3 Influence Tricks That Will Make You Loved in the Office
By: Piero Borrelli
Tags: Work, Communication, Office, Psychology, Productivity

Have you ever read How to Win Friends and Influence People? It’s an incredible, timeless bestseller which I believe reveals the only secret you must know about to be the best communicator you can be.

Do you know what this secret is?

What if I told you that it’s something that can turn your personal and business relationships for the better? Or, as you will learn in this article, to show you how to become a respected, loved professional in your office?

It’s the same secret that the author mentions being behind the personal fame of a guy like Roosevelt. Or the economic fortune of the Scottish, king of steel, Andrew Carnegie.

Sculp this secret in your head, read it again and again, as it is the foundation of the principles described later on how you should behave with people working around you.

Ready?

“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.” — Dale Carnegie

How did that hit you? Don’t you believe that you should call your coworkers friends? That word doesn’t necessarily refer to people you share an affection for, in this case. But human beings you can connect with to establish a prolific relationship, one that can give you advantages in your life and enrich you.

There’s no wrong in using relationships to your advantage, as that means ethically providing good results both for you and your interlocutor. And the best way to that type of effective relationship is to be genuinely interested in others.

“The only way to have a friend is to be one. “ — Ralph Waldo Emerson

When you have this honest feeling of interest towards other people, everything around you will change. An interested person is interesting by definition.

Be interested in other people’s jobs and they will reveal you their secrets and how they do it. Be interested in their stories and they will tell you who they are, and you will learn stuff from their backgrounds.

You still don’t believe me? Let’s see this principle in action through a set of rules that can guide you in your work.

Express Sincere Interest People’s Job and What They Do

I work in the tech field as a software engineer. I have people coming from all disciplines collaborating together with me. And as I believe in these people’s skills, so I am honestly interested in what they do. How they learned it, and what principles they apply.

I remember my attempt trying to learn stuff about designing a website. I was having a hard time understanding the principles behind it. To be honest, I suck at visuals. And I recall how I exposed these problems to a coworker of mine working in the field.

I asked her a couple of questions, and I was exploding with interest in the answers. I will never forget her smiling face, the inner pleasure of having somebody truly interested in what you have to say. Somebody admiring you. I was hanging from her teachings. And they went on and on, and that person helped me more and more. She would even thank me at the end of one of our design talks.

“I feel like you really like this, and I’m happy you listen with so much passion. Feel free to come back to me and ask me anything whenever your need it”.

To this day, I have to recognize that, I’ve learned a lot from those lessons, and without that person, I wouldn’t have the skills I have today. And this is something I still do with people from all departments. Salespeople are great at teaching you influence techniques, accounting was so helpful in revealing to me how a company works and how I could create mine one day.

There is immense value in being interested in a person. As that person will always be better than you at something. The return on knowledge, networking and bonding on a human level is just astonishing.

There’s some weird magic in having someone craving from your words and what you have to say. It makes you like that person immediately. And with this trick, I’m now able to have many mentors who are better than me in my life at something, making me constantly grow.