Influence is Contagious.

The influence of you is astounding.  Ever think of it? The ever evolving power of your suggestions is amazing and diverse in the course of a whole day.  You get out of bed, turn on the lights and make coffee, and fry bacon, you are influencing anyone in your home to get up drink coffee and eat. 

Okay, hear me out, you get in your car and cut someone off in traffic and he gestures rather rudely to you, some kind of hand gesture we have either used many times, or seen, whatever, you know what I mean, but you influenced the creation of that by cutting him/her off.

You are at your office now, looking over your daily schedule, planning your day, answering the phone “Good morning, this is …… and we are here to welcome you home.” Now, you have influenced the caller, you have let them know they matter to you, you feel they are important to your day, especially if they schedule an appointment with you to view an apartment that is available.

Your assistant has come to you and told you she needs the day off tomorrow, something unexpected came up. You wrinkle up your face and hesitate giving an approval.  You have just communicated to your assistant that you are displeased, by your body language of wrinkling up your face and your hesitation in answering. Your assistant now feels uncomfortable, they already knew they were screwing up the day, feeling badly about it, and now it is magnified by your outward display of emotion. How do you think this has influenced her day?  Think about it, will everything person she meets today get her full attention?  Will they get her unbridled friendliness?  Maybe….maybe not..something has set in motion for her to have a bad day, possibly.

Moving on through the day, you inspect a unit that has just been turned by your Maintenance Team and you are smiling, uttering accolades, and you point out that you really like the way they have finished up the unit and given praise to the team for their better than expected completion. You influence the team to do this again and again and again and guess what, they do. Your positive influence has given them the gift of a great day, and they pay this forward all day long to everyone they meet.

You call your regional director and during the conversation you mention that you have just found a way to save some big money onsite. Taking your lead, your regional director calls their other properties and immediately mentions that there could be money saved by doing this and that, not really giving you the credit, but none the less, you influenced the call to be paid forward and everyone wins by saving money by initiating the new idea, again, all influenced by you.

As you are walking along your property, you pick up some errant litter that has blown in with the wind and a little girl sees you and copies your actions.  By your influence, you have set the example for a little girl to pick up errant litter wherever she goes in life, quite possibly setting the example to even her parents while they see her do a good deed, they copy her.

On and on it goes, much like a yawn, happiness or a gigle, influence is contagious, it is never ending and it can start and end with you. We all have influence, whether it is positive or negative, you do make a difference in someone’s day every day. What kind of influence are you going to pay forward?