Positive Influence for Women

Introduction

The purpose of this book is to help you to become more influential. Influence is so important if you wish to be successful, yet many women struggle to gain the influence they need to make satisfactory progress in their work and in their careers.

In particular, this book will:

Stimulate and provoke your thinking on some of the most common challenges facing women when it comes to influence.

Explore the differences between how men and women typically approach influence and also explode a few myths.

Encourage you to take a positive approach to becoming more influential.

Challenge you to relate the ideas back into your world and your career.

Enable you to discover practical things you can do in order to be a more influential woman.

This book takes the form of a series of independent articles. The core articles which address gender related topics were written as part of a series of emails sent to subscribers in the spring of 2014. Because each of these is quite succinct, they have been supplemented with related articles which go deeper into each topic. Many of the articles included here are not available elsewhere without a further subscription.

Hence you may use this book in a variety of ways. You can read it straight through from start to finish; this will give you time to do justice to each topic and explore each thoroughly before moving on to the next. Alternatively, you can just scan the contents and go where your interest (or needs) take you.

For me, the most important thing is that as you are reading you begin to make decisions about actions you can take in order to progressively become more influential.

Finally, I’d like touch on the obvious, yes I'm a man writing on a topic for women, which may perhaps seem a little strange. My mission in life is to help people to become more influential, and I have been working exclusively on this topic for over ten years. Consequently I know quite a bit about influence. The material here resulted from a heartfelt plea from a female friend to provide something practical, useful and pertinent to influence from a woman's perspective. She knew how useful my work was and wanted me to tackle the challenges faced by women from an objective position.

So, here is my contribution. It is thoughtfully researched and I hope it will help you to make more progress than you would otherwise have done. I also hope you will appreciate my position and be tolerant if you are reacting strongly to what I have written. All of this is designed to challenge your thinking and attitudes rather than simply entrench your current views.

I'd also like to point out that I truly believe that women make a great contribution to the world of work and that they can also increase their contribution for the good of all. In fact, I believe the world needs more influential women.

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Note: As you work through the book you will encounter extra links which I have added where appropriate. Some of these are part of the premium area of the Influence Blog. As a reader of this book you can purchase premium access at a reduced rate by using a discount code of women2014 when going through the checkout. The link below will take you straight to the instructions.

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Article 1: Networking and Women

"Burke et al (1995) investigated the differences between men and women in their interpersonal networks. They concluded that women relied more heavily on their external network than men. They speculated that this could place them at a disadvantage to their male colleagues who tended to have larger internal networks, particularly when it comes to promotion decisions. Also relevant was their exploration of the potential causes of women finding it more difficult to build informal networks within their organisations, one of which was deliberate exclusion by men who were in the majority". Colin Gautrey, The Criticality of Political Skill, 2007.

If this is the case, women potentially have a distinct advantage when it comes to achieving recognition and making progress beyond the boundaries of their organisation. With generalisations there are always exceptions but, as I look around my network, there are more women who have larger networks than men. I would also venture to suggest that women are much more likely to remain in touch with me. Would you agree?

On the other hand, what this research is suggesting is that, internally, women are at a disadvantage. I’m not sure this is true. However, it does raise the idea that if women are great at networking externally, why not so good internally? Same skills but different environment. Is it really that their minority position is closing the door?

Consequently…

How do you build your external networks?

Does this differ from what you do internally?

What can you learn from the external work that can benefit you internally?

What action can you take to capitalise on your external connections?

What action can you take to ensure you are not disadvantaged internally?

Article 2: Men vs. Women

Note: This article comes from a series exploring the results of my original research into the critical political skills which lead to success. The article begins by talking about the overall level of importance placed on influencing and political skills by men and women.

A strong divergence of view was identified between men and women in our survey. Overall, women scored a mean of 4.90 compared to 4.50 for men (max. 5.0). This was not entirely unexpected, given the common notion that women tend to be more socially aware and concerned with relationships. However, the surprise came when probing more deeply into this factor, which forms a lesson for us all.

It appears from the literature that there has been no successful attempt to find differences between the genders when it comes to perceptions of political skill. Several academics have tried to establish this difference, but have failed. What has been found, however, is that major differences appear to be evident in minority group members. These have much more awareness of the need for political skill than those who are members of the majority groups.

Relating this to our research, we would expect that those women who took part are likely to have been in minority positions, i.e. working in male dominated environments. Unfortunately, we were unable to quantify this and we also suspect that some male participants could have also been in a minority position and, therefore, ranked the importance higher.

