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JIMINY SELF-HELP HANDBOOK 17

4. Take responsibility and ownership of customers, situations, and problems for both the good and
the bad, being proactive, accountable and available.

2.2. Social/Relationship Management
The target of this section is to show how we can use emotions to facilitate performance.

Influence and Leadership

The ability to win over and persuade others. To offer support and gain support. To inspire and guide
individuals and groups.
As Terry R. Bacon, describes in the ‘Elements of Influence: The Art of Getting Others to Follow Your
Lead’, there can be no leadership without influence because influencing is how leaders lead. In their
classic book on leadership, ‘Leaders: Strategies for Taking Charge’, Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus
echo this point: "There is a profound difference between management and leadership," they wrote,
"and both are important. 'To manage' means 'to bring about, to accomplish, to have charge of or
responsibility for, to conduct.' 'Leading' is 'influencing, guiding in direction, course, action, opinion.'"
They add that "an essential factor in leadership is the capacity to influence."

People respond best when they are treated like human beings, they work best when they have a voice
in how the work is done, and they remain loyal and engaged when they feel respected, trusted, well
informed, and cared for. So, solely rational approaches by managers are not enough, they need also
to lead through the social and emotional approaches to influencing.

Leaders lead by mobilizing people around a compelling vision of the future, by inspiring them to follow
in the leader's footsteps. The best leaders are teachers, mentors, and role models--and they
accomplish the vast majority of their work through influence, not authority.

The art of management and leadership is to know when to act as a manager and when to act as a
leader, when to use authority and when to use influence, when to ask and when to tell, when to take
over and when to let go. In every case, it is crucial for leaders and managers to understand the range
of influence techniques they can use, know when and how to use them, build their power bases so
that they have the capacity to be influential, and sharpen their skills so that they can influence people
effectively.

The same author has described in ‘Power and Influence’ 28 skills associated with the effectiveness of
influence. The ones related to Emotional Intelligence form the major part of this skillset.

The EI-related skills affecting influence effectiveness are:
Listening: skill at actively listening to others; being engaged in others when they are speaking and
accurately hearing and retaining the essence of their thoughts

Being friendly and sociable with strangers: skill at opening up to and engaging with people one does
not know; being outgoing and conveying warmth, acceptance, and interest in strangers. A critical skill
in the influence technique of socializing.