Whether you are communicating with your kids, your employees, your vendors, your friends, fellow volunteers, your spouse, or anyone, it is ALWAYS important that you first build trust if you hope to be influential at all.
So what steps can you take to ensure you are influential in your communication? I’m so glad you asked!
1. Lead with authenticity showing your intentions are sincere. That means you have to have a legit, unselfish motive as you communicate. That doesn’t mean you can’t have an agenda, it just means if it’s SELFISH you will not come off as authentic unless you are a pathological liar or an oddly social sociopath!
2. Show empathy by demonstrating you can share in someone’s emotions and perception of what is being communicated.
3. Be personable. Before cutting straight to business, ask about the person’s life. If he was recently sick, inquire about how he is feeling. If her daughter recently won student body president, congratulate her on her daughter’s victory.
4. Find your receiver’s WIIFM “What’s In It For Me?” Knowing your audience’s WIFFM (pronounced wiff-umm) is an old sales terms. Great sales people understand they aren’t going to get their prospect to buy if they simply sell them on the features of their product or service. Instead, they have to sell them on the benefits of those features in relation to the prospect’s desires. Every person who buys the same treadmill will get the same features. WHY they are buying those features is directly related to what is in it for them
In the same, when you communicate with someone, especially if you want them to take action, identifying their WIIFM and crafting your message around that will build trust and get you the response you ultimately desire. This means you not only want to appeal to their emotions (by showing empathy as noted above), you want to also appeal to their goals.
So the next time you need to communicate influentially, try to keep these tenets in mind and see how warmly your message will be accepted!
Do you have additional tips that you’ve proven work when influencing? Share the goods, my friend! Let us know in the comments!