Another potential contributor to this feature in our research is the evidence of networking activities by men and women. One researcher discovered that women have larger external networks and men larger internal networks. Given that our work is involved with the politics in the workplace, it would appear that men may have an advantage and women should be encouraged to network more amongst their working colleagues.

The important implication of these findings is that if you work in a minority group, political skill needs to be at its sharpest. This will be applicable whatever the basis on which group structure is formed. Aside from the obvious, if you are working in a highly educated workplace and have few qualifications, you’ll be in a minority. For this person, special emphasis will be needed on developing greater understanding of groups, group dynamics and interactions.

Article 3: Networking: Missing a Trick?

Networking is a critical aspect of influencing skill. In our workshops, we find all manner of excuses thrown up, but having a vibrant network is vital to success in the long term (and the short term). Yet despite all the noise on the subject, in the press, in training programmes and on the bookshelves, I think something is missing — the focus on motivating people to want to do it!

Research (from our Influencing Skills 360) shows that people think the individuals they are scoring are pretty relaxed and effective at networking events. They even believe that those people are quite strategic about the way they do things. However, self-rating shows a different story. Most people feel uncomfortable, ineffective and that being strategic is almost a non-starter. Indeed, these items show the biggest perceptual difference out of all 42 skills we assess.

Having talked to lots of people on their networking skills, it seems as if they are there under protest. I don’t have time for this, it’s got to be done, let’s get it over with and look as if I’m enjoying myself! At least they’ve done their networking and can forget about it for another month (or quarter). Sound familiar?

What’s missing is the genuine motivation to engage fully with this important activity. Most books on the subject, at best, pay only cursory attention to this aspect, which I think is missing a trick. Indeed, high levels of motivation can often make up for a huge lack of skill! Actually, once you realise this, it isn’t too difficult to remedy. When I’m working with clients on this, I usually start with their longer-term goals and then work backwards — ah yes, backwards! This is another trick missed by many — so if that’s what you want to achieve, what sort of people do you need in your network? Then you start to get focused and save precious time and take another big leap in your motivation — and, dare I say it, start enjoying the time you spend networking.

Extra link:

Influencing Skills 360

Article 4: Hate Networking? You Are Not Alone!

Since launching the original research and questionnaire on influencing skills, we have had thousands of people self-assess or rate others on their influencing skills. 74% say they could improve on their networking and an incredible 34% cited it as their weakest influencing skill area. So, if you don’t like going to those ‘events’ or fabricating an excuse to go talk to someone while you have more important tasks to focus on, you are by no means alone!

In my experience, I believe that most people have the capability to network, but lack the motivation to do it. They either see it as a pointless activity or a contrived engagement which lacks authenticity (or legitimacy, or both). Despite the pressure from above to network, results count when it comes to performance reviews and the lack of networking is rarely seen as a real performance issue — provided the business results have been achieved!

But I also know, that if you want to become influential, having a good, robust network is probably one of the best assets you can have, particularly in large complex organisations. So, in no particular order, here are some ideas which could help you to get up the motivation to build a stronger network:

Set networking goals and targets just like you would for every other part of your job. There are two reasons for this. Firstly it makes it easier to get on with it — in many ways it legitimises the time spent. It also helps you to focus more effectively on what you need to do, or rather which events to go to and which to avoid. More time saving there too!

Create a list of benefits you could get from networking. Unless you expect to gain significantly, you will probably not do it, or it will be half-hearted and therefore much less effective.

Develop your own definition of a ‘networking’ contact. How many have you got? How many should you have? Where should they be? Time to get real — a Facebook friend is probably not a networking contact. Creating your definition adds a healthy dose of reality and also increases your focus on what you need to do to build each networking relationship.

Organise your networking effort to avoid it becoming overrun by everything else. Yes, it is part of your job, so plan for it!

Remember to add value to people in your network. Not even your friends will tolerate you taking from them all the time, so why would a network contact accept that situation?

Why would anyone want you in their network? What do you have to offer? This may be a tough one to answer, but the closer you can get to an answer the better. And don’t forget, you could always ask them!

Often, the only person who knows you are nervous at a networking event is you. In fact, in our research this is often one of the biggest perception gaps between what an individual thinks and what other people notice. Maybe they are too wrapped up in their own nerves to notice yours! So relax and have some fun!

When I talk to people about power, one of the most frequently cited assets that help people to become powerful, and thus influential, is their network.