5 Ways to Increase your Personal Impact at Work By Juliette Jenner.

I am increasingly aware of my personal ‘bandwidth’ limitations as I balance running a growing business and being a wife and mom.
With our finite energy and resources, demands from home and work and a longing for balance, we need to get smarter! There is no room for anything less than real impact: meetings, presentations and conversations need to be effective and lead to action.
That’s why my focus is on how to communicate with maximum impact in your environment. Be clear, strategic and effective.
Here are a few tips to get you off on the right foot….
Janet is well-prepared manager. She is a capable, knowledgeable expert, but when it comes down to it, she just doesn’t have the personal impact she needs at work to deliver the results she knows are possible. Key stakeholders don’t listen to her, they don’t take her seriously enough and they are quick to dismiss her value. She is losing confidence and feeling frustrated.

1. Learn to be Composed Under Pressure:
   The ability to self-regulate and maintain your composure when people disagree with you, ignore or undermine what you have to say is vital. You can’t wait for your environment to feel safe and relaxed before you can manage yourself- you need to be able to stay calm and hold your ground when things get tough. Janet needs to learn to manage her nerves, especially in front of senior people.
2. Power Your Voice:
   Janet tends to feel small and lose her voice when she needs to speak to a high stakes audience. Speaking well and showing up with presence is a key factor to having clout. In fact, with all the preparation in the world, if you can’t deliver your message with power and confidence its hard to have impact. Speaking with a strong and articulate voice, sending all the right non-verbal ‘power cues’ and commanding the space allows you to deliver your message with credibility
3. Learn to Think on Your Feet:
   Despite her preparation, Janet finds herself going blank, stumbling on her words or coming up with a great answer ten minutes too late. No matter how prepared you are, you can never predict the outcome of a communication. You need to handle uncertainty and imperfect conditions in the moment: a key person arrives late, someone hostile is present, someone throws you a curve-ball. Unpredictability is more the rule than the exception and it pays to be ready to improvise. Thinking on your feet is a game-changing skill and gives you the confidence and power to make your mark.
4. Know Your Audience:
   If you want to have impact, you need to be relevant to your audience. Being knowledgeable is only the starting point. Positioning your information in a way that is compelling and relevant to your audience requires strategic thought. The more you can align your message with what most concerns them, the greater your possible impact. Your audience, whether in a presentation or meeting, is a collective of power. Who does it consist of? What is their agenda? Are they hostile? Do you have credibility with them already or not? For example, Janet needs to get project buy in from Manbo. She needs to understand who they are and what they need before she can plan how best to leverage her information to them.
5. Focus on the Relationship with your Audience:
   Speaking is an assertive act, well likened to an act of leadership. Speak to your audience, not at them. Pay close attention to them and have the confidence to place your relationship with them as a key priority while you speak. A massive hurdle for Janet is that she struggles to do this in front of senior people and starts to express her ideas with low status and doubt. This destroys her relationship with them and undermines her value. No matter how powerful or senior your audience is, while you speak your job is to lead and command the space. In fact, to have impact, the more powerful your audience is, the more powerful you need to be. The best way you can build a relationship and serve them is to rise to the moment and lead.           KINGSMITH.