By Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN
Nurse leaders often complain about the lack of influence that they have in their organizations. Influence is important because it is the power and the ability to personally affect others’ actions, decisions, opinions or thinking. Ultimately, this is how things get done in organizations. In leadership, it is critical.
The Center for Creative Leadership has found that influencing tactics fall into one of three categories: logical, emotional or cooperative. We call this influencing with head, heart and hands.
- Logical appeals tap into people’s rational and intellectual positions. You present an argument for the best choice of action based on organizational benefits, personal benefits or both.
- Emotional appeals connect your message, goal or project to individual goals and values. An idea that promotes a person’s feelings of well-being, service or sense of belonging has a good chance of gaining support.
- Cooperative appeals involve collaboration (what will you do together?), consultation (what ideas do other people have?) and alliances (who already support you or have the credibility you need?). Working together to accomplish a mutually important goal extends a hand to others in the organization and is an extremely effective way of influencing.
A challenge for many nurse leaders is that they often rely too heavily on the second tactic above – emotional appeals. I have seen situations where nurse leaders have framed budgetary messages to Chief Financial Officers using emotional appeals only to be completely shut down. The context of the environment and desired goals should drive which tactics you use and why. The following are three good questions to ask:
What is the situation driving my need to exert influence?
You need to clearly understand both the environmental situation and what your desired outcome is (begin with the end in mind). Identify who the stakeholders are that you need to influence to achieve this outcome and the potential obstacles. Clearly understanding the situation clarifies whether the type of appeal you make should be a more cooperative one involving others.
Who is your audience?
If you are going to try to influence a community advisory board, your approach would be very different than if your target audience is the Chief Financial Officer. Generally emotional appeals don’t work as well with CFOs as a logical appeal approach would. An exception would be if you have set the stage to make an emotional appeal by connecting the CFO closely to the work of patient care.
What are your current abilities?
If your “go to” approach is usually emotional but you are in a situation where a logical approach is more appropriate, you will need to be more intentional and do cognitive rehearsals. I once worked for a Health Systems Director who was the king of bullet points. His attention span was about 2 minutes. I was very comfortable with this but many of the nurse leaders that I worked with were not so we would rehearse presentations in advance.
To maximize your personal influence, you need to develop skill in all three styles of influencing. You will also need to plan in advance which of the three influencing tactics would serve you best in a particular situation – an approach from the heart, head or hands.
Read to Lead
Center for Creative Leadership (2017). Three ways to influence.
© emergingrnleader.com 2017
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