Thematic Unit: Influences - Elements of Influence Lesson

What are elements of influence?

Boy Image At the simplest level, influence is simply the effective combination of three elements:

1. A communicator -- the person who wants to influence someone

2. A text annotation indicator message -- what the communicator wants the audience to do or believe

3. An audience -- the recipient (or recipients) of the message. Throughout this section, we will refer to the person or people you want to influence as the audience, even if your audience is just one person.

The communicator has a message he or she wants understood and accepted by the audience. It's pretty simple, and we see it happen all the time.

For example:

A son (the communicator) wants his mother (the audience) to stop smoking (the message).
A company (the communicator) wants teenagers (the audience) to buy a certain brand of soda pop (the message).
A coalition chair (the communicator) wants community members (the audience) to become active members (the message).

So the different parts of influence are pretty simple. The harder question is, how do we make it work? What helps the message get through? What makes influence effective?

Summary

The ability to influence someone successfully is one of the most important and challenging jobs any leader will face. This section gives an overview of some general ideas behind this science of persuasion. By fully understanding this information, a leader can become very effective in his or her work. Pay attention to the way influences appear in The Giver and in the upcoming drama, Pygmalion.

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