After many months of working virtually, I'm guessing you're self-aware of how much influence you have virtually. Or are you? If you haven't considered your virtual presence yet, it's essential to understand your impact and influence on others.
Maybe you have been thinking about your virtual influence but are unsure what to do or how to enhance it. Influence comes from how others experience you.
Consider what happens when people perceive you negatively. If your customers feel you lack confidence in your product or service, they likely won't buy from you.
When your team questions whether you authentically care about their work-related challenges, they probably won't follow you.
Your ability to influence others to act comes from their perception of you, not your best intentions.
Trust, credibility and authenticity have the power to move people to act. You can never completely control what others think about you, but you have more control over it than you may believe when you're self-aware.
How many virtual meetings have you attended when you were painfully watching someone deliver a message? They may have been taking too long to get to the point, fidgeting, not knowing where to look or disconnecting from you.
Chances are they weren't aware of how they communicated. As observers, it's easy to pick apart others' communication flaws, but we rarely acknowledge our weaknesses.
Self-awareness of our presence is essential to increasing influence both personally and professionally.
We need to become self-aware to know what our listeners see and hear. Only then can we begin to master communicating with influence.
Self-awareness is so critical that it's the first element of our influence model that we teach. Our thorough research with the University of Northern Colorado indicates how vital self-awareness is to increasing overall influence, but it also reveals how difficult it is to achieve.
Our survey results indicated that 48% of respondents believe that greater self-awareness leads to greater impact and influence in the workplace.
We must be more self-aware of our virtual presence to ensure you have more consistent influence now than ever. Action steps to take this week:
Eliminate any excuses you may have.
I've heard excuses as we continue to work virtually: it's just my team or a client I've known forever. They don't care how I show up. I didn't have time to prepare and wouldn't have used filler words if I had known what to say. I don't have time to record myself, OR I don't have time to practice communicating with brevity. Every virtual conversation you have IS an opportunity to focus and practice your communication. If we don't make the time to practice while working out of the comfort of our homes, we'll never practice, and we'll never develop.
Let your presence be an example for others.
If you want your team to behave one way, be an example. Avoid excusing your actions or justifying them in any way. Your title doesn't give you a free pass from any behavior different than what you expect from others.
You probably can guess the final action step…video and audio record yourself as often as possible during personal and professional conversations.
Without observing ourselves through the eyes and ears of our listeners, we're constantly guessing our level of awareness and influence.
