#129 Influencing Up: Get Seen and Heard Using the Magnetic Influence Method

Lucy Gernon (00:00.974)
Do you ever feel like your ideas and opinions are falling on deaf ears? I know you want to be seen as a high performer who can lead effortlessly at senior level, someone who can bring people along with her vision and make a big impact and influence change. But what do you do when people are just not listening? It can feel deflating, frustrating, and even stressful. I hear this a lot from women in leadership roles that they often find it hard to be seen and heard, which results in a lot of unnecessary chaos.

So today on this episode of the show, based on my knowledge of human psychology, neuro -linguistic programming and sales techniques, I have created a method I call the Magnetic Influence Method to help. Now I’m going to be going through this with you today and you’re also going to be learning about the number one thing that you need to activate in a stakeholder to get your point heard and six absolutely critical questions that you must ask yourself before you even attempt to influence people. So make sure you tune in to the end.

Lucy Gernon (01:05.326)
Hi there and welcome back to another episode of the 360 Leadership Podcast. I hope you are having a great week and I look forward to diving into this episode all on how to be more influential. So I just want you guys to know that I wasn’t always an influential leader, okay? I have learned so much in the last four years of my business, especially when it comes to sales techniques and that kind of thing, things that I would never have really understood. And based on all of my knowledge of

sales, I’ve done positive psychology coaching, I’ve done positive psychology, sorry, psychology, your linguistic programming, transactional analysis, all of the study of language. I have come up with a method that I have taught my clients that they use all the time that works super, super well. So I teach this inside 360 Leaders Club. I teach this method. We do workshops, we do challenges, leadership challenges as well. So you got support from the community to be able to actually implement these things too.

So if you want to learn more about 360 Leaders Club or working with me, you can just head over to lucygarnon .com or 360leadersclub .com for more information. Okay. So let’s talk all about being a more influential leader. Now, the reason that I decided to hop on the podcast and talk about this today is because it’s been coming up a lot, especially with the senior leaders inside 360 Leaders Club.

And it’s a big, it can be quite frustrating, right? When you’re in a meeting, you’re in a boardroom, you’re with your peers, there’s a lot of dominance around you. You can see something that they’re just missing and you’re like, oh, why won’t they listen to me? Or worse, you don’t even bother trying because you’re afraid your idea will be shot down because it’s been shot down so many times before. Can you relate?

One of our 360 Leaders Club members actually posted a really nice win in our private LinkedIn community about after she did my camera method, which is for conflict management, and she had already done this training on the magnetic influence method. She was able to use the tools. Now, this lady is an executive level leader. She knew what she was doing. She’s done all the leadership development courses before. But what she said she loves is that,

Lucy Gernon (03:27.182)
when she comes to our coaching calls, I can direct her to what she needs when she needs it, as opposed to forgetting. Like we forget about these tools, right? So she spoke about this particular situation, that she had a new CEO and there was some conflict and she applied the method that I’m going to teach you today, as well as some other tools. And she was able to get her point heard. She said that she raised a point in a business situation which had the potential to cause some conflict in the organization.

And by using the tools that I taught her, it helped her to position the situation in a way where it made best commercial sense for the business and needed to be considered. She was happy that there was more conversations to be had, but she felt she was ready for them, which was just amazing. OK, so that’s why I wanted to give you a sneak peek at my magnetic influence method so that you can begin to influence with confidence.

and make sure that you listen to the end because I’m going to be sharing six questions that you must like ask yourself before you even attempt to influence anyone. Because if you can’t take off each one of these questions, especially number six, you’re setting yourself up for failure. And that’s not what we want. Okay. So let’s dig straight into it. The first concept I want you to open your mind to is what I call

the tunnel of trust. Now, the tunnel of trust is key to influencing up. It’s key to influencing sideways and across laterally. It’s key to influencing down. Before you ever influence anybody, you’ve got to build trust. Okay, there has to be trust. The no like and trust factor has to be there. So I like to teach this when I teach it in, you know, visually.

I have a tunnel that I have, it’s like a dark tunnel. So I want you just to imagine for a minute that you’re looking at a dark tunnel and you are standing at one end of the tunnel and the people or the person that you’re trying to influence is standing at the other end of the tunnel. Now, from where they’re standing, they can see your silhouette at the end of the tunnel with some light behind you. But the tunnel is dark.

Lucy Gernon (05:44.238)
and they don’t know you enough yet, they don’t trust you enough yet to actually walk through the tunnel. They’re thinking, well, my trip me up. Is this safe to go here? Is this person I’m walking towards trustworthy? Do they know what they’re doing? So your job as a leader is to, first of all, get your stakeholders to trust you so that they can start moving towards you and your idea or your opinion, okay?

Now, there are five steps in the method, which I teach the magnetic influence method, which I won’t be going through today because I don’t obviously have time. So if you want to learn the full method, it’s been proven time and time again, reach out to me at lucygernon .com forward slash contact. And we can have a chat about working together privately or in your organization. OK, so I’ve explained to you the concept of the tunnel of trust. OK, and here’s the thing that you need to ask yourself.

What do they need to know, understand, see, hear and feel to be attracted towards the light, which is you at the end of the tunnel with your bright idea. Okay. So if you’re multitasking, come back to me, write this down. If you’re not driving, write this down and ask yourself this. What do they need to know, understand, see, hear and feel?

to be attracted towards the light, which is you and your big idea. So what information do they need? What do they need to know? And to do that, you need to know what’s already influencing them, which I cover in other sessions. It’s about understanding their language, okay? Super, super important. What do they need to understand? Like, how can you make them understand your point? Have you thought about the impact? Are they clear about the impact?

