Do you want to influence others? Do you want to encourage, impact, or make a positive difference in the lives of your children, spouse, coworkers, or neighbors?

Good.

Do you know how to do that effectively? If the answer is anything short of “absolutely” (backed up by proven positive results from your influence), then that is…

Bad.

I truly believe that most people in the world do want to make a positive impact on others. They want to influence their friends and associates in a powerful way – one that will be remembered for a long time. The challenge that many people face is that they have never been trained on how to influence others in a way that consistently gets good results.

I have always been intrigued by the various sources of wisdom that are available to people. Of all the places that I could glean good advice, TV would probably not make the top 50; however, every once in a while, a show’s character will speak a line that not only sounds good for the show’s plot, but also applies to life. Such was the case a few weeks ago when my wife and I were watching the TV show “Reverie”. One of the characters was telling another one about the best way to influence others (I have since seen the following acronym used by the FBI when dealing with a hostage negotiation.)

If you want to influence others, remember this acronym: LERI.

Listen
Empathy
Rapport
Influence
(add Behavioral Change to the FBI model)

As is true in all progressive lists, the most important item is the first one – in this case, Listen. It will do you no good if you just go around spewing great “advice” to people who are not listening to you. This is true when you speak to teenagers (we have two ourselves), but also to coworkers, neighbors, fellow church members, or anyone else. People want to be HEARD FIRST. When you listen – truly listen with all of your being – then and only then will many people open themselves up to the second item on the list.

I appreciate it when someone listens to me attentively. I really do. However, if I feel that the person only listened to me because he just wanted me to be nice back and listen to him, then I do not want to be influenced by him, as he was just putting on a show so that I would hear him out. That is why it is critical to show Empathy during, and after, your listening. Make the other person truly FEEL that you are listening to them. Repeat back what you heard, and ask if you understood them correctly (the “mirror technique”). Remember that, “people don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.”

Through your high quality Listening and your Empathy, you will develop Rapport. When I ran a family business a few years ago, I would ask our sales team members (especially the new ones) what their main goal was for any sales call. The new ones would usually say, “to make a sale”, or, “to get a Yes.” I would teach them that, in my opinion, their main goal should always be to get The Truth: the truth whether we could help the prospective customer with want they wanted or needed. One example of this philosophy happened one day when one of our sales people came back from an initial sales call. I asked him how it went. He said that he hit the goal, because he got the truth. The prospective customer said that he was interested in only one thing: the cheapest product in town. Our salesman said that, though we were very competitive on pricing, he could not guarantee the lowest price on every product. When other sales managers and salespeople would believe that the result of that interaction was Failure, I believe that it actually was a Success – because our man had discovered the Truth.

Why do I mention that story? Because the only way our salesman was able to get to Rapport – to get the customer’s “wall” down – was by Listening and showing Empathy first. If you will learn to go through this 3-step process on a regular basis, your ability to Influence will increase tremendously.

Before I end, I want to speak to a few of you who may be thinking, “I don’t want to influence anyone anyway.” Well I have some bad news for you:

You ARE INFLUENCING others every day, whether you like it or not. The only question is: will you make a GOOD influence or a BAD one?

Learn to use the LERI process, and you will enjoy the ability to make a lot of GOOD influences on others.