To follow up on the “telling people what to do” article and the “decision making” article. We are going towards the next step of the process. This article is about the difference between Inspiring and Influencing.
Influencing
As we stated with “should”, no one likes to be told what to do. Now when you think of it, being influenced is listening to someone’s point of view and follow them blindly. When you were growing up, your mom always picked out one, or more, of your friends and labelled him as a “bad influence”.
Have you heard “social media influencers”? They are paid to influence trends and get people to mimic their behaviors on social media to reach a goal.
Acting as an influencer can work with younger generations that might need guidance, and follow trends. You are not susceptible towards trends as much as you used to after a certain age, so you are not influenced as easily. An Influencer is simply there to tell you what to do.
Inspiring
Now we are talking about someone who will inspire you to become better. You will be looking at their behavior and adapt it to what you think is right for you and therefore pursue the goals you are looking to achieve. Inspiration is a very positive word. You need inspiration to be creative, this is a fact.
It shows that your mind is working in a certain way which probably boosts your “right brain” cognitive processes. I find it very hard to be creative when you are not in a positive mind frame. On the other hand, you can do very tedious tasks even though you are not feeling your best.
What about consulting
Throughout my years of experience, I have tried to inspire people to become better at what they do and how they do it. I have tried to get people at all levels of organizations to push their envelope and improve. I’m sure you are going to ask me how… It’s actually quite simple. First of all, getting people to see a positive outcome to what they do for work. In conclusion, the easiest one you can pinpoint in our society is monetary gain.
In most organizations, people are there to make money, in addition with everything structured right, the better they do, the more money they make. I’m pretty sure I don’t need to explain more than that. Money doesn’t bring happiness, but I hardly ever saw anyone being sad driving a Porsche.
