Xian Yu answered the reader's question: How to create influence at work and drive colleagues?

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What is influence? Quoting Wikipedia's explanation:

Influence is the ability to change the thoughts and actions of others in a way that others are comfortable with.

And the "influence" we want to create in our work is actually

1. Affirmation of oneself by colleagues (thought)
2. Willing to act with oneself (action)

What will help build your influence? I think there are two parts: one is professional ability and one is personal charisma.

What is professional competence? Quoting the definition from Wikipedia:

Professional competence refers to the combination of various abilities that people have in their occupations

As far as the profession of "front-end development" is concerned, the manifestation of its professional ability is nothing more than:

1. Solid technical foundation
2. Professional technical output
3. Excellent work results

Among them, "solid technical foundation" is the foundation of the latter two, but this "foundation" does not mean that everyone can grasp the grammar of the language with elevation and rhinoceros. In my opinion, if you can independently and improve your work well, In fact, the technical foundation is already in place.

In the professional technical output, blogging is a kind, sharing in the team is a kind, and sharing the frontier in daily communication is also a kind, no matter what kind, the most important thing is to keep the input of new knowledge, and bravely publish your own View. These outputs will bring professional improvement.

And excellent work results, compared with other methods, although very slow, but it is the most powerful thing to prove one's professional ability, after all, everything is the result. But this work product is not what you accomplish, more importantly, what you accomplish beyond what others expected. When the project is successful, what do you empower the project, business or other teams to do, when the project fails, you summarize and review it to help the rest of the team not to make the same mistakes again. Although a review cannot change the outcome, your attitude and behavior will still positively affect many people.

Although we are saying that the embodiment of professional ability should achieve these three points, it does not mean that these should be our goals.

Let's first think about "work". We usually think that work is to sell time to the boss, which is true, but some people sell the boss's time, but also for the growth of their own ability and experience. I think the main purpose of work should be to invest in your future, and earning money is just one of the results. Looking at these three points from this perspective, there is absolutely no need for us to deliberately do these things in order to build influence. The main purpose is to invest in ourselves. These things are just a result, and influence is the product of these results.

Taking professional technical output as an example, our output, whether it is team sharing or daily communication, should not be shared to build influence, nor should it be shared to help colleagues. Taking team sharing as an example, this kind of sharing is actually of limited help to everyone. Is the keynote speaker good? Are you really listening? After listening carefully, have you expanded your learning and practice? The final effect is uncontrollable and unknowable. Of course, team sharing is still necessary. In my opinion, it is mainly to maintain the technical atmosphere of the team and to serve as a platform for personal presentation. Of course, this is another topic, just to say that the purpose of sharing should be to help oneself sort out first, and then to help Others, blogging is the same reason.

Take excellent work results as an example. It seems that the work can only be completed normally, but if it is done for the purpose of investing in yourself, completing these projects will not really allow you to grow your ability. From the use of specific technologies, do you really I understand the principle, whether there is a better way to realize the same function, how to optimize the redundancy in the project, whether it can be solved with tools, and then whether it can be considered from a platform perspective in combination with business... These thinking and Practice will undoubtedly make our work more content, but it also makes us grow faster. Think about the interviews of many big factories, they don't care how many projects we have done, but more about how different this project is because of your existence. I want to tell everyone that excellent work results are also built on the basis of self, and do not need to do it to influence others.

Next, let's talk about personal charm, citing Baidu Encyclopedia's explanation of "personality charm":

Charisma refers to a person's attractive power in character, temperament, ability, moral character, etc.

It looks very abstract, think about it, what do you like about the person you admire or want to imitate? These points are the embodiment of TA's personality charm, and at work, what kind of colleague do you want? Reliable? enthusiasm? Rigorous and serious? Reckless? Why don't you try to write these points down, and then think about it from another angle, aren't these what your colleagues expect from you?

Although I can also write a bunch of labels, hoping to become such a person, but when I use labels to ask myself, I always feel a little restrained, unreal and free, and personality charm is a very complicated thing, For example, a colleague I met at work, obviously I was already too busy, but still would personally find me to solve the problems he encountered in the business. Although I was very annoying at the time, I calmed down and admired it. Colleagues, do their best for their own business, even if they cause trouble to others, but also resolutely push forward, is this not the level I hope to achieve?

There are also some colleagues who insist on exercising and meditating every day. Even if the conditions do not allow, they will lay a yoga mat at noon and meditate on the spot. When it comes to exercise, they will use the venue to do some stretching and exercises that do not require equipment. It doesn't matter if we're around or not. This makes me admire, as I am thin-skinned, I would be a little embarrassed to do these things.

Sometimes, when I see these colleagues, I think the most important thing in personality charm is authenticity and freedom, listen to your heart, do what you think is right, overcome difficulties, and make continuous efforts. Presumably everyone wants to be such a person in their heart, so they will be influenced by these people unconsciously.

When I talk about these two examples, I actually want to say that you don’t need to be too deliberate about your personality. If you truly express yourself and work hard for your own ideas, you will already be a very attractive person.

When I return to work, the place where I come into contact with people is where I can show my charisma. Because we are in a team, the things we can come into contact with are far more than writing code by ourselves. In daily life, we understand everyone's work content, help colleagues in the team, and there are also some informal work content in the team, such as Recruiting, cultivating new people, organizing regular meetings, planning team building, maintaining team documents, etc., and the company also has various activities. Participating in these things can also make the teammates remember you better.

