To progress as a designer, learn to influence

Influence is a critical skill for us as designers whether we're trying to get designs implemented correctly, eliciting a clear vision from the team, avoiding late stage blowups, or evangelizing design best practices.

But how do you actually influence others? I think we all know that in practice influence can be incredibly hard. Recall the last political debate you had with a family member or the last time you tried to convince an emacs user that vim is better. It's one thing to talk about influence. It's quite another to actually practice it. There are three aspects of influence you need to master if you want to be a happier, more successful designer.

Reciprocity

The cornerstone of influence is reciprocity. You have to allow yourself to be influenced in order to win others over. Generally, you need to let yourself be convinced more often than you convince others. This gradually builds trust and relationship capital that you can cash in when it really counts.

The easiest way to practice reciprocity is to ask yourself this question:

If so, go with their idea. They'll be more bought in, more invested, and you'll bank relationship capital for when it counts. If it's not a sufficiently good idea, ask earnest questions to help them improve it. If that doesn't work, then you can argue for your own idea and spend the necessary relationship capital to do so.

Another important element of influence is similarity.

Similarity

We are more easily influenced by people we perceive to be like ourselves. When I say this people tend to immediately assume I'm talking about skin deep similarities, but I've found that tribe is a much more important factor. I worked with a senior backend engineer once who was incredibly salty. Every design review was an interrogation and every conversation was an indictment of my existence. Frankly, I dreaded collaborating with him because it was generally an incredibly unpleasant experience. But I subordinated my ego, kept an open mind, and plugged away at building a relationship with him bit by bit.

Want to know what completely changed our dynamic? I saw some UI elements that were implemented incorrectly, got sick of it, and wrote some code to fix it. It wasn't great code and it wasn't a lot, but the fact that I shipped some code completely changed his attitude towards me. I was no longer this dark, external force compelling him to waste time implementing enchanting microinteractions. I was now on the inside, shipping code alongside him and his team. Part of the team, part of the solution.

The armed services and athletic teams were some of the first social institutions to integrate different racial groups. Why? Because of tribe. Shared experience, shared values, and shared suffering trump superficial differences. So in your context, consider what actions you could take to simultaneously build empathy with the stakeholders you're trying to influence and signal that you're part of the tribe.

Try shipping some code, shadow your sales team, take some customer success calls, read the financial statements of your business/competitors and list out some observations/questions for your executives.

Here's the key question you should ask yourself to nail this aspect of influence:

We can be influenced by those that are similar to us, but sometimes we're influenced by people who are deeply unlike us. If I break my leg and show up in the ER, the doctor might be completely unlike me in every way, but I'll likely listen to their recommendations. Why? Because they have authority.

Authority

Authority can be explicit or implicit. I might be your direct manager and therefore have authority over you or I might have a certain set of experiences/credentials that make me more persuasive to you.

I would generally focus much more on reciprocity and tribe than authority because sources of authority cannot be conjured quickly. It takes time to get a degree or an explicit promotion.

What can be quicker though is showcasing your authority. This again is something I would de-emphasize relative to the softer forms of influence because it's easy to come across as arrogant or insecure if you aren't careful.

My dad told me about a senior engineer once that would introduce himself as follows:

"Hi. I'm Dave. I have a PhD from Princeton."

While that's an awesome accomplishment, it comes across as insecure and a little strange when you present it that way.

So how can you showcase your authority without seeming like a tone deaf braggart? Your explicit credentials and experiences will come up in natural conversation over time. When you first join the team, you have full freedom to summarize your background for folks.

Once you're on the team, the most valuable way to showcase authority is to share relevant, useful information derived from your expertise. You have years of experience as a designer under your belt or a fancy degree or scar tissue from working at early stage companies.

Here's the question to ask yourself:

To progress, influence

Influence is a subtle and challenging thing. The hardest part about it is subordinating your ego, being willing to give up a lot of your ideas, and being strategic about where you want to cash in your chips. But you will get better at it over time and it will make you more successful and happier.

As a reminder, here are three questions you should ask yourself to become an influential beast:

• Is this person's idea at least 80% as good as mine? If so, let's go with it.
• What can I do that will allow me to walk a mile in the shoes of my collaborators and signal that I'm part of the tribe?
• What have I learned from my experience and education that might help my collaborator? What might they not know?

If you're serious about practicing this stuff, print them out somewhere and keep a journal tracking your progress. I've found a daily journal to be very helpful for changing ingrained habits of mind and elusive soft skills.

If you're curious about what else separates mediocrity and greatness for us as designers, check out my article good designer, bad designer.

I'll be releasing more deep dives and guides on the topics listed therein over the next few weeks.