Why These Skills Can Make You Influential

Your ability and your willingness to communicate will determine the quality of your life. So how able and how willing are you to communicate? How willing and able are you to articulate the complex thoughts and the deep insights of your years of experience? How willing are you and able are you to communicate when the circumstances are tough? I'm Dr. Grace Lee and you're listening to the Career Revisionist podcast for executives, team leaders, people and managers and ambitious professionals from all backgrounds. It's for those among us who can't stay stagnant and admire anyone who demonstrates exponential growth. We challenge ourselves to step out of our comfort zone and into higher levels of leadership. And we are determined to rise confidently in our industry so that we can make our greatest contribution using our knowledge and expertise. We have worked hard to become great at what we do, but only so we can achieve the goals that give our lives meaning and purpose. And while we persevere through a college education to get us here with our technical skills, we understand that to get to the next level where we desire to be, it requires a different kind of skills. We're not comfortable with failure because we experience satisfaction when we are advancing. And while some of us work well under pressure, all of us perform the best when we are part of a winning team. And instead of just hoping to achieve what's important to us, we choose to become a more optimized version of ourselves to make it happen. We're not just A players. We are A+ players. And we are the source of consistent output that makes positive advancements in the world around us. What skills have you been developing? Have the skills that you've been working on helped you to become more visible or less visible in front of the people who are important? In this video, I'm going to be talking about the skills that can make you influential. This is not based on Barry. These are the skills that I have worked on and built in myself and also the skills that I have helped countless clients all around the world to develop in them to help them to become the people they need to become, to be influential. Number one is to be a person with clarity. Clarity in what? Clarity in who you are. These somebody who knows who you are and focus more on who you are and then who other people are. I hear this a lot when a client comes in and they begin to work with me. They tell me that there's been a lot of conflict. They're in a task environment or they are working with people that are difficult to work with. A lot of the times in the coaching conversations I hear that how do I manage people who are aggressive? How do I manage people who interrupt me? How do I manage people who don't value what I say? This is being overly concerned about who other people are. This is a skill that can make you influential. If you are more focused on who you are, then focused on who they are, this will help you to be more influential. Why? It's because you know who you are so much that you don't need to be concerned whether or not other people know who you are because it is clear to you. And when you know who you are, you also know what's important to you. You also know what you believe. You also know why you do what you do. You also know why you tend to make those types of decisions. You also know why you tend to react to certain things in this way. You also know why certain things might trigger you to wrap one way versus another. This is a very deep understanding of who you are. And when you understand who you are at this step, that is enlightenment. Seek to understand this. This is one of the most important skills in life in terms of having this clarity because this is the beginning of having self-governance as well. This is the kind of things that they don't cheat you in school and in the education systems. There are no classes to help you to know who you are. And so therefore, it is your responsibility to make this permission to really get to know who you are and what is important to you. Number two, be a person of character. Having strength of character leads to having strength of mind. So what is strength of character? Strength of character is your transworthiness. It is when you say what you say is exactly what you will do. And so if you think about it, all the effort that you're putting into your career path, all the effort you're putting into your job, all the effort that you're putting in, the time and the energy, is these are seeds that you're sewing into the garden of your future. And when you think about gardens, when you plant the seed, you nurture the seed and eventually something will grow. But you plant the seed and you don't have to worry that it will grow. If you nurture it, it will grow. But the seed you plant will predict exactly what will grow. So if you plant an apple seed, you get an apple tree. You do not get a pear tree. You do not get an orange tree. An apple seed grows an apple tree. And so be careful about the seeds you are planting in the garden of your future. What are the seeds? The seeds are the deeds that you do, the thoughts that you think and the words that you speak. These are the seeds. So ensure that you build strength of character and therefore strength of mind, your trustworthiness is what are the seeds of the words of thoughts and the deeds that you are doing? Are they good seeds that you're sewing into the garden of your future? Are they good seeds? Are they going to produce the crop, the fruit of your life that you desire to produce? And when you are congruent, this is the foundation of building a professional brand. Your brand is consistent with what you say and what you think and what you do. And that brand builds out into strength of character and therefore strength of mind. Number three is to be a victor of your circumstances. Along the way as you are planting seeds and you are harvesting the fruit that you have nurtured, along the way there are winters. Because you don't harvest and you don't sew in the same season. You plant your seeds, you sew and you harvest in different seasons and one of those seasons is the winter. So during the winters of your life, the winters of your career path when there are no promotions, when there are difficulties and challenges, can you last through the winters so that you can get to your harvest without giving up, without avoiding, without trying to seek for pleasures and avoid pains, can you last through the winters of your life? So this is being a victor of your circumstances. Your circumstances are where you stand, the place on which you stand while you observe the things that are happening around you and how are you? How do you show up when you observe the things that are happening around you? Do you perceive them as something happening to you? Do you perceive them as something that is being offensive to you? That happens to you that you don't have control over? Do you perceive them as negative? Do you perceive them as in your way? Or do you perceive them as opportunities for growth? As opportunities to learn up, as opportunities to when you overcome them that on the other side of it are outcomes that are desirable? How do you see the environment around you from the place on which you stand? Being a victor of your circumstances means that in those moments of difficulty, which there will be some because winter is a season. On the place in which you stand as you weather the winters that you will see these circumstances as on your way, not in your way. You see these circumstances as grateful for the opportunity to experience them. That is being a victor of your circumstances. Number four is to be a better communicator. How willing are you able are you to communicate when the circumstances are tough? When individuals have very different opinions and different ways of approaching things than you do when there is conflict, when there is a negotiation, when there's a diplomatic relation just to be had. How willing enable are you to communicate through those things? Your ability to develop these skills will either limit or enable you to greater things to achieve your goals as well. When you be a better communicator, the path to get there is to work on your internal leadership first. Your ability to be present and be to be self-governed in those moments when you are around individuals that are so different from you. How can you manage through it? How can you self-govern through it and maintain the presence and the authenticity in your communication? This is all internal leadership. Success in communication comes from the inside out. But first of all, how willing and how able are you in communication? If you've been taken note so far and so far, I've only covered four skills that can increase your influence. And you're realizing that yes, this is something I'm serious and I'm committed to doing this, especially improving my communications. Then I invite you to work with me. Every single week I mentor, I train, I coach executives and senior leaders just like you, team leaders that want to have a greater impact, who want to make the most inspired contribution and get the most inspired reward in return. If that's you, then there's a link below this video, the very first link to speak to a member of my trusted coaching team. And this is just to explore how we work and how we're going to help you to build that action plan into it. But if we do work together, then I'm going to hold you accountable as well and to really help you to assist in developing these skills as in ways that are actionable, in ways that are practical, and in ways that have not been taught in the education system. So if that's you, apply the link below and I look forward to working with you on the inside. And number five, the skill that can increase your influence is to be a leader with care. And what does this mean? Understand that your skills, your experiences, your education that you work so hard to attain is there to really provide value to people. Is there to provide value to groups of people, even to large groups of people as well. So then the mandate here is to love the people you work with and love the people you work for. And when I say love, I'm not referring to a romantic love. I'm referring to a love where I understand what's important to you. And I'm here to serve you. I have a skill set that I can bring to the table and I'm here to leverage that skill set so that I can serve you to your highest value. Love the people you work with. People you work with, and love the people you work for, and that is how you become a leader of care. (upbeat music)