It's the first meeting of the week, in a glass room on the twentieth floor in Business Bay, and Tariq has prepared for this one.
He opened with a story, because he read that stories land. He paused before the key number, the way the course taught him. He made eye contact around the table, one person at a time. He asked the team to commit to the new targets, and every head nodded.
Two weeks later, nothing has changed.
Meanwhile Farah, who runs operations and rarely speaks in meetings, said one quiet sentence in the corridor: "I'll do the first week with you." Three people volunteered by lunchtime.
Tariq drives home along Sheikh Zayed Road with the same question going round and round. What does she have that I don't? He has the title, the slides and the techniques. She has something else, and he can't find it in any book.
What is the difference between inspiring and influencing?
Influence is moving people toward something. Inspiration is when they move themselves, because something in you woke something in them. Influence can be built from technique, position or pressure. Inspiration can't. It comes from who you are when you're not trying to get anything, and people feel the difference within seconds.
That last part is the whole article.
Why don't influence techniques work the way they should?
Because people read you before they read your words.
The techniques themselves aren't wrong. A good story helps. A pause helps. Speaking to what the other person cares about helps a great deal. But all of that sits on the surface, and the person in front of you is taking in far more than the surface. They feel the tightness in your voice when the target matters too much. They notice that you speed up when someone pushes back. They sense, without being able to name it, that you need them to say yes.
And when people feel a need pressing on them, most of us lean away from it. Not because we disagree. Because pressure asks something of us before it's earned anything.
In my masterclass on this subject, I define influence as "the ability to create a context in which people are empowered and uplifted from where they are, to where they could be." Notice where that definition points. Not at you, your delivery or your result. At them. The moment the conversation becomes about what you need from the room, the room can feel it, and the context you're creating is pressure.
If you'd rather look at what's been getting in the way of your own influence, at work or at home, Sara, our veteran RS Method Master Coach, offers a free 20 to 40 minute mentoring session on Zoom. Just you and her. You can book it here. Or read on.
What gets in the way of inspiring people?
A need you didn't choose.
Somewhere back there, you learned what it took to be listened to. Maybe you grew up in a house where the loudest voice won, and you decided you'd better be convincing. Maybe nobody took you seriously until you'd proved you were clever, so proving became the way you speak. Maybe keeping everyone happy was the only safe option, and you still soften every request until it barely asks for anything. I've written about that last one in how to stop people pleasing.
Each of those is a survival identity: a self you built to get through, which still runs the conversation long after the danger has passed. And each one carries a quiet sentence underneath it. "If they don't agree, I'm not enough." "If they don't listen, I don't matter." "If they push back, I've failed."
That sentence is what people feel when you speak. It's like driving with the handbrake on. You press harder on the accelerator, better slides, sharper stories, more confident body language, and the car still crawls, and you can't understand why. The effort was never the problem. Something is holding the brake.
When your impact keeps falling short of your depth, there's usually one reason, and it isn't your vocabulary.
Can you learn to inspire people?
Not the way you learn a skill. Inspiration isn't something you add to yourself. It's what's left when the need comes off.
Here's why. Every one of those quiet sentences is a thought fused to a charge, a memory with weight the body put on it. The thought says "if they don't agree, I'm not enough". The charge is the jolt in your chest when someone frowns at your proposal. Understanding argues with the thought. You can tell yourself, sincerely, that one frown doesn't define you. But the jolt fires faster than the argument, so you lean in, speed up and press, before you've decided anything.
Removal works on the other part. When the charge comes off the old memory, the memory stays. The weight goes. And a memory without weight has nothing left to fire with. The frown arrives, and nothing in you needs it to change.
That's what Farah had in the corridor. Not more skill than Tariq. Less need. She wasn't asking the team to make her feel capable, so there was room in her sentence for them to step into. People move toward that kind of room on their own.
You are not broken. You are buried. The person who can move a room without pushing is already there, underneath the one who learned to push. The freedom is in the removal.
I've written about the steadiness that comes from this in how to be present, and about what changes when choices stop coming from fear in decisions from love, not fear.
If you can already feel which need has been leaning on your words, it's worth looking at with someone who isn't inside it. In a free 20 to 40 minute session on Zoom, Sara listens, helps you see what you're carrying and what can be done about it, and tells you plainly if we're not the right fit. Book your free session with Sara.
How can I tell whether I'm influencing or inspiring?
Try what I call the need check. It takes five minutes, and it works best before a conversation that matters to you.
- Name the conversation. One line. "Asking my team to take on the new targets." "Asking my teenager to put the phone away at dinner."
- Write what you want them to do. Be specific and plain about it.
- Then ask: if they say no, what does that say about me? Write the first answer that arrives, not the sensible one. "That I'm not respected." "That I'm a bad parent." "That I've lost control."
- Notice where that answer lives in your body. The chest, the jaw, the stomach. Don't try to fix it. Just find it.
- Go into the conversation with one aim only: to leave them a little more able than they were. Not to win. Afterwards, write down the moment you felt yourself push, and what they did next.
Do this for a week. You'll start to see that the conversations where you pushed hardest were the ones where step three had the heaviest answer. The need check won't remove that weight. It shows you, plainly, where it sits.
What would it take for your influence to come from who you are?
Not another course on persuasion, and not a louder voice. Whatever finally changes this has to do three things.
- It has to see what you can't. You can't read the label from inside the bottle. The need that leans on your words is the lens you've been looking through, so you'll keep calling it your style.
- It has to look at what you're carrying, not polish how you deliver it. Better delivery on top of the same charge is still pressure, just better dressed.
- It has to tell you plainly what can be done. Including, if that's the truth, that someone else is the right fit for you.
That's what the free mentoring session with Sara is built to give you. Twenty to forty minutes on Zoom, just you and her, about the conversations where your influence keeps falling short and what's underneath them. Book your free session with Sara.
When the pressure comes off, the work doesn't go soft. In my experience, it often goes further. Here's what Erin Kurt reported after the work: "My business literally tripled within 6 months." Results like that are hers to report, and I won't promise them to you. And if you'd like the mechanics of how humans move humans laid out in full, my two-part masterclass Inspired Influence walks through its six foundations, ten drivers and three game-changers. You can read more about the thinking behind all of this on the RS Method page.
Robert Simic, guiding the remembering.
P.S. This week there'll be a conversation where you want someone to say yes, and you'll feel yourself lean in before you've decided to. Before then, spend twenty to forty minutes with Sara and find out what's been leaning. Book your free session.