Page 6 - Leadership Basics 4

What is Influencing Behaviour

Influencing behaviour can be defined as the strategies, tactics and actions used to change another
person (or persons) attitudes, beliefs, values or actions. Influencing behaviour can also be defined as
a force to change events and/or the opinion of large groups of people (such as through the mass
media). Influence can be therefore be applied by leaders to people and/or events. The purpose
magnitude or strength of influence can vary greatly.

In exploring influence, it is important to reflect on three aspects of influencing behaviour:

 the different reasons that leaders have for their influencing behaviour;

 the different tactics used to influence others; and,

 the ‘direction’ of influence.

To illustrate this, consider the following examples, a mid‐level leader in a school may wish to

influence:

 a teacher who needs to modify his/her plans

 their principal to change his or her view about a policy or innovation

 their science students’ willingness to carry out a social impact assignment

 a parent in order to get them to support a class project

 their colleagues to improve outcomes

 the general school community’s perceptions of school’s performance and ranking.

 the overall literacy levels in their school.

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