Most associations exist to protect and promote their industry or profession, which often includes influencing all levels of the legislative arena. However, many advocacy professionals, whose jobs require above-average persuasion skills, somehow face challenges in obtaining internal support for current programs and new initiatives. Before we declare that association leaders “don’t get it,” we must address the common denominator: your communication and persuasion skills. Let’s look at five strategies to help you when advocating for support from those within your association.

Recognize the challenges of upward influence. Remember that no matter your title or tenure, when advocating for more resources, adoption of a new program, or more inclusion in the decision-making process, you are engaged in upward influence. Upward influence is not management, leadership, or peer-to-peer influence. It has nuances and requires a different skillset.

Focus on results. One reason advocating for your initiatives fails is because it emphasizes the activities you will undertake, rather than the results of those activities. Reminding organizational stakeholders of the “stuff” you produce, also known as deliverables, is a sure way to devalue your work. A mentor once advised me that people use the term deliverables “because they tend to view activities as accomplishments [and] focus on process more than results.”

Is your value determined by the time you invest and the volume of your activity, or the results you produce? What value is your team bringing to your members? What is it worth? If you can’t articulate it, maybe you shouldn’t invest time in the activity.

Know that political realities matter. When engaging in upward influence, don’t focus on your passion and the self-righteousness of your cause. To succeed, keep your eyes on the values of those whose support you need. In advocacy, it’s all about them.

Before we declare that association leaders “don’t get it,” we must address the common denominator: your communication and persuasion skills.

What matters to your stakeholders? There may be hundreds of answers, but in general, the way people are measured and rewarded shapes organizational behavior. While disruption has become trendy, be careful, because if it does not respect what was built by others, it can propel opposition. Staff are sometimes emotionally attached to “the way we do things around here.”

Will your new idea create more work for your team or boss? If the value isn’t clearly articulated, that work is going to be weighed in comparison to competing priorities. Very often, to move something forward, you have to pause something else.

Your government relations programs are considered not only on the objective merits, but also on internal political realities. Because politics runs through all organizations, you need to embrace, understand, and work your internal political system.

Understand how you are seen. Fair or unfair, first impressions are final impressions when advocating for your team. Are you putting yourself forward in ways that support the role and responsibilities you want for yourself and your team? Your reputation weighs greatly in whether the decision makers approve your initiatives.

Digging deeper into the nuances of first/final impressions, Amy Cuddy of Harvard Business School, Susan Fiske of Princeton, and Peter Glick of Lawrence University developed a model to delineate how we quickly judge others. All over the world, people judge others on two main qualities: warmth and competence. Are they friendly with good intentions? Do they have the ability to deliver on those intentions?

As human beings, we abhor cold, incompetent folks. Cuddy and her colleagues found that we respond with ambivalence to other personality blends. For example, warm and incompetent people elicit pity and benign neglect; competent but cold personality types foster envy and a desire to harm. Thus, warmth and competence are the winning combination.

Build successful patterns. Do you have a track record of successful projects? Goodwill, attention, and authority for future cool projects are granted to those who have a history of success. There is a reason why certain employees are granted oversight of departments that they seem to know nothing about: they likely have a track record of achievement that allows their board to use that past experience as their compass toward new ventures.

While we’d like all of our ideas and initiatives considered on the merits, data, and logic, that’s wishful thinking. We are still dealing with human beings, and that implies feelings, emotion, and, yes, some irrationality. Proceed accordingly.