The Art of Influencing and Persuasion: How Managers Can Put ‘Square Pegs’ into ‘Round Holes’

Abstract

The ability to influence and persuade others at work has become an increasingly important managerial skill to achieve work goals and objectives to drive businesses forward in today’s demanding and competitive work environments.This paper investigates and provides a deeper understanding of what positive effects knowledge and application of the concepts of influencing amd persuasion can have on managers, the people they manage and the organisations they work for. The results show that the performance of managers is positively influenced by how they influence and persuade people at work. The outcome of a literature review suggests that there is no conclusive evidence of what makes an effective manager at work that is good at influencing and persuading others. Outputs from face to face and a focus group meeting with final year social psychology students from the Universidad de Oriene in Santiago de Cuba closed this gap by suggesting an effective influencing and persuasion skills set that, when applied appropriately, could guide managers how to influence and persuade others successfully.The outcome of this research is applicable and relevant to managers in any working environment such as Telecommuncations, Utilities, Banking or Automotive. The proposed skills set of what makes an effective influencing and persuading manager at work can be applied globally although the prevailing cultural diversities in different countries should be considered.

Keywords: Influencing, persuading, attitudes, work performance, managing people