How to influence people

Everything we do tends to influence people, even the little things. The way we dress, our general appearance, our friendly manner, the kind of car we drive, the home we live in, the job we do and last, but not least, our personality. This is our persona and these days, we even have a online persona and a written persona. The way your CV is written, the way you write a letter and the way you write everything adds to your overall persona.

Your online persona includes what you communicate in chatting, your profiles on social networking and everything you do online. I put the photograph above on Facebook yesterday and that had an affect. Some people just liked the photograph, others perhaps wanted to visit the area, some wanted to take photographs too. One person wanted me to confirm where the photograph was taken, because he knows the place well from his childhood experiences there; which are now happy memories.

The way we feel often influences other people. If we feel happy it tends to be contagious and rubs off on others. If we are depressed that  can have a negative effect on others. They have an affect on us, depending upon their mood. In a workplace where everyone is unhappy and depressed the mood will often spread to other people, perhaps to customers. It is in the interests of employers, therefore, to keep their staff happy.

We communicate not only through speech, but through gestures. We should try to be friendly towards people. If we try to fool them or have less than friendly intentions that will show in our body language. This is a problem that many salesmen have, they don’t believe in their product and just psyche themselves up to sell at any cost. The emotional cost for the salesman is anxiety and stress that he passes to the customer. The salesman should first, believe in his product and then relax!

We are emotional beings and we all like people to be nice to us. The officious jobsworths in local government will know every rule and will stick to them; quote them and take pride in sticking to the rules. If only they would actually feel some empathy for the people they talk to, how much easier their jobs would be. They would have less official power, but far more influence as people would want to be cooperative and helpful.

Stress and anxiety are very contagious, one wrong word can upset someone when we feel stressed. Sometimes we have to take a deep breath before we speak and not let the situation or person get to us. Children can be very stressful with all the demands they make and the noise! How easy it is to shout at them and judge them harshly in that moment of frustration. That hasty judgement can affect them for life though and that influence that parents have over their children should never be under estimated. Maybe you can even remember when your parent accused you of being lazy, stupid or idle in a moment of frustration?

We all have more influence than we often realise in  our contact with other people. That influence can be friendly and positive or it can be envious and negative. The choice is ours on a daily basis, we can wave the carrot or the stick. The carrot usually works best.

There are more amazing blogs on the home page. Remember that influence by consent is a powerful thing.