The Inspiring Influencer

People with a core Influence behavioral style are often sought out because they are inspiring, optimistic, creative, and enthusiastic multi-taskers. They are energetic and make people smile with their natural warmth and contagious positivity. Their charismatic verbal skills make them powerful champions and influencers. When convinced of a direction, cause, or product, they effortlessly inspire groups and individuals to follow.

They can, however, also appear to be disingenuous, shallow, unrealistic, overly optimistic, and self-promoting. Consequently, when faced with deadlines or restrictions, they tend to over-promise and under-deliver. They let their enthusiasm get the best of them, assuming they can deliver without considering limitations or external factors. In their excitement and out-of-the-box thinking, they may come up with unrealistic plans and projects, convincing others to follow without considering downsides, risks, or consequences.

All styles (Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Compliance) have strengths and weaknesses (also known as shadows). If you picture a volume dial, when strengths are over-dialed, they become shadows, weaknesses, or fatal flaws. The key for all four styles is to maintain the perfect volume set point.

We’re taking a deeper dive into what makes this particular style so unique. As we do this, avoid judging a style as good or bad. Remember, most people have a combination of styles that contribute to their unique make-up. This overview is meant to isolate this style in particular to show what makes it unique. Proceed with an open mind and consider what is accurate and useful as you interact, communicate, and engage with Influence people. We’ve added some “flair” to each style to highlight certain aspects.

High-level overview

• Fast Paced – People focused
• Extroverted – Direct
• Core Emotion – Optimism
• Fear – Social rejection or not being liked
• Focus – People and contacts
• Needs – Interactions and connections
• Energizers – Social recognition, positive people, teamwork, exciting projects
• Demotivators – Restrictive environments, repetitive activities, lack of people contact
• Strengths – Creative, enthusiastic, optimistic, and positive
• Shadows – Unrealistic, shallow, self-promoting, sporadic listeners
• Value to the Team – Creative problem-solver, motivator, champion, negotiates other people’s conflicts
• Communication Style – Effusive, fast-paced, excited, and persuasive
• Communication Dos – Focus on people and feelings, ask for their opinions, support their dreams and visions
• Communication Don’ts – Being cold or tight-lipped, too formal, or exclusively business-focused
• Conflict Style – Ignores or pretends it isn’t happening
• Percentage of population – 26%

Consider who fits this description. How high or low in Influence are you (or might you be)? On a scale from 0-100, how high might the other person be? If you’re in one of our Leadership Cadence Programs, you’ll find the answer in your assessment under the Natural Graph.

Unique Characteristics You May Find Fitting or Amusing

• Sunshine personified. Influence people are easy to spot. They tend to radiate optimism and positivity. What they don’t bring in attention to detail, they make up for in enthusiasm. “No” is not a word Influencers favor, and they’ll do anything in their power to make dreams come true (no matter how “pie in the sky” they may seem). This makes them visionaries and creative thinkers. They are like a double espresso when you’ve lost all energy.
• Of course, I/we can! Did we mention they are overly optimistic? They will say yes to any exciting request and believe they can deliver exactly when and how they promise. The challenge is they often forget to consider external factors. They’ll promise to get something to you by end of day, even if it’s already afternoon. Overly optimist about completion time, they will promise to deliver it the next day when the project actually requires at least three days. Always assume they will over-commit. Before leaving a meeting, agree on smaller deliverables and set unequivocal timelines. This will help the Influencer accurately consider all factors and form more realistic deliverables. As a boss, they may over-commit the team’s ability to deliver. So, ask detailed questions about what else is on their plate to help them establish realistic deadlines.
• Can “sell ice to polar bears.” Tremendously convincing, they may sway you to agree that you need something you already have. To avoid getting swept up in their enthusiasm or charisma, consider what you truly need versus what they are offering or selling.

