Influencers from Around the World – You Think You Don’t Have Authority? You’re Wrong!

Our “Influencers from Around the World” post
this month is courtesy of Hoh Kim. Hoh has been guest writing for so long I’m
hard pressed to tell you something that hasn’t been said before so I’ll tell
you this – I am very thankful I met him in January 2008 when we trained
together under Robert Cialdini. Hoh and I have remained friends ever since and
I’ve enjoyed our communication and getting to know each other even more. I
encourage you to visit his website, The Lab h, and his blog, Cool
Communications. You’ll also find Hoh on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Brian Ahearn, CMCT® 
Chief Influence Officer

influencePEOPLE 
Helping You Learn to Hear “Yes”.

You Think You Don’t Have Authority? You’re Wrong?

Do you ever find yourself thinking you don’t
have any authority because you’re not the boss, a C-suite executive, a celebrity
or something else like that? I’m here to tell you that you do have some
authority!

1. Let me ask you this question first. Do you
have experiences? Of course you have experiences. If you have experiences then
you must have some expertise. Seth Godin, one of the world’s most respected
marketing experts said, “Everyone’s an expert (at something).”

So ask yourself, in what area do you have
better, deeper and more experience? One good way to find your expertise is to
write an “experience resume.” A typical resume will show you where you worked,
which school you attended and what jobs you’ve held. An experience resume lists
experiences, maybe up to fifty, you’ve had during your lifetime. It could contain
trips, work, cooking, art, baby-sitting, reading, etc. You will find your
expertise from the list by looking for patterns in the experiences or through
connecting the dots among experiences.

Here is a personal example; I like to teach
and I like communication consulting in business as opposed to working as a full
time teacher in a school or university. By combining those two I became a business
coach. Also, I enjoy workshop facilitation and I like LEGOs so I learned LEGO
Serious Play, a method of using LEGOs for business strategy development. Now
LEGOs are one of the major teaching methods I use during my workshops.

2. Once you identify your expertise you need
to consider what evidence or symbols give other people proof of your expertise.
Without having some evidence your expertise will not be perceived as such by
your customers.

Questions to be asked include: a) What
advanced education or certification have you earned in your area of expertise? b) What awards or recognition have you earned? c) Have you written articles,
books or contributed to other publications in your area of expertise?

Don’t worry if you do not have enough evidence
to support your authority yet. That means it should be part of your plan to
obtain that evidence moving forward. Someone might say, “I don’t need evidence!”
Perhaps. After all, neither Steve Jobs nor Bill Gates graduated from college. However,
most of us are not Steve Jobs or Bill Gates! They now have tremendous evidence based
on their amazing business results and great product innovations. That is the
evidence to support the fact that each is a respected authority. Each of us has
to have some evidence if we want to be recognized as experts in certain areas.

3. Lastly, to build your authority you need to
have E3 = Experiences, Expertise and Evidences. If you’re a manager
here is one more very important tip. One of the key roles for managers is to
help build their team member’s authority. Ask the above questions to your
members and help them to identify their personal authority. If they need more
evidence to support their authority you can come up with a plan to help them,
including training or a project assignment. If you’re good at this you will be
a successful manager.

Here’s the bottom line – Authority is waiting
for you to use! It just needs to be discovered then developed.

Today’s column is based on my recent webinar “The
Cialdini’s Influence Series for Managers.” In that webinar I talked about the
principle of authority and while preparing I received help from two people with
many experiences – Bobette Gorden of Influence At Work and Brian Ahearn.
Thanks!

Hoh Kim, CMCT® 

Founder, Head Coach & Lead Facilitator,
THE LAB h