ABSTRACT
Technical skills and past performance may be enough to secure a job interview, but you need empathic influencing to land the job itself. First, empathic influencing can help to develop the network and relationships that will get you hired. Second, empathic influencing will enable you to understand interview questions, to provide the right answers and to develop positive relationships with potential colleagues. For anyone who works in a team, empathic influencing is important. High-performance teams are characterised by their members’ behaviour with each other, rather than by their individual or collective skills. For anyone who leads a team, empathic influencing is absolutely essential. It is not enough to understand the goals of the team; you must also understand what drives and motivates its members. Furthermore, the higher you rise, the more important empathic influencing becomes. For example, performance at board level is more about constructive challenge and relationship building rather than specialist expertise.
