6Influence
Ideas without influence are impotent.
Whether you’re a leader looking to create buy-in with your team, a sales or marketing team wanting to sell products or services, a change agent with a cause you want to champion in your community or a parent trying to get your kids to do pretty much anything you want them to, influence is a critical Forever Skill.
Of course, influence has always been important. Throughout history, an ability to inspire others with your ideas, to persuade them of your usefulness and garner their support has been a critical factor for success in even the smallest societal and organisational groupings.
Influence allows us to negotiate a deal on our terms, mould opinions, make social change, and build businesses and organisations that generate commercial and social value.
What’s more, the importance of influence will only increase in the future as the volume of choice, information and options continues to grow.
One of the problems we’ve discovered in working with smart people is that many of them would rather be right than win, or, phrased another way, they’d rather be right than rich. We become so enamoured with our own rightness that it becomes self-righteousness and costs us the very thing we desire ...
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