To influence people means using behaviours to affect their thinking, feeling and actions so that they think, feel or do something which they would not otherwise have done. If you wave or smile at someone and they wave or smile back – you have just influenced them – they wouldn’t have done that if you hadn’t provided the stimulus. In business this influencing is more likely to be in the form of meetings, negotiations, presentations and conversations – particularly where there is a problem to be solved or a decision to be made.
Influence by design, not by chance or accident, should be the aim of the skilled practitioner or conversation controller. The skills and disciplines of Behavioural Intelligence build on the core skills of Emotional Intelligence and help skilled negotiators, leaders and managers to elegantly and subtly take charge. This is not limited to positions of authority. We teach meeting facilitators and meeting attendees these skills so that they can make meetings more valuable and worthy of the investment of time and resource.
The four quadrants of Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence model include:
Self Awareness – Having the ability to recognise the emotions you feel and the effects they have on you in different situations.
Self Management – Controlling your emotions and impulses and adapting to changing circumstances.
Social Awareness – Your ability to notice, understand, and respond to others’ emotions and the effects these have on their behaviour.
Relationship Management – Your ability to build constructive working relationships.
The first two quadrants are about you and your internal management system. The second two quadrants are about how you operate in the presence of others.
Behavioural Intelligence is firmly founded in all four quadrants but shows itself most readily in the Self Management and Relationship Management areas. Here the interaction is with others in the form of things you say or do – that’s what behaviours are. Behaviours can be verbal or non-verbal, a statement or question or a facial expression.
To operate with Behavioural Intelligence means being able to interrupt your reflexes or impulsive responses (probably from your amygdala or limbic system) long enough to choose an alternative behaviour (using your prefrontal cortex). Having a name for the behaviour or a mental map which gives names or titles to behaviours within conversations means you increase your speed of choosing. It is generally thought you have about 0.6 seconds to consciously affect your behaviour so there isn’t much time.
We use the expression “influence by design” to reinforce the conscious choice and decision not just impulsive response. Skilled practitioners use mental maps or models to help them picture what is happening in a conversation, meeting or negotiation.
The Conversation Control Map, which we have developed from the original work of Dr Charles Margerison, is enormously useful in noticing where a conversation is at any given time. This, then, helps the behaviourally intelligent practitioner to manage his or her own behaviour and choose whatever is most appropriate to achieve the desired outcomes, results or objectives.
