How to be more influential at work

It’s a New Year, and a new chance to make a fresh start. Be that by adapting your style, your diet or your general outlooks, a change can often be good and shake up your life. But one of the most important places to make a change is your workplace. As we tend to spend more time at work than at home over the course of the year, it is imperative that your office – or wherever you plug away from 9 to 5 – is where you present yourself best.

So, if you spent the majority of the last twelve months working without excitement or purpose, clocking in and clocking out and living for the weekend, then listen up. It’s time to inject a little personality, impression and influence into your work life. And here’s how…

Now, this is important – but it’s equally as important not to get carried away. Nobody’s going to find you influential, or even noteworthy, at work if you’re sneaking in every day in the same charcoal suit or bland shirt-and-tie combos. But you don’t want to become known as the overdresser, who has so many accessories and affectations that people can’t even see past the clobber.

Instead, learn to lift your work outfit without eclipsing your own points or personality. A brighter tie, pair of stylishly interesting shoes or a subtly eye-catching pocket square is enough to stick in people’s minds without overshadowing your authority or ideas. You want to stand out, but principally for who you are, not how you dress – the clothes just help you get there.

There’s nothing worse than the wishy-washy employee who doesn’t know whether he’s coming or going. He says one thing to somebody, and a different thing to someone else. He’s fickle, changeable and universally unliked as a result. Our advice to you? Whatever the subject, be it political or a work quibble, take a stance and stick with it.

This goes double for debates with the boss. There’s nothing your boss will hate more than a suck-up, so don’t pander or agree to things for the sake of it. Show some spine, be your own person, and anything you say will have a lot more influence in the future as a result.

You can’t be influential if you’re not respected, and you can’t be respected if you’re not good at your job. So, to become more influential, prove your worth by showing your workmates and superiors how you make a difference in the workplace – be this either higher sales figures or positive client reports. This way, you’ve got a solid base of evidence proving you know what you’re doing when you raise any future points.

But be careful. Showing off how good you are can very, very easily turn into bragging. And, just as nobody likes a suck-up, people rarely warm to the big-headed either. So don’t send an email to everyone telling them how great you are, and instead puff yourself up in addendums to important emails to the boss, or in casual water cooler conversation.

In every workplace, there are certain tasks or recurring issues that people want to stay away from. Be it dealing with a particular client, or taking inventory at the end of the month, or even perfectly phrasing an all-important email, some lesser workers will shy away from these problems, and let those with more ambition take a swing at them. Make no mistake; if you want to be influential, you should be the one swinging.

Even if you miss, the fact that you even had the gumption and drive to step up to the plate will tell others that you aren’t to be messed with, have an ambition to rival all others, and frequently can get by even on the strength of your own self-confidence. And if that won’t breed influence, we don’t know what will.

This is arguably the most important skill in growing your influence around the workplace. True, the majority of CEOs are rich, old white men who probably don’t understand the intricacies of Bitcoin and couldn’t code to save their lives, but to move up in a modern world, you need a whole arsenal of skills that weren’t even around when they were young.

As such, keep building your abilities. Go on courses, read extensively about the news and current affairs and ensure that no technology feels alien in your hands. If you become the ‘go-to guy’ in the office – for everything from work-related solutions to general knowledge – you’ll hold influence. And, as we all know, influence is power…

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