Influence

Leadership is the ability to influence with or without authority. The power of influence has many dimensions and depends on a number of factors.

Nowadays we step into the digital economy with exponential growth of information and abundant knowledge; the world has been interwoven through the internet and the latest technologies, leadership becomes more interdisciplinary, influential and innovative. 

Every profession and role has its unique influence based on insight to understand, confidence to assert, wisdom to negotiate, uniqueness to bridge, courage to break down barriers, and forward-thinking to drive progressive changes. So digital leaders and high mature professionals need to have abilities to “calibrate their impact,” being able to lead through influence, not by brute force.

Intellectual influence: To survive in today’s “VUCA” new normal with the mixed bag of truth or outdated knowledge, quality data or misinformation, it’s strategic imperative for us to develop influential intelligence which is based on deep expertise, transdisciplinary knowledge, cross-functional experience, business acumen, cultural cognition, and leadership skills. Pragmatically, a mindset could be called influential intelligence if it can discover the patterns of interrelationship among different disciplines, and understand the mindsets with cognitive differences. Digital leaders and professionals with intellectual influence can identify and close the gap between knowledge and insight, to reach the state of knowledge proficiency and spread expertise influence.

Expert power is neither equal to the title you have or the certificate you hold. Those leaders with intellectual influence are usually perceptive thinkers; they do not accept the status quo and continually challenge what most people understand as normal. They can break down conventional thinking boxes, and cultivate the next generation of true critical thinkers, independent thinkers, or creative thinkers. They can gain unique insight by learning to create inner space of consciousness and superconsciousness in the storming mind of thoughts, emotions, sensations, imagination, and reasoning. They are open minded life learners, not only listen to others’ viewpoints, but also have abilities to keep up and express their thoughts and perception, to explain the point of view based on update knowledge, insightful understanding and applied experiences, to lead forward with continuous deliveries, not just the follower to chase the waves blindly.

Persuasive influence: To "influence" means to be able to shape other people's views or opinions towards one's own views or perspectives. In brief, the purpose of leadership persuasiveness is to convey the vision, update the outdated viewpoint, and get the work done promptly. Digital leadership or professional influence is based on clear vision, strong logic, deep insight and persuasive communication. Being persuasive needs to be authentic, convincing, consistent, and persistent, to make sure your thoughts can be interpreted by multiple entities and acted in the desired way. As persuasiveness is so interrelated with influence, influence can be used to define a good leader who has a vision and influence with that vision or toward that vision or make the vision sustainable.

With influential intelligence, the contemporary leaders and professionals can inspire, interact, interpret, exemplify, encourage, and orchestrate change. Influence and persuasion begin with trust, to encourage others toward your vision by communicating in depth and breadth, bridging cognitive or knowledge gaps, relying on reciprocity, attempting to influence outcomes by uniting or connecting with others via both hearts and minds. Contemporary leaders with persuasive influence desire to listen to the different viewpoints and discover the connectivity and common ground from the difference, carry compelling conversations across business domains, speak functional dialects to tailor audiences in a simplistic fashion, in order to present the strong "intellectual persuasiveness" skills and make influence via inspiring.

Cultural influence: Culture is collective mindset, attitude, and behavior. At the societal level, cultural behavior is the end product of collected wisdom, filtered and passed down through hundreds of generations as shared core beliefs, values, assumptions, notions, traditions, and persistent action patterns. Actual culture is a function of leadership, starting at the top. Therefore, culture influence is one of the most crucial attributes of forward-thinking leadership, especially at the global level. Insightful leaders are great culture influencers because their unique observation, clear discernment, interdisciplinary knowledge and intellectual empathy can both touch the heart and shape the mindset across geographic boundaries. Their magnetism is based on distinctive vision, unique voice, strong character, as well as world-class leadership competencies such as self-regulation, social judgment skills, empathy, cultural intelligence, flexibility, learning agility, and the tolerance of uncertainty and ambiguity.

Senior leaders often set the tone for making good policies. In fact, culture is the policy. A human organic system composed of uniquely diverse people who have much to offer to grow and develop the culture. If not, then the policy is more than likely not needed. We have to shift gears and mindsets to see the culture of an organization as a collective living breathing thing, keep evolving. Culture change is critical to make a seamless digital paradigm shift. Thus, top leaders need to make cultural influence by asking tough questions: “What are the beliefs and unspoken rules that everybody in the company knows and shares? Which core values you need to promote to propel the organization forward in line with the strategic ambitions? Are they different from today and if so what needs to change? How does culture drive organizational behaviors? How does organizational leadership play a role in shaping a strong culture? Etc. The commitment is that we are all in this together and have our passions focused on a goal with a cohesive leadership to build a high performance culture.

Leadership is the ability to influence with or without authority. The power of influence has many dimensions and depends on a number of factors such as multidimensional intelligence, the mix of knowledge and experience, the quality of information received, exemplary leadership, personal sacrifice, all held together by a collection of confidence. In addition, you must develop various skills, core competencies, and have strong ethics, responsibility, integrity, and empathy.

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