7 Ways to Become a More Influential Project Manager | Video

Do people listen when you speak, and take your advice when you offer it? Part of growing, as a Project Manager, is becoming more influential. Here are seven of my top tips.

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How Can you Become More Influential?

Raising your level of influence is often a matter of changing perceptions about yourself. How can you grow in workplace stature and become more influential, to get ahead of your peers?

1. Posture

A confident posture is the starting place for becoming influential. Stand or sit upright and face the person you are talking with, so they know they have your attention. Practice controlling all of those little actions, called “tells”, that signal a lack of confidence. These include all types of fidgeting or shifting on your feet or chair. All forms of self-contact, like adjusting your collar, jewelry, cuffs, or hair indicate nervousness.

2. Become an authority

This is not quite the same as being an expert. An expert knows more than other people about something. As an authority, you will be the person people go to for answers and recommendations – maybe because you are an expert, or maybe because you can evaluate what experts say or interpret it for the rest of us. Cultivate the ability to see through to the marrow of a topic and ask incisive questions.

3. Focus

Avoid spreading yourself too thinly. Have the confidence to know what your niche is and get yourself known for that. Ironically, the narrower your focus, the more credible, and therefore influential, you become. If you want to spread yourself more widely, find a unifying theme.

4. Silence

Cultivate the art of powerful silence. When they stop speaking, take time to think through your response. Your silence says “I was listening, now I am thinking”. Make them wait for you. If they feel nervous and fill the gap, then your stature will grow. When you finish speaking, stop and wait. The more deliberately you speak, the more influential you sound.

5. Process

When everyone gets hooked up on a problem, a dispute, or a tricky decision, focus on finding a process that will deliver the answer. Leadership is controlling the process. Set the emotional tone and establish a structure, and let the others follow your process to the answer. They will sense you knew all along where they were headed, but were too generous to leap in and tell them.

6. Evaluate

Take nothing at face value. Use your silences to evaluate what you see and hear and offer insightful feedback that says “I’m thinking ahead, I see further, I see deeper”. Congratulate people when they get it right and ask careful questions that probe gaps in their thinking when they don’t.

7. Respect

Learn to say “NO” to requests. This is difficult: you got where you are by saying “yes” and delivering. Now there are too many calls on your time, and saying yes to all of them makes you a doormat, not a hero. So practice making a Noble Objection and stay strategic in your choices about when to say “yes”.

Be More Influential with ‘How to Influence in any Situation’

I’ve drawn these tips from my book ‘How to Influence in any Situation’ – the second edition of my best-selling book, Brilliant Influence.

Recommended Videos to Help You Become More Influential

Carefully curated video recommendations for you:

• Influencing Stakeholders: Start at the Bottom
• Astonish Your Stakeholders… with a Stakeholder Listening Plan
• Project Communication: Stop Using Telegrams – Get Better Project Results
• Challenging Communication Tips for Better Project Communication
• How to Build a Great Project Communications Plan

What Kit does a Project Manager Need?

I asked Project Managers in a couple of forums what material things you need to have, to do your job as a Project Manager. They responded magnificently. I compiled their answers into a Kit list. I added my own. 

Check out the Kit a Project Manager needs

Note that the links are affiliated.

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