Illustration by chuenmanuse
“Leadership is a behaviour, not a title,” says SAIT educator, leadership coach and enterprise innovation consultant, Curtis Braun. “You don’t need to be in an official leadership position to demonstrate leadership behaviours.”
Braun is one of two instructors facilitating Influence Matters, a new course from SAIT’s Continuing Education and Professional Studies (CEPS). The program describes influence in the workplace as building rapport, listening, using persuasion and creating trust. It teaches students strategies for wielding influence with integrity in both their professional and personal lives.
“We always influence others, whether we’re intentional about it or not. It’s important to become aware of influence to understand the impact we have,” Braun says. “Through the course, we get to explore scenarios and understand that line between manipulation and ethical influence.”
For Braun, ethical influence is about preserving people’s agency and inspiring action, rather than securing a self-serving outcome. “Influence creates commitment,” he says. “There’s a major difference between compliance and commitment. Commitment requires engaged hearts and minds.”
Here, Braun shares four soft skills you need to advocate for your ideas and gain support, no matter your role:
“Don’t rush to judge and draw conclusions about what you’re seeing,” he says. “Take the time to learn how decisions are made, how disagreements are managed and what support really looks like.”
Active listening means being curious about others’ perspectives. “You need to be able to connect your ideas to what matters most to people,” says Braun. “You learn what others want by building a relationship and listening to feedback.”
By using techniques like paraphrasing during conversations, you can show that you’re hearing what the other person has to say and taking it seriously.
•Care: Keep colleagues’ best interests at heart.
•Sincerity: Practice honesty and express your genuine beliefs and values.
•Competence: Generously share your experience, skills and knowledge.
•Reliability: Act with integrity and show up when others need you.
“Take time to understand the work and the reasons people do certain things the way they do,” he suggests. “Then connect the changes you want to make with what really matters to them, like safety, efficiency, reduced rework or better communication.”
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SAIT is located on the traditional territories of the Niitsitapi (Blackfoot) and the people of Treaty 7 which includes the Siksika, the Piikani, the Kainai, the Tsuut’ina and the Îyârhe Nakoda of Bearspaw, Chiniki and Goodstoney.
We are situated in an area the Blackfoot tribes traditionally called Moh’kinsstis, where the Bow River meets the Elbow River. We now call it the city of Calgary, which is also home to the Métis Nation of Alberta.