"Know What You Want" Influence Tools

The “Know What You Want” influence tools are all about being highly focused on achieving your outcomes (read more about Student to CEO Influence Tools here).

These influence tools only work if you already have a clear idea of what you want to achieve and the more specific you are in the definition of your goals, the more effective these tools will be.

The key themes covered by these success tools include:

• Focus: if you are focused, both in terms of being very clear about the outcomes you are striving for and in carefully using your time to ensure everything you do takes you closer to those specific outcomes rather than spending time on things that do not, you will be massively more successful than if you spread your efforts over too wide and area that may or may not align to where you want to get to;
• Delivery of value: whatever you do, always aim to deliver value in excess of what you are being paid and track your results and successes, because it is the tangible results that you deliver that people benefit from and care about, not the qualifications you have obtained or the tasks you have carried out. If you have done a lot of work but you cannot say what benefit that work has delivered, what was the value of you doing the work in the first place?
• Continuous learning: no matter where you are in your career, it is critical that you continuously build your understanding and experience in line with the outcomes that you are striving to achieve. Look for opportunities to learn from everything you do – from the day-to-day activities you perform to specific training courses and books;
• Perseverance: you will encounter challenges, you will make mistakes and you will fail. The important thing is how you deal with this failure: if you pick yourself up, learn from it and carry on, you will be a success. The more challenges you overcome, the stronger and more successful you will be – even if in the short term it doesn’t feel like it. Often the most successful people overcame the biggest challenges before they made it to where they are today.