A Pathway to Positive Influence (Part #4) – Character Creates Opportunity®: Thursday, October 25, 2018

Whether we care to recognize it or not, we all have influence on those closest to us. The writings over the last few weeks have focused on some key principles on the pathway to having a positive influence on others.

Here is a brief summary of the prior weeks:
Part # 1 Intent: We need our intent to be aligned with a desire to help, to serve, and to give to others.
Part #2 Listen: We need to increase our focus on listening and lessen our efforts on responding.
Part #3 Empathy: We need to build our empathy to better understand one another and try to “walk in their shoes,” see experiences from their lens, understand their perspective, and feel what they feel.

We all share some common experiences in our journey of life. Many times, we share similar emotions through life’s experience of failure and success, fear and worry during difficult experiences, and moments of joy and peace during uplifting experiences. As we develop the 4th step along the pathway of positive influence, the opportunity to connect closely with someone based on common experiences and shared emotions opens a door to have a positive influence on others.

There is often no greater connection that can be made with someone than sharing a common experience and the emotions that accompany it. Those who fear public speaking can readily connect to someone nervously getting ready to stand in front of a crowd. Those who may have had a most difficult journey through adolescence can readily connect with a teenager experiencing feelings of loneliness, isolation, and rejection. Those who have endured the pain and sadness of the breakup of a family are in a good position to relate to someone walking alone out of a broken relationship.

Discovering some common experiences and shared emotions is often helpful to build a connection to someone and create a receptive heart for influence. Those who have endured a specific experience are very often the most helpful to relate to the needs of those dealing with a similar experience.

Below are a few additional thoughts to encourage all of us to look for common experiences and the shared emotions around those experiences in order to move forward along the pathway to having a positive influence on others:

  1. Be intentional about identifying common emotions like fear, worry, joy, and sadness while listening to others. Sharing experiences linked to these emotions can create a door opener for a deeper connection.
  2. We all tend to feel alone in periods of suffering and enduring hardship. Being open and sharing a common struggle can often help open the door for someone to ask for help and be receptive to the positive influence of others.
  3. Offering our own experiences and emotions in areas that are typically shamed or kept quiet in our guarded world may help give others the courage to more openly share their struggles and seek help.

When we look for opportunities to connect closer with others through common experiences and the emotions that surround those experiences, we build and strengthen our character and Character Creates Opportunity to have a positive influence on those we care about most.

A Pathway to Positive Influence (Part #3) – Character Creates Opportunity®: Thursday, October 18, 2018

As we continue another writing on influence, one important reminder is that whether we care to admit it or not, we all have influence on those closest to us. Our influence may have a positive or negative impact, or it simply maybe dismissed through apathy or pre-judgment by the receiver.

Here is a quick summary of the past few writings on the pathway to positive influence:
Part # 1 Intent: Our intent is aligned with a desire to help, to serve, and to give to others. We can effectively open the door to be a positive influence on others when we realize our efforts are not about “me” and my own personal gain, but they are about helping you.
Part #2 Listening: We need to increase our focus on listening and lessen our efforts on responding. We don’t need to be brilliant to listen, we just need to care. Simply put down the screen and listen.

In part #3 of this message, we focus on the importance of empathy and trying to “walk in the shoes” of another in order to have a positive influence. Empathy is about seeing experiences from the lens of others, understanding their perspective, and feeling what they feel.

We all don’t see the world as it is, we see the world from our own unique perspective.

If I were to ask you what the American flag means to you, I would hear a multitude of responses. They would all be responses based on your lens of experience, not mine. Empathy helps me understand your response a little better.

If I were to ask you about the rising rates, across all age groups, of mental illness in our country, I would hear a multitude of responses and a different perspective from:

  • Those who personally struggle with depression, anxiety, etc.
  • Sons and daughters who had a parent struggle with mental health and perhaps covered it with alcohol or drugs.
  • Parents who struggled to help a child walk through depression.
  • Children who lost a parent to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
  • Adult children caring for a parent with dementia or Alzheimer’s.
  • Those who have not been directly and personally impacted by mental illness.

Empathy helps me expand my ability to see what you see, understand you better, and feel what you feel.

Below are a few additional thoughts to encourage all of us to focus on empathy as an important step along the pathway to having a positive influence on others:

  1. After ensuring our physical survival, a great human need is to be understood, validated, and accepted for who we are today. Empathy helps us open the door to meet this need of those around us.
  2. Instead of projecting our own story on others and making assumptions and interpretations about others, empathy helps us get into the heart and soul of those around us.
  3. Empathy is very difficult to achieve over a text message. Empathy is most embraced when we listen not just with our ears but focus our eyes, heart, and physical presence with another.