Communication Strategies Unique to Influence Styles

• Include a time buffer for all meetings. If you believe a meeting will take 30 minutes, set the meeting for 45 minutes to one hour. Influencers are verbal communicators who rarely stay on task. Their brains work quickly and creatively, making them go off topic. Always end a meeting with agreed-upon next steps, or you may find yourself having a second meeting on the same topic.
• Use pictures instead of words. If you are preparing a presentation for an Influencer, use pictures, memes, or icons rather than words. They connect more powerfully through visuals, and you’ll get your point across quicker in one powerful picture versus an entire slide deck.
• Use colors and emojis in emails to get their attention. Of all the styles, Influencers are the most casual in their communications. They tend to write like they think, paying less attention to grammar, spelling, and punctuation. You’re likely to see exclamation points, emojis, and colors indicating what they find important or interesting. Feel free to do the same with them.
• Pick up the phone or see them in person rather than writing an email. Influencers are in-person face-to-face people. They thrive on interactions and connections, which aren’t available in written communications. Whenever possible, pick up the phone or see them in person to communicate most effectively. Always start with casual, engaging conversations. Ask about their day, week, or weekend. Expect at least 10-15 minutes of non-work-related personal and professional conversation.
• Use their preferred messaging system. They prefer fast and engaging communications like text messages, and they tend to have a myriad of apps on their phones. Expect emojis and stickers (even in a professional setting). Don’t over-analyze their meaning or intent, as they tend to be overly casual in their messaging.
• Offer your most creative approach first. Influencers love to think outside the box. They will immediately take a tried-and-true concept and turn it on its head. To engage them, start with your most creative approach, and see where it takes you.
• Assume they’ll forget. They tend to live in the moment, believing they’ll remember everything they commit to (which they rarely do). After a meeting or agreement, follow up with a short email summarizing your commitments. Include deadlines and assign colors to their names, so they can easily identify their to-dos.
• Front-load opportunities; follow up with risks. Nothing gets an Influencer down as much as listing all the reasons something can’t be done. Instead, frontload. Start with opportunities and follow up with pertinent challenges. If positioned in this order, they are more likely to accept the restrictions and brainstorm ways to turn them into opportunities. The other way around disengages them.
• Words they relate to: Awesome, excellent, fun, visualize, people, connections, inspiration, collaboration, feel, sense, extraordinary, exceptional, innovative, ground-breaking.
• Words to avoid: Methodical, analyze, factual, limitations, status quo, tried and true, traditional, structured, rules, parameters.

Interactions that Build Trust and Confidence with Influence Styles

• Be their “dream multiplier.” Influencers are naturally trusting (sometimes too much so), and you won’t need to do much to gain their trust. Instead, focus on how you can multiply their dreams and visions. Serve as a sounding board, so they can verbally process. You’ll discover that it doesn’t take much to activate their creativity. Just one powerful open-ended question can ignite their creative juices.
• Lend an ear. Because they are verbal processors, listening is your golden ticket. Create space for them to brainstorm. Ask questions and let them explore options. To help them consider all sides of an issue, practice using questions like, “If you couldn’t do that, what would you do?” Or, “If you did that, what would the pros and cons be?”
• Hold and support their dreams and visions. As positive as they are, they need continuous encouragement and support to reach their daunting dreams. They will doubt and second-guess what’s possible, so be their coach, support person, and champion. Offer positive feedback, encouraging them to go for their dreams.
• Set deadlines before a “drop deadline” to help Influencers get things done on time. It may be helpful to prepare a three-step deadline plan that breaks down important dates and requests for information.
• Ask specific open-ended questions to get precise answers. This prevents them from giving overly optimistic answers. For example, you may ask: “How many of X receipts do you have?” “When you add them up, what number do you get?” Avoid asking questions like “What annual percentage increase do you estimate in the following category?” That is likely to produce an inflated and less accurate number.

Hot Buttons and Triggers

All styles have hot buttons, or triggers that tend to produce shadow behaviors. Here are some of the most common ones for Influence people:

• Negativity (comments or people). In their world, anything is possible. Influencers detest limitations and restrictions (which they see as negativity). If people express concerns about a perceived obstacle or challenge, they are the first to turn it into a positive by looking at what is While this is a useful approach when searching for creative solutions, it also could minimize the downsides or risks, producing disastrous results.
• Personal criticism. Fears of the Influence behavioral style: Not being liked or being rejected socially. As such, they tend to take personal criticism to heart. They can become sensitive if given challenging feedback or called out for not delivering promised results. They tend to defend and defer actions, blaming forces outside their control. They may also promise to fix a problematic pattern in exchange for a second chance. Beware: While overly optimistic about changing themselves, they may forget the commitment once the bad feelings have passed.
• Being excluded. Influencers are powerful contributors and see themselves as unique assets to any team. If they are excluded (even unintentionally), they tend to take it personally, wondering if they did something wrong. If you are intentionally excluding them, let them know why and share how their talents, time, or energy is better served on other projects to avoid triggering their fear of being rejected.

Common Shadow Behaviors

• Overly optimistic
• Superficial
• Shallow
• Insincere
• Self-promoting
• Unrealistic
• Sporadic listeners
• Fake/artificial
• Conceited
• Self-focused

Managing and Interacting with Influence Styles During Stressful Times

Under stress, Influencers go into optimism overdrive. Their shadow responses include: Over-committing, forgetfulness, scattered, disorganization, and failing to acknowledge facts or the truths in favor of what is most positive. Keeping these shadows in mind:

• Challenge their commitments and ability to deliver. Make sure they don’t over-commit during times of stress, as their predominant shadow is being overly optimistic. Double check that they have the capacity to take on what they commit to. If you notice them drowning in work, consider how to help, or coach them to say no to requests.
• Help them prioritize. They are notorious multi-taskers during non-stressful times. With increased pressure and tension, multi-tasking might turn into chaos. Help them prioritize. Use the strategies from Prioritizing Like a Pro and focus on one key accomplishment at a time to avoid overwhelming them.
• Encourage them to delegate. They like to drive team projects and deliverables, and they usually can do so with enthusiasm. During stressful times, however, they tend to “help” by taking on other people’s deliverables instead of delegating them effectively (especially if they are the boss). Make sure they aren’t “managing other people’s circuses” or “taking on monkeys.”

