{"id":68,"date":"2008-07-07T12:11:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-07T17:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/?p=68"},"modified":"2008-07-07T12:11:00","modified_gmt":"2008-07-07T17:11:00","slug":"two-words-that-can-improve-your-influence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/2008\/07\/two-words-that-can-improve-your-influence\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Words That Can Improve Your Influence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Can a couple little words really make a difference in your ability to influence someone, such as a customer or stakeholder?<\/p>\n<p>I just read a summary of Jeff Mowatt&#8217;s new book <strong>Influence With Ease<\/strong>. Though I&#8217;m not recommending it as an addition to your reading list, I did appreciate the reinforcement that small changes to how we phrase things can make a big difference.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pop Quiz<\/strong>: What two words helped waiters and waitresses to increase their tips by 12%? &#8220;Thank you&#8221; comes to mind.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.canadaone.com\/ezine\/april01\/phrases.html\" target=\"_blank\">In this article<\/a> Mowatt talks about using the phrase &#8220;for you.&#8221; Waitresses who said &#8220;I brought more coffee over for you&#8221; notably increased their tips over those who asked &#8220;Would you like more coffee?&#8221; Using &#8220;<em><strong>for you<\/strong><\/em>&#8221; helps the service to feel more personalized.<\/p>\n<p>What if you&#8217;re not waiting tables? Give some of these a try: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;Here&#8217;s a site I found for you. It looks like it addresses some of the questions we discussed.&#8221;\n<li>&#8220;I updated the document for you based on your input.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;That finishes what I intended to cover in this meeting. Before we wrap up, is there anything more I can do for you?&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><iframe style=\"WIDTH: 120px; HEIGHT: 240px\" align=\"right\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/rcm.amazon.com\/e\/cm?t=instituteforl-20&amp;o=1&amp;p=8&amp;l=as1&amp;asins=0091906814&amp;fc1=000000&amp;IS2=1&amp;lt1=_blank&amp;lc1=0000FF&amp;bc1=000000&amp;bg1=FFFFFF&amp;f=ifr\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe>In a sense this calls back to what Dale Carnegie taught us decades ago in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0091906814?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=instituteforl-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0091906814\" target=\"_blank\">How to Win Friends and Influence People<\/a>: &#8220;<em>You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.<\/em>&#8220;<\/p>\n<p>(By the way, here&#8217;s a recommendation <em><strong>for you<\/strong><\/em>: add Carnegie&#8217;s book to your must-read list if you either haven&#8217;t read it or haven&#8217;t gone over it again in the last 5 years.)<\/p>\n<p>You can radically improve your influence by focusing on the other person and their needs instead of yourself and your needs. Though there&#8217;s no phrase that will magically get others to comply in every situation, consider adding a little &#8220;<strong><em>for you<\/em><\/strong>&#8221; into your comments this week.<\/p>\n<p>We offer keynotes and workshops that can help you and your team improve your ability to influence, even when you don&#8217;t have authority. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.i-leadonline.com\/ContactUs.asp\">Contact us<\/a> today to learn more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Can a couple little words really make a difference in your ability to influence someone, such as a customer or stakeholder? I just read a summary of Jeff Mowatt&#8217;s new book Influence With Ease. Though I&#8217;m not recommending it as an addition to your reading list, I did appreciate the reinforcement that small changes to&#8230; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/2008\/07\/two-words-that-can-improve-your-influence\/#more-68\">Continue Reading &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[44,6],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p488Wj-16","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}