My previous blog post established three critical success factors to an effective leader’s lifestyle.

This post discusses the second success factor to effective leadership: interactional excellence.

Once you’ve balanced your own physiological dynamics of movement, fuel and recovery, now you can more effectively deploy a powerful influence protocol to give you the interpersonal impact you desire.

You can define protocol as an accepted code of behavior — a prescribed approach for correct conduct or action. What are the accepted principles and expectations for effective influence interactions? Our work has revealed an unshakeable triad of diagnostics for maximizing readiness in others, to maintaining and strengthening the empathic connection between you and others; attention, commitment and trust.

Let me give you the basics of developing the attention, commitment and trust of your team:

Attention

1. Start with awareness – is your influence target even aware of your objectives or of you as a conduit to the outcomes they desire?

2. Verify personal interest – what are the benefits and advantages of your own personal value proposition for them? This is the beginning of moving the state of any influence moment.

3. Avoid rushing to a relationship – it’s the ultimate rapport killer. If you don’t have someone’s attention, let alone their commitment, there is no professional reason for a significant relationship as yet. Take first things first.

Commitment

1. Understand their investment– commitment is a factor of investment and pace, and investment can either be intangible or tangible. What are the tangible deliverables you expect of them?

2. Create alignment around urgency – early on, the sense of urgency is often misaligned. You may feel a much stronger sense of pace than those you interact with.

3. Create influence momentum– work on moving your influence interactions from intangible to tangible, igniting pace from apathy to energy.

Trust

1. Trust is respect, reliance and confidence – once you see evidence of awareness and interest, investment and pace, maximizing now takes moving your focus to building trust.

2. Respect is personal power – you can’t compel it or demand it, you earn it. It is their take on you as a source of expertise, information and compatibility.

3. Reliance is confident dependence – the ultimate maximization of an influence moment is evidenced by another’s willing and unreserved interdependence with you in the process of meeting their needs.

This then is the protocol to interactional excellence. First balancing and ensuring personal well-being allows for a further focus on your needs; generating the interest, commitment and trust of another – in that order. That is achieved through following a powerful influence protocol.

Now you are ready to affirm the final habits of a leader’s lifestyle – taking control of your own personal and professional transformation. Next we will explore the final enablers of the path to effective leadership; purpose, growth and service.