1. Influencing and Communicating With Leaders and Peers

2. Our Objectives Building Relationships
Outlining the Levers of Influence
Preparing Your Pitch

3. Building Relationships

4. Building Relationships
Know Your Manager and Peers:
Spend time learning their interests and priorities
Learn their pet peeves and avoid them
Don’t talk negatively about your colleagues
Understand and support their:
Strengths
Weaknesses
Priorities and Goals
Work style (e.g., Is your manager a reader or a listener?)
“Managing your Boss,” by John J. Gabarro and John P. Kotter, Harvard Business Review
The 360 Degree Leader: Developing your Influence from Anywhere within the Organization, by John C. Maxwell

5. Levers of Influence

6. Influencer
The true measure of leadership is influence – nothing more, nothing less.
- John Maxwell

7. Levers of Influence People will attempt to change their behavior if:
They believe it will be worth it (motivation)
They can do what is required (ability)
You can influence motivation and ability through personal, social and structural sources

8. Six Sources of Influence
Motivation Ability
Make the Undesirable Desirable
Surpass Your Limits
Harness Peer Pressure
Find Strength in Numbers
Design Rewards and Demand Accountability
Change the Environment
Structural Social Personal

9. Personal Motivation Help people find intrinsic satisfaction:
Immersing them in the activity
Tapping into people’s sense of pride and competition
Linking new behaviors to their values

10. Personal Ability Ensure that people have the ability to change:
Breaking behaviors into clear, specific and repeatable actions
Creating time and space to practice new skills
Providing immediate feedback against clear standards

11. Social Motivation Use peer pressure:
Cultivating the support of “opinion leaders”
Surfacing undiscussables through public discourse
Removing people from existing networks and placing them in a new, supportive network

12. Social Ability
When individuals need the support of those around them to change:
Getting entire groups to change behavior together
Co-opting others by turning your problem into their own
Having participants teach one another new behaviors

13. Structural Motivation
Extrinsic rewards should compliment other strategies:
Linking rewards to specific actions (not outcomes)
Using small, heartfelt tokens of appreciation
Using punishment judiciously – start with a warning but never bluff

14. Structural Ability Shape the environment to make change easier:
Changing the physical environment
Making a small amount of important data visible to reinforce behaviors
Eliminating choice altogether

15. Applying the Influencer
In small groups, pick one of the challenges you shared at the beginning. Work together to determine how you might apply this model to that case.

16. Preparing Your Pitch

17. Communication Discussion
How do communication skills affect your ability to have an impact?
Why is it difficult to communicate effectively?
Executive vs. peer audiences?

18. Focus on the Audience Are you communicating up, down or across?
Are they:
Experts?
Educated decision-makers?
Customers?
Collaborators?
Frame your case – tell them why they should care

19. Characteristics of Executive Audiences
Busy
Distracted
Impatient
Thinking about something else
Prone to tangents
Have multiple agendas (some open, some hidden)

20. Conveying Your Message – Make It Stick
Keep it simple and brief
Lead with results/impact
Use stories to support findings and recommendations
Make the ask clear
Deliver the unexpected (w/o being gimmicky)
Use alternative media as appropriate

21. How Do You Fail? No explanation of significance No roadmap
Not knowing your stuff
Gaps in logic
Excessive detail
Gimmicky

22. How Do You Succeed?
Do not share everything you know – but be ready to provide depth and complexity when asked
Answer questions efficiently – if you don’t know the answer, do NOT make one up
Be prepared NOT to get through everything:
You will be interrupted
The audience may focus on one issue and never let go
Make your most important points early

23. Examples of Effective Communications
Jared Fogle – Subway Celebrity
Derek Sivers – Starting a Movement
Alexis Ohanian – How to Make a Splash in Social Media
Others?

24. Effective Communications Strategies
For communications to be successful, you must move beyond one-time communications:
Repeat, repeat, repeat
Explore different mediums of communication
Meet people where they are
Do not assume that hearing equates with understanding or action
Communicate throughout any initiative, not just at the beginning

25. Next Steps

26. Action Planning
What is one action you will take upon returning to work?
What support will you need to accomplish this goal?

27. Stay Engaged! Center for Government Leadership: Daily Pipeline
Annenberg Leadership Seminars
Excellence in Government Fellows program
Fed Coach
Daily Pipeline
Service to America Medals

28. ourpublicservice.org