Influencing Others at Work

Institute of Leadership & Management

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780080464350
• eBook ISBN: 9781136017858
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Super series are a set of workbooks to accompany the flexible learning programme specifically designed and developed by the Institute of Leadership & Management (ILM) to support their Level 3 Certificate in First Line Management. The learning content is also closely aligned to the Level 3 S/NVQ in Management. The series consists of 35 workbooks. Each book will map on to a course unit (35 books/units).

Session C

How to Get the Result You Want

1 Introduction

As a first line manager you have a number of means at your disposal to get people to do what you want. Sometimes they will respond just as you intended, sometimes not. Sometimes it will involve a lot of effort on your part, sometimes you may even have to compromise. Your success will largely depend on the skills you will learn in this session.

We will consider four ways of getting other people to do what you want.

Instructing - where you have sufficient power and authority to tell someone what to do.

Influencing - where you bring the whole context of the situation to bear on the other person, including the quality of your past and current working relationship, his or her wants, needs and fears.

Persuading - where you use all your verbal and non-verbal skills to get the other person to agree.

Negotiating - where you have the same bargaining power as the other person, and both of you have to compromise in order to get something of what each of you wants.

2 Instructing

As a first line manager you have the power to issue instructions to your workforce. There are a number of ways of getting the message across, some of them more effective than others. Three of these ways are:

giving orders;

making a request;

pleading.

2.1 Orders

We give an order when:

it’s an emergency - where timing is critical;

an immediate response is needed;

the people on the receiving end know exactly how to respond. An example of an order might be:

An example of an order might be:

‘Take aim. Fire!’

Orders are right for such jobs as the armed services, police or fire services because there’s no time for requests or explanations - an immediate response is needed. Because of the urgency, an order has to be short and to the point. It must also be precise. The normal courtesies of ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ are neglected and yet, in circumstances where giving an order is warranted, this is quite acceptable. It is also acceptable in a situation where one person has specialist knowledge and is training someone else how to do something (for example, ‘Now, double-click the mouse on the file name, then …’).

Most of the time, however, orders aren’t a suitable way of getting things done. In most circumstances, people will respond more positively if they are involved in the decision making and understand the reason why something needs to be done.

2.2 Requests

Usually people will respond better if they are asked to do something rather than if they are told to do it.

This doesn’t undermine your power as a manager. A request can easily make clear what you want done, when, why, how and by whom. Giving your instructions in the form of requests doesn’t mean that you lose any of your control over the job.

Asking rather than telling makes the team feel that you see them as people with something to offer to the job rather than just cogs in a wheel.

Activity 27

Here are two very different ways of giving the same instruction. Which do you think is better, and why?

a ‘Fred, you’re on the gate from 10.30. Hand over to Mr Khan at mid-day.’

b ‘I’d like you to go on the gate this morning, Fred. Do 10.30 to mid-day and then hand over to Mr Khan, would you? … Thanks.’

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyrights
• Contents
• Series preface
• Unit specification
• Workbook introduction
• Session A: Active listening
• Session B: Building a network
• Session C: How to get the result you want
• Performance checks
• Reflect and review