What is influence?

Grant Leboff: What I wanted to ask, to kick this off is; what is influence? Warren Cass: Influence for me is about effecting an outcome. It's about affecting change without having to necessarily force the issue. It's about persuasion. The key thing is most of us are influenced all of the time every single day, from the moment we wake till the moment we sleep. Whether consciously or subconsciously. It could be the mood our partner is in when we wake that effects and sets up our day. All the stress we feel on our commutes on the way to work, which affects the way we behave. It's even been proven to be the fact that if you witness an act of kindness for the couple of hours that follow, you're more likely to be kind to yourself. So we're all influenced, very subtly, throughout the whole of our day by all sorts of different triggers. Whether it's media messages or the simple conversations we have face to face with other people. Grant Leboff: So what you're saying is correct. We know, just logically that we are all the time by other people and yet influence has become a huge topic today. Because I think it has changed because of the digital world and changes in modern life. So for you, how has influence changed because of digital, because of social etc... Warren Cass: Actually it's a broader topic than just whether digital has changed it. But but one of the beautiful things is that we're more aware of how we're influenced and how we can potentially influence. So one of the things I often say on stage is; become a student of people and of course those behaviors transcribe onto online as well. It's not it's not just about face to face. But if you think about it all of the the main stream books on influencing; either Dale Carnegie's How to win friends [and influence people], or Influence: The psychology of persuasion by [Robert D.] Cialdini. They were written in 1936 and I think 1984 respectively - before a digital age, before the Internet anyway, and the world has become so much more complex since then. The way we communicate is very very different online. We've got a whole generation who are digital natives and know no different, whereas we who are slightly older - the the digital migrants - have had to adapt but we haven't necessarily adapted our communication style, we've just applied the way we used to communicate to digital. The complexity now is that you've got multiple generations communicating in different ways using, intuitively, what they know and how they know how to communicate. Grant Leboff: So what are the key things that you notice in the online world that, from your point of view, are having having a real factor on the way that we're influenced and behave? Warren Cass: Well one of the biggest things, and they've been around for a few years now, but it's the rise of science that actually measure your influence. If you're a big brand looking to work with a sole trader or a consultant for example, Klout the obvious and the biggest, I actually personally loathe the fact that these sites exist because, for me, they're much more of a measure of activity than they are real influence but they are focused on a whole bunch of complex algorithms that look at the size of your database the level of engagement you get whenever you post something and in return how influential your audience is. So what's interesting for a snapshot - I think recently there was a social media practitioner in the US who was obviously very active but he had a higher Klout score than Barack Obama - and I would argue he's a bit more influential. So I think you use these things with a pinch of salt. But but understand that some people are making hiring and firing decisions based on things like Klout score. So I think we just have to be, as entrepreneurs, as business owners, as professionals, we have to be aware that the do diligence that people are doing before they will even meet let alone engage, looks at your reputation online looks, at the footprint that you leave and makes a judgment and, therefore, we all have to be a bit more mindful about how we do interact online, if we want to make the right first impression. There may be small changes to the spoken word in this transcript in order make it more readable.