When we start with our intent to help, listen to others, and focus on empathy, we build and strengthen our character and Character Creates Opportunity to have a positive influence on those we care about most.

A Pathway to Positive Influence (Part #2) – Character Creates Opportunity®: Thursday, October 11, 2018

As we mentioned last week, whether we care to admit it or not, we all have influence on those closest to us. Our influence may have a positive or negative impact, or it simply maybe dismissed through apathy or pre-judgment by the receiver.

Part # 1 on this message was a reminder that the pathway to positive influence begins when our intent is aligned with a desire to help, to serve, and to give to others. We can effectively open the door to be a positive influence on others when we realize our efforts are not about “me” and my own personal gain.

In part #2 of this message, we focus on the importance of listening instead of talking as the next step in having a positive influence on others. Listening goes against the popular opinion that we need to be up front and on stage with our intelligence and experience in order to have influence.

The reality is much different than the popular public perception of influence. We need to initially focus on listening instead of talking to most effectively move forward in having a positive influence on others.

Below are a few additional thoughts to encourage all of us to be more effective on listening as a second step along the pathway to having a positive influence on others:

  1. No effective response needed. Many of us hinder our ability to effectively listen because we have been conditioned that in order to have a positive impact on others we need to know what to say in conversation with others. Even though it may sound counterintuitive, we need all our energy focused on listening with the hope to understand instead of listening with a desire to respond with something “brilliant.” If we don’t initially focus on listening, our “brilliant” response will most often fall on deaf ears.
  2. Ask additional questions in follow-up. Using some thoughtful questions followed by silence will help to encourage others to keep sharing. Asking a follow-up question and simply shutting up is often difficult for us but allowing silence to hang after a question will open the door for others to fill the gap and continue to share. Even something as simple as, “Please tell me a little more about that experience” can keep the discussion going.
  3. Focus on him/her, not everything else in “my” world. In today’s massively distracted world, keeping smart phones, laptops, etc. out of site will help send a message that the focus is on them and not anything else. We send a huge billboard sized message that says, “You are not that important to me” when we show up to listen and we are constantly “stepping out” of conversation with the casual glance at notifications on our phones. Our ability to positively influence others will be severely limited when we allow simple distractions to creep into our attempt to listen to others.
  4. We don’t need to be brilliant to listen, we just need to care. Listening, not talking, is the most simple and powerful way to demonstrate to someone that they matter and to meet a human desire to be accepted for who we are today. Listening is the gateway for truth in a conversation and can encourage others, at least for a moment, to take off our mask and end the “costume party” we all typically live in.

When we start with our intent to help and then begin to listen to others, we build and strengthen our character and Character Creates Opportunity to have a positive influence on those we care about most.

A Pathway to Positive Influence (Part #1) – Character Creates Opportunity®: Thursday, October 4, 2018

Whether we care to admit it or not, we all have influence on those closest to us. Our influence may have a positive or negative impact, or it simply maybe dismissed through apathy or pre-judgment by the receiver.

As we continue on our journey to build and strengthen our character in order to reach our full potential and have a positive impact on those around us, it is important that we learn and follow a well-established, principle-based, pathway for positive influence.

In our public world where the loud and proud get most of the attention, this process may seem out of touch with the present reality. However, when we chronicle the archives of history both in the home and in the public square, we will come to appreciate these steps as the most effective pathway to long term, sustained positive influence on the lives of others, especially those we care about most.

Over the next few weeks, we will journey together on a road less traveled in today’s public forums and look closely on the pathway to positive influence on those we care about most.

The first step in any major effort to have influence is to examine our intent. When we look at the opportunity to have influence on others, what is our intent?

Do we strive to influence others for our own personal gain, credit, or some hidden agenda? Is our desire to influence from a pure selfish motive?

Or

Do we strive to influence others based on a desire to help where we see a need? Do we simply want to help fill a gap in knowledge or skills created by youth, inexperience, or lack of awareness or resources? Do we simply care and want to help?

Examining our intent is the foundational first step on the pathway to positive influence.

The pathway to positive influence begins with our intent being aligned with a desire to help, to serve, and to give to others. We have come to humble realization that life is often difficult and we all need some help along the way.

There are no “self-made” men and woman. We don’t live alone on an island. We have all received some help along the way. Whether it was some encouragement in our home, a positive role model on the field of play, a friend or mentor’s advice, a stranger’s kind offering, or a teacher from our past, we all have received some help. Those who desire to have a positive influence on others recognize that we all need some help along the way.

When we start with our intent being grounded in a desire to help, serve and give to others, we build and strengthen our character and Character Creates Opportunity to have a positive influence on those we care about most.