There are 10 strategies for influencing people to act with guts, tenacity, determination, and spirit. This is moxie and it’s the new strategic advantage at work and in play.
Innovation, growth, and brilliance suffocate when people fail to use their own moxie. Without moxie, people flounder. They show up in body, but not committed to anything. And when people don’t stand for something they will fall for anything. (See the picture of the billboard that I found with that great quote!)
A missed opportunity for them and for us.
As leaders, we have the ability (and the obligation) to influence, instigate, and empower people to leverage this new strategic advantage while working for us. When we empower people in this way, we evolve from manager-leaders into moxie-leaders. And so do our people.
Each of the 10 strategies below leverages the 10 influencing tenets that drive our behavior (see a prior blog post for the list of 10 influencing tenets).
1. Give Them a Battle Cry – people need to go into battle for a heroic reason
2. Fuel Their Self-Delusion – help people feel like it’s all about them
3. Pause for the Applause – recognize and appreciate regularly
4. Lift the Fog – communicate, communicate, communicate
5. Crush the Patterns – use actions to create new thoughts to then create more actions
6. Label Intentionally – eliminate toxicity and tap the power of labels instead
7. Deliberately Spoil Sabotage – foster a failure-free approach and address fear of rejection
8. Advocate for Discovery over Proficiency – it’s not about knowing, it’s about learning
9. Teach the Art of Bouncing – shift the focus from excuses to solutions
10. Make Waves, Not Ripples – change, shake things up, innovate
(This is a picture of me in front of the “Welcome to Pennsylvania” sign on my cross-country bike ride that I just completed this summer. I used every Influencing Strategy to succeed!)
You can read more about the 10 Influencing Tenets
and the 10 Influencing Strategies in my new book:
Moxie for Managers: The Secret to Evolving from Manager to Leader
lifemoxie 