Speaker 0 00:00:00 From Roman Leadership, I'm Oscar Romano. This is Learn, reflect Lead Leadership and DIA Development for mission driven individuals and organizations. This episode is titled, the Power to Influence Others Can Be Yours. This episode is for you if you are struggling with how to influence others. If you don't know why you should focus on influencing others or if you're looking for tips on how to influence others. Today, we're gonna do just that. We're gonna focus on what you can do to influence those around you. You have the power to influence the behavior of the people around you without them even realizing it. But as Spider-Man's Uncle Ben once said, with great power comes great responsibility. How does this power to influence work? Well, everyone can wield this power, but only a select handful wields it knowingly and correctly. It all comes down to how you can subconsciously impact the people around you with the messaging that you deliver.
Speaker 0 00:01:07 In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell describes the ability disability as priming, where individuals give subtle cues that cause subconscious reactions in others. Gladwell references an experiment by psychologists, John Barr, who have participants in a study create sentences from different lists of words. One set of participants receive words such as aggressively bold, rude, bother, and disturb. While another group receive words such as respect, consider it appreciate patiently and polite. The participants were then directed to the scientists in charge to get further instructions only to find a scientist in a conversation with another individual. The scientists weren't interested in the sentences that the participants created. They were interested in how long it took each group to interrupt the scientists to get further instructions. The results were striking when they measured how long it took participants from each group to interrupt the conversation. The individual's prime for politeness never interrupted the conversation. While those prime for rudeness interrupted within five minutes, the scientists could influence the participant's level of patience. Just by priming the two groups of participants with different sets of words, the participant's subconscious minds took into words they were given and created meaning through their level of patience.
Speaker 0 00:02:35 What about leaders and the power to influence others? What connection is there? Well think about what the results of that experiment mean for leaders and the people around them. Participants in that study were influenced merely by a list of words they had to use to create sentences. Leaders are constantly putting much more than a list of words in front of their staff. Leaders send out staff-wide emails, speak to them in meetings, and have one-on-one conversations with staff. If leaders aren't careful and intentional with their messaging, their words could have unintended negative results. On the other hand, if leaders are deliberate and focus with their messaging, they set set up a wave of positive energy across their staff.
Speaker 0 00:03:24 We have to be careful with misinterpreted negativity though, and I do wanna point out that derogatory terms should never be used right, but you should also be mindful when using words like worry, urgents important or necessary. These words could lead individuals to feel more stressed and frenetic. While you might be trying to convey and promote a culture of accountability and urgency, your staff could be experiencing a wave of negativity. Now, this isn't to say they shouldn't feel a bit of pressure at times, but that we need to be strategic with our choice of words, and when we're using them in the middle of October. A first year teacher doesn't need that added stress, and you may need to use words such as urgent or important. When it comes to a veteran teacher who has already gotten feedback about their lack loss to performance. It's okay to use different words for different groups of people.
Speaker 0 00:04:24 We have to keep in mind that groups also different than working with individuals. Leaders should be careful to avoid any interpretation of negativity while addressing groups of people. I remember one situation when I was addressing my whole staff about the importance of arriving on time for meetings. I was stressing words like importance, urgency, and respect. Unfortunately, the people who needed to hear that message didn't realize it was directed toward them. While those who didn't need to listen to it were upset that their efforts weren't recognized, your message is only effective if the audience received it as intended.
Speaker 0 00:05:06 Leading with positivity can go a long way. It never hurts to push encouraging, motivational and positive words to those around you. As a principal, I used to keep a bulletin board of positive messages in my office, and I saw plenty of other staff members do the same in their offices or classrooms. Why is that? It's simple. Positive messages make you feel good, give you energy, and motivate you to move forward. A struggling first year teacher will probably be down on themselves, so finding something positive to point out could make a massive difference in their performance. And a veteran teacher who is a consistent performer may have fallen under the radar and could benefit from some, from some praise. Getting the habit of positivity is excellent because it works in all situations, whether you're with one individual or a whole group, you should find ways to leverage positivity for your messaging.
Speaker 0 00:06:07 Even if you're going through a trying situation, there's always something you can be optimistic about. I do have a warning, though, a warning about hiding behind positivity because a trap that some leaders fall into is thinking they must be positive with everybody all the time no matter what. And by no means is this the case. They're hiding behind positivity To avoid accountability, never avoid holding people accountable for fear of coming across as negative. A lack of accountability is the same as promoting a culture of negativity. You activity, you're inadvertently sending a message that you don't care enough about your staff to hold them accountable and help them grow. And I know that's not the case. I know that's you do care about your staff and you want to help them grow. So now it's time to commit. How are you going to influence the people around you and what supports do you need to better influence those people? Let me know how it goes. Thanks. That's it for this episode of Learn, reflect Lead. Thank you for watching on YouTube or listening via podcast. If you're interested in more, you can find
[email protected] or connect with me on LinkedIn Mono Leadership.
Speaker 0 00:07:31 If you like this episode, please share it with your friends. Subscribe and leave a review. I'm Oscar Romano. Until next time.
