EXERCISING INFLUENCE: A Guide for Making Things Happen at Work, at Home, and in Your Community - Softcover

Barnes, B. Kim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0970071000 ISBN 13: 9780970071002

Publisher: Barnes & Conti Associates Inc, 2000

Synopsis

We all need to influence others in order to build relationships and achieve results in our personal and professional lives. This book contains practical ideas and tools for exercising influence in all aspects of life to accomplish more with less effort. Readers will learn how to create work, family, and community relationships that are more balanced and mutually rewarding, and to take charge of their lives in a powerful, ethical, and productive way.

About this title

About the Author

Kim Barnes is president and CEO of Barnes & Conti Associates, Inc., of Berkeley, California, an independent learning and organization development firm. She holds a masters degree in Human Development and has over 30 years of experience in the fields of management, leadership, and organization development. She has worked in both internal and external roles with organizations in a broad range of industries, including high technology, research and development, e-commerce, biotechnology, telecommunications, aerospace, finance, distribution, public utilities, health care, manufacturing, insurance and government.

Kim has been a frequent speaker at national and international professional conferences and meetings and has published a number of articles in professional journals in the U. S. and abroad. She is the primary developer of Exercising Influence: Building Relationships and Getting Results, Constructive Negotiation: Building Agreements that Work, The Mastery of Change, Intelligent Risk-taking, Creating a Culture for Risk and Innovation, C.O.A.C.H. for Peak Performance, The Art of Communication, and The World Class Team Series, copyrighted programs of Barnes and Conti. Her work has been translated into Japanese, Hungarian, Polish, Danish and Hebrew. Her new book, Exercising Influence: A Guide for Making Things Happen at Work, at Home, and in Your Community, was published in May 2000.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Skillful influencing is more than just effective communication. It is possible to communicate often and clearly without achieving your desired results. These skills can be learned, but success as an influencer also requires you to have the ability to read the person and the situation, and the discipline to hold a clear goal in mind while selecting and using the behaviors that are likely to lead you toward that goal. There are many opportunities in daily life to exercise your influence. A good set of influence skills can lead to:

• Improved ability to manage and lead cross-functionally
• More positive and productive personal and professional relationships
• Greater ability to choose and use behaviors tactically to achieve strategic objectives
• More confidence in your ability to achieve results through other people and a better track record of actually doing so
• Increased flexibility in dealing with people from diverse professional and cultural backgrounds as well as those who differ from you in gender, generation, experience, and personality
• Improved skills for resolving conflict

In this book, we will explore some practical ideas and tools for exercising influence in all aspects of your life. Influence involves sophisticated understandings and a complex set of skills. Some situations are fairly straightforward and require little in the way of planning; others are Byzantine in their complexity. We don't always get to choose which influence opportunities we will be confronted with. I have tried to cover, at least briefly, the major areas that are useful for the influencer to explore. Not all of them will be relevant to or needed for every influence situation. I hope you will find enough here to stimulate your interest in influence and increase your confidence as an influencer. The best way to learn it, of course, is to do it.

Edition details

• Publisher: Barnes & Conti Associates Inc
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0970071000
• ISBN 13: 9780970071002
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176