Here, I would also like to say a little more about building a personal connection with your colleagues. Not to create influence, but to get along with normal people. We usually ignore the friendships established by our colleagues and focus on the friendships established with our former classmates. Although it is understandable, after all, your classmates have studied hard with you for many years, and there are interests in the workplace. You come to work, not for you make friends. But think about it, the classmates in the past went their separate ways after graduation. If you come to a city far away from home to develop, the closest thing to our daily life is actually our colleagues.

Although some people advocate that making friends in the workplace should "make friends from afar": colleagues who are closer to you are often your competitors. Everyone in a team has similar starting qualifications, but in a team, there are only so many resources, and it is inevitable to compete with each other, it is better to maintain a little Distance, provincial competition when letting yourself get hurt. And what you can hand in is those colleagues who have a certain distance from you, different ranks, but the same three views.

Such a statement may be applicable. For example, in the work within the system, everyone has been in a department for more than ten years, and it is a competitive relationship. It is good to maintain a relationship that is close and not distant. But as far as the Internet industry where most of the front-end is located, when you were in a big factory, even if you were in one department, but the organization changed, you might switch to another team in the second year. When you were a small factory, you thought about better The benefits, keep changing jobs. A true colleague relationship may not last for a few years. Is it really that important to have a close relationship? At least when I recall the past, what I regret is that I always looked into the distance, but ignored the people around me. Although I also had a good relationship, I never thought of taking the initiative to get closer to everyone. . And for many colleagues, I didn’t realize that my colleagues were so different in work and life until I left and added WeChat. Sometimes you regret not knowing more about them when working together.

Back to the topic, now you will find that whether it is professional ability or personality charm, it is obviously to influence others, but I am emphasizing for myself. Is this proclaiming that "people are not for themselves, and the world will be destroyed"?

What I want to say is that there is still some difference between selfishness and living out oneself. When a person lives out oneself, it may be to dedicate oneself to a specific behavior. What I emphasize more is to truly express yourself and to bravely stick to your own ideas.

OK, let’s assume that your ability has also improved, and your team has been affirmed by everyone. At this time, I think one thing to keep in mind is that you should never take the initiative to “save” others. We may have had such an experience, seeing that the object is not motivated and working hard, wasting time on some nipple fun, and hating that iron is not steel, so we persuaded hard and hoped that he could improve himself more. The result is often a hot face on a cold ass, with both sides taking their breath away.

The reason is that you think you are helping TA, but in TA's view, you are probably just a giant in words and a dwarf in action. Even though you know a lot of truths, you have not seen that you are particularly good, but It's just rhetoric and arrogant. So these words you said did not make TA change, but also caused disgust.

So what should you do? You can only prove that you are not just rhetoric. Prove yourself with actions, and when you really insist on becoming a better version of yourself, often your object will also be affected by infection. So the best way to change others is not through persuasion, but through influence by example.

The same is true for colleagues, you can actively persuade or suggest, but if they don't listen, you don't have to struggle, just keep working hard. When you are professional enough, people will naturally seek your advice.

In the context of this question, you wrote:

I've been thinking about why I'm at home lately. Home, currently in my heart is a place full of joy, tolerance and dedication. When a person pays in this place and gets a return, then this place will become his home, and he will cherish and protect this place.

Extending from this, in a project of the company, if everyone actively participates, contributes their wisdom and enthusiasm, and obtains corresponding rewards, then we will grow faster and live happier. The company will therefore be valued and protected.

When you think about it, it shows that you are a motivated, hard-working person who loves your job and your company. Indeed, a sense of belonging is not something you will have in one place, but only where you give it. If everyone can actively participate, we will grow faster. But we must also realize that not everyone thinks this way, everyone has their own pursuits, but some people are not in the current work.

Among cognitive biases, there's something called the "false consensus effect," which refers to people's tendency to project their way of thinking onto others, assuming that all people think the same way.

In 1977, psychologists conducted such an experiment: they randomly found 40 students and asked them if they would like to hang a piece of cardboard with "Repent" written on it. 63.5% of students are willing to do so, and among the students who refuse, they think that only 23.3% of the whole school should be willing to do so.

In fact, this effect is well understood. People will overestimate the prevalence of their own wishes. If you can answer a question, you will overestimate the probability of others answering it. If you support a certain star, you assume that the star has more fans than it actually does.

When I talk about this effect, I want to say that although this description is ideal, as adults, we all know the truth, but there will be some deviations when actually doing it, and everyone will still be defeated by reality. Although we have the will to do so, we must not force others to change according to our own will.

The above is based on the premise that you are on the same level, but at work, because of the existence of interests, the relationship will be more complicated. If you really want to promote something, you don’t need to care too much about the ideas of your colleagues. You only use It is enough to negotiate with the leader, be emotional, and understand the reason. Even if there is no progress at the moment, it is still a seed buried in the thoughts of others, and it also leaves a good impression of thinking. Although I think the most important thing in this process is the idea, many people are not without ideas, they just don’t want to think about it.

Finally, to sum up, there are indeed some methods and techniques for building influence. There are many online searches, but the same is true. I think the most important thing is to be a good self. Only when people listen to their hearts and do what they really want can they emit positive energy, and in the process of making it excellent and even extreme, the influence is actually growing.

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