What do they need to see? Do they need to see a graph? Do they need to see some data? Do they need to see social proof? Do they need to see testimonials? Do they need to see research papers? Do they need to see a corporate guideline? Do they need to see a recommendation from, I don’t know, like Harvard Business Review? Like, what do they need to see? What do they need to hear? This is where the language is super, super important.

Lucy Gernon (08:06.638)
What do they need to hear? What’s the thing that’s going to get them over the line? What are they already thinking? You need to get inside their heads, okay? And what do they need to feel? So this is a big one. Again, if you’re multitasking, please come back to me. People make decisions based on emotion and we rationalize with logic. So in order to influence somebody, you’ve got to be able to move them.

emotionally, OK? So maybe you need to tell a more an emotionally evocative story to accompany your pitch or your idea. Maybe you need to link back to something that you know is important for them. Maybe you bring their family into it, for example. Maybe you bring something really that you know is important to them and their organization, whatever makes sense, depending on your relationship with that specific person. You’ve.

got to move them emotionally. Okay. You’ve got to move them emotionally. So now I’ve gone through the tunnel of trust. I’ve told you about that magic, about what they need to know, understand, see, hear and feel and about moving them emotionally. And now you should be equipped to begin to start to actually influence people. So there’s a bit of prep. Okay. This is not something that you just rock up to a meeting.

If there’s something important that you want to influence somebody about, you’ve got to do your prep. OK, you’ve got to make time to actually prepare what you want to say and all of the things I just shared. And then just before you even think about attempting it, I want you to ask yourself these six questions. Number one, have you built rapport? Do they know you? Do they like you? OK, have you built rapport? That’s the second question.

Do they like you? Do they trust you? Do they know you enough? If they don’t, please don’t even attempt to start to influence them. You need to start there, okay? Building rapport, getting them to like you, getting them to trust you. Number three, do you know where they’re currently at? So where are they currently at in relation to what you want to influence them about? And what I mean by that is,

Lucy Gernon (10:27.31)
How much knowledge have they actually got about this particular topic? How much of a gap is there? Do they know everything? Do they know too much? Maybe they’ve been in your role. Where are they currently at? So it’s like trying to understand what are the mindset shifts you need to actually help them to make. Number five, what’s stopping them meeting you? What is stopping them walking through that tunnel of trust? And number six, which is the big one,

How can you get them there? So based on everything that I’ve just shared today, if you ask yourself, okay, how can I get them there? Well, I know they need to see this. I know that I need to move them emotionally. I know that this is where they’re at. So this is what I need to say. I’ve anticipated their objections, all of these things that I teach in a lot more detail, which is so, so important, by the way, then that’s how you begin to influence. How not to do it is to go into a meeting.

unprepared and go off the cuff. If it’s something that’s important, you’ve got to take the time to be strategic. And this is strategy at its absolute finest. It’s like your pre -strategy strategy, right? It’s your prep work. So please ensure that, you know, I know it’s challenging to hold yourself accountable and to have the self -discipline to take the time before the meeting to prepare. But I promise you,

If you do this, your likelihood of success is like 100 times greater than if you just rock up and roll with the punches. OK. So if you enjoyed that episode today, there’s another couple of episodes I would love you to check out. The first one is episode number 74, which is a solo episode with me where I’m teaching you five strategies for effectively communicating with higher ups in large organizations. OK.

Number 67, which is the number one thing you must know when it comes to confidence, because in order to influence, you’ve got to believe in yourself. You’ve got to have confidence in your abilities. And that’s something that I can help you with all day, every day. It’s my favorite thing to support women with is this whole area of confidence at work. And episode number 77 is four reasons why investing in your team’s development will make your life easier. And the reason I’d love you to listen to that one is because…

Lucy Gernon (12:50.67)
If you already have a team, there are so many things that I can support you with to help your team boost their performance. OK, I can help you with high performance. I can help you with all of the tools that your team are probably missing to actually perform at a high level. So I’d love you to listen to that episode as well. And even if it’s not with me, I think it’s so important that you invest in your team in terms of the stuff I speak about on the show, because if you lead a team of leaders and you have these questions,

you can be sure that your team of leaders also had these questions too. So to recap, just before I sign off, we have talked about why building trust is essential before you even attempt to influence anyone. I’ve given you a high level overview of my magnetic influence method introduction, but there are five steps which I didn’t get into today, which if you do not do these five steps, it is just not going to work, okay? So if you’re…

interested in learning that, you can reach out to me about joining 360 Leaders Club or having me work with you privately or in your organization. And then we went through six questions that you need to ask to build your influence and trust, which I hope that you found super, super valuable. So that is it for this week’s episode of the show. Please know that I’m always here. I love hearing from you guys. So if you ever have a question or I’d love to know what you thought of the episode, did you like it, was it valuable, what do you want me to…

cover on future shows, please, please do reach out to me. I love hanging out on Instagram and on LinkedIn. So you can reach out to me there. Or like I said, if you’re interested in working with me, you can just reach out to me at lucygarnon .com forward slash contact. You’ll see a little contact form and we can arrange a chat or literally just send me a DM. So I hope you enjoyed it, guys. I look forward to seeing you again. Same time, same place next week. Bye for now.