How do you go about influencing your boss?
The reason we are asked this question so frequently is that your ability to influence anyone is dependent upon the power you hold. Whether you are seeking to get your boss’s approval for an idea you want to pursue, or you want your boss to change some aspect of how they act at work, you do not have the power to make those decisions.
If you do not have the power to make the decision, you have to approach influence from a different angle. You need to persuade them that your ideas are the right way to go, or as Marshall Goldsmith says, if you can’t tell, you have to sell.
Great sales staff don’t spend their time talking about how wonderful their product or service is. Rather, they spend time building their understanding of the needs and aspirations of those people they are trying to sell to. They then talk about how their product or service will help meet their client’s needs. Yet, how many of us are guilty of pitching our ideas to the boss based solely on why we believe it is good idea. The first step in selling your idea to your boss is to know what they want and then giving it to them. As simple as this sounds, being able to put yourself in their shoes may open your eyes in ways that you did not expect.
To influence your boss, you need to understand what his or her goals are, and help to achieve those goals.
- Present ideas that will help your boss look good and achieve their goals. Structure your pitch to highlight how the idea benefits your boss and the organisation. This is the old problem/solution model. After all, who would ever buy something from a salesman who said, “buy this because I get a good commission if you do”.
- Complement your boss by helping with those tasks that they do not do well themselves, but which are important to achieving the results that matter to them.
- Frame feedback in a way that highlights how your boss’s ideas and actions take them towards or away from the goals that are important to them.
