Lot of people think resistance is the worst enemy of an influencer.

Over the years, I realized that resistance is really a bliss in disguise.IMHO

• Without resistance there might be only one side of the story
• Without resistance one might seize to find new, better ways of doing things.
• Without resistance the risk is completely on you. If anything goes wrong, it would be easy for people to just point at you saying it was her/his idea.
• The worst thing is without resistance I feel people are not passionate about the topic at hand and they are just indifferent. Which means they will not give in their best to make it happen.

Some people talk about healthy resistance and baseless resistance. Personally I don’t see these 2 forms of resistance. When something appears to be baseless to me, I think I’ve not done my job of actually understanding and seeing from the other person’s point of view. A lot of times doing so, provides very interesting insight to various other things as well.

As easy this might sound, dealing with resistance is quite taxing and sometimes the best policy is to let it go and then try to change it later from a different perspective. Influencing is a two way street and is a great opportunity to learn something new.

Clarity of Thoughts and Clarity of Actions is very important when it comes to influencing people around you.

The how do you get clarity of thoughts and clarity of actions?

Staying in the trenches yields insights.

Continuously reflecting yields clarity and fuels new ideas.

Trying to teach others help in formulating and articulating your thoughts.

Last but not the least, working with smart people helps you become a good influencer.

Working with smart people is very important because they don’t just ask you “Why?” but they also ask you “What is the alternative?” or “What are the trade-offs?”. Lot of times, I get into the mode of “This is THE way to do this”. And when faced with the alternative or trade-off question, really forces me to think. This really helps me find new, interesting ways to solve the problem or at least helps in clarifying my thoughts.

I find “Leading by Example” is a great way to influence others. I see a lot of people trying to influence others by pointing at their mistakes and trying to correct them. But they themselves don’t walk their talk. This form of influencing is very harmful and short-lived. Agile Consulting is a great example of this.