How Influence Styles Respond to Change
Each style has their own unique approach to change. These are the natural responses to change for the Influence style:

• Extremely optimistic about change and tend to over-emphasize the positives of change.
• Invite change and tend to recruit others to champion change.
• Can become overly zealous about change, assuming that everyone else is as positive about the change as they are.
• May become disappointed when the reality of the change isn’t as positive as they assumed it would be.

How to Handle Conflicts with Influence Styles

Natural Response: Convince themselves it’s not that bad
Conflict Approach: “Let’s create an even better situation for the future”

Their conflict style is to turn any negative situation into a positive, avoiding conflict or refusing to address the “elephant in the room.” This unrealistically optimistic approach tends to result in core issues not being addressed. Thus, these issues grow, fester, and become challenging to resolve.

• Be positive and share your desire for a mutually beneficial result. They love co-creating win-win outcomes and welcome creative problem-solving. If you focus on how the negotiated outcomes will benefit you both, they are likely to jump onboard.
• Ask questions about their feelings and perspective to co-create new outcomes. Emotional by nature, they will have feelings and opinions about the conflict and how you got where you ended up. Invite them to share. Listen and relate. Acknowledge their hurt feelings and share your own. Bonding and connecting will help you move through a conflict faster and with less pain.
• Enter the Zone of Uncomfortable Debate (ZOUD) to get to the core. To avoid uncomfortable conversations, Influencers like to skip the ZOUD, moving too quickly to the Zone of Comfortable Unfortunately, doing so won’t get to the core or heart of the matter, so deeper unresolved issues reappear later. Avoid the temptation to exit the conversation too soon. Instead, challenge them to dig deeper until the real reason for the conflict is unearthed.
• Focus on possibilities to elevate the relationship. Their preferred approach is always to make something better. If you focus on how resolving and addressing the conflict now will prevent future uncomfortable situations, you’ve got a winner. Once they can visualize a more positive future and relationship, they tend to let go of the past and commit to the future vision immediately.

Delegation Strategies for Influence Styles

The Influence employee is a great team resource because they infuse positivity and can persuade others to move in an established direction. To help them thrive, consider the following delegation strategies:

• Share how delegated activities make a positive impact to the organization and/or team. Influencers are encouraged when their contributions make a difference.
• Set crystal clear deadlines and let them know you will be holding them accountable. Overly optimistic about their abilities to meet goals and deadlines, they are prone to “over promising and under delivering.” Always set check-ins, due dates and drop deadlines to keep them on track. That way, they can hold themselves accountable and practice delivering on-time.
• Avoid the temptation to offer reminders. Because they aren’t disciplined by nature, they may become overly reliant on you (their boss or peer) to remind them of upcoming deadlines. Avoid the temptation to “help out.” This only reinforces the negative behavior (missing deadlines). Instead, set upfront agreements on what will happen if they miss a deadline, helping them develop powerful habits that will serve them for life.
• Be specific in how you plan to follow up and what you expect to be delivered. Influencers are prone to focus on positive or fun activities. They have a tendency to put unexciting activities on the backburner. Help them prioritize and stay on task.
• Offer positive feedback throughout the project. Let them know what they do well and praise them publicly.

When YOU’RE an Influencer

Self-Management Strategies for Influence Styles

If you’re an Influence person yourself, and you need a check-in to make sure you’re as effective as possible, you’ll find these strategies helpful:

• Your biggest strength is your positive outlook and ability to motivate others during stressful times. Use these talents to keep your team and co-workers focused on creating positive results.
• Keep in mind that your optimistic outlook can easily result in unrealistic expectations for yourself and others. Ask yourself: “How much time will this task take, based on previous experience?” “How realistic am I in my expectations about my (or the team’s) availability to accomplish this?”
• Set clear standards and expectations for your team and colleagues. Avoid falling victim to “excuse-making” and stories about why deadlines or tasks were not completed. Use your natural questioning skills to help the person self-reflect and evaluate.
• Identify your “1” each day. With a consistent and easy-to-use prioritization process, you’ll get more done with less effort.

Under stress

• Avoid over-promising and under-delivering. When asked for a deadline, give yourself an extra day or hour and deliver on time. No one likes a chronic excuse-maker (no matter how believable the excuse).
• “We can do anything” is a great approach when you have plenty of time and resources to carry out initiatives. During stressful times with short deadlines, this strategy can be detrimental. Avoid over-committing yourself and your team. Instead, focus on delivering what you KNOW you can.
• Prioritize your workload and delegate. This is a time when you need to focus on staying organized, on time, and on task. Set traps to catch your own mistakes before others do.