresses that to have a positive attitude and work successfully with others you need to first serve yourself well and meet your own needs.
   
4. What I have found with influence and persuasion is that you need to first be able to influence your own actions, influence yourself before you will be able to effectively influence others in many areas.

Are you ignoring yourself while trying to sell or influence others? What could you do to develop more self discipline, control and enjoyment at the same time which would lead to a snowballing effect in influencing others? You could create a list of 5 things you need to complete every single day, write a book over the next 4 months, travel to places you have always dreamed of going, or commit your time and money to launching your new business on a small scale right now.


Tags: Influence Others, Influencing others, How to Influence others, how to influence others in business, how to influence others in sales, The Ability to influence others, influence over