We can be the most white-hot efficiency machine ever invented. Without the support or at least the acquiescence of other people, however, we'll hit a brick wall, which will potentially wreck our development – even sending us back to our ineffective worst.

So how do we enlist others in our pursuits? Two schools of thought quickly emerge. Oddly (for modern ears), the first involves conflict. We can force or coerce people. This looks like a highly effective route – so effective, in fact, that most of human history seems to have progressed through war, invasion and subjugation. Even as individuals, many still subscribe to this notion – not overtly, perhaps, but via competitive instincts that force us to think in terms of a win/lose paradigm. I win, ergo, you lose.

Indeed, the continued popularity of Sun-Tsu's Art of War is proof enough that many are still persuaded by this school. Sun-Tsu was a Chinese general writing around 2500 years ago, although for many his resonance is as strong as ever. He pervades modern day business thinking simply because so many ambitious men (yes, it's usually men) live either consciously or unconsciously by his code.

Niccolò Machiavelli is another hero of the conflict school of people management. His book The Prince at least gets us into the early-modern era (it was written in 1513), although is equally – err – Machiavellian.

In fact, The Prince can be summed up in one phrase: the end justifies the means. It's a handbook for power-desperate manipulators – conjuring the deceit, trickery and outright oppression required for success in the Florentine court, or any other workplace environment for that matter.

And modern writers continue the craze. One book in particular makes me cringe whenever I see it being read on the tube: The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene (written with Joost Elffers in 2000).

This is a fantastically successful book – not least because its laws all contain a nugget of truth. Indeed, that's the problem with all these books: they offer advice from the dark side that's not only true (at least in part), it's highly effective.

Just a brief look at some of Greene's laws illustrates the point:

• Don't trust allies, but learn how to use enemies. Out of envy, friends will betray you. So never hire friends – hire enemies. Forgive an enemy and they'll want to prove their loyalty.
• Conceal your intentions. If people don't know your goal, they cannot defend against you. Envelope your intentions in smoke.
• Take credit for others' work. Others have wisdom, knowledge and endeavour. Use it. But make sure you take the credit. No one will remember those who made your success possible.
• Make others come to you. Never act first. Never go to the other person's territory. Lure them, seduce them, draw them to you – then attack.
• Avoid losers. Emotions are infectious and the unfortunate sometimes draw misfortune towards them. Shun the poor, the unlucky, the unloved and the unhappy.
• Make people dependent on you. You must always be needed as it gives you the freedom to act. Keep others dependent – it keeps you in control.
• Pose as a friend to gather intelligence. You must know about your rival. So get them to reveal themselves by posing as a friend.
• Crush your enemy. When you fight, do not leave your enemy alive to fight another day. Annihilate them – not only in body but in spirit.
• Cultivate terror through unpredictability. Make people exhaust themselves trying to figure you out. In extreme cases, volatile changes of mood, temper or plan can empower you as a tyrant.
• Play the courtier. The courtier is adept at intrigue, manipulation, image, flattery and flirtation. The perfect courtier looks good and manages to assemble power without seeming to grasp.
• Keep your hands clean. You must seem a paragon of civility. So use someone else to do your dirty work. Then find someone else to take the blame.
• Deal the cards to control the game. Your victims should be your puppets. Seem to allow others some freedom of choice, but always invisibly control the boundaries.
• Learn what hurts and use it. Everyone has weaknesses, vulnerabilities, insecurities, needs or sensitivities. Learn them and exploit them. Inflict or relieve pain as serves your purpose.

Need I go on?

Of course, the veracity of the above statements makes them all the more depressing. Yet there's hope for those desperate to avoid such obnoxious tactics in their pursuit of productivity. When it comes to getting things done, the homilies of Sun-Tsu, Machiavelli and even Robert Greene contain one fatal flaw for their modern application. We have to vanquish our enemy, which is simply impractical in today's working environment. Murder is unacceptable (at least for the sane), which means our enemies are likely to stick around and potentially plot their revenge.

And this makes persuasion a far better option.

Persuasion is a survival tool

That said, persuasion also has its problems. In Persuasion (2005), renowned business coach David Lakhani unravels what he calls one of ‘mankind's survival tools’.

‘Good … persuasion involves understanding the true needs and desires of the person you are persuading’, says Lakhani, ‘understanding his or her criteria for action, and finally presenting information in a way that is congruent with his or her indicated desires.’

This is a long way from Sun-Tsu or Machiavelli. It's about ‘developing consensus through discussion’, says Lakhani. There are no dead bodies – quite the opposite. It's aimed at providing a good outcome for all parties – the fabled win-win of manage­­ment speak.

So where are the problems? In fact, there are two. First, we may not be in a position to persuade anyone of anything. Persuasion requires us to be on the inside of the decision-making process – or at least able to affect it – while we may in fact be an outsider, or a mere recipient of others' orders.

Second – and more importantly – persuasion still focuses on winning. Sure, we're now seeking a win-win, in which we persuade someone that what we offer is what they want. Except – in reality – we're not. We're focused on our own ‘win’ and using their ‘win’ as a means of achieving it. This could be manipulative because, in many cases, we'd happily jettison their win if we could achieve our win without it.

Seeing their win as the price for achieving our win (whatever language we use to describe it) renders persuasion, in my view, little better than an acceptable version of war, hence persuasion – for me – remains in the first school for enlisting others in our pursuits.

Winning influence

The second school involves something far less tangible than either war or persuasion, but something far more sustainable: influence. Of course, influence sounds like a mild or more tepid version of persuasion – but it's far deeper than that. Persuasion is a face-to-face negotiation: an exchange in which you're hoping for victory (perhaps by offering them something they want in exchange). Influence, meanwhile, is a side-by-side collaboration.

Influence makes you a fellow traveller on the same journey – with conjoined objectives. And that makes influence far more powerful than persuasion because you've immediately done something very effective for enlisting others: you've made achieving their pursuits your central aim.

Your objectives need to be aligned, of course. So you should search for those you want to influence on the basis of aligned objectives. Once found, however, it's their goals that matter. They're the important ones in your quest and, if not, you've simply chosen the wrong person to try to influence.

The great Dale Carnegie tackles this need in probably the most famous self-help book ever written – How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936). A crucial tenet running right through the book (what Carnegie calls his ‘big secret’) is the notion that ‘there is only one way … to get anybody to do anything. And that is by making the other person want to do it’.

This sounds like persuasion – and is – except there's one key difference. Carnegie has recognized the other person's fundamental wish to be appreciated. To feel important.

He writes that ‘the desire for a feeling of importance is one of the chief distinguishing differences between mankind and the animals’.

In fact, he states that it's the key difference that led humans to develop civilization. And while our other wants (such as food, shelter and sexual gratification) are usually fulfilled, it's our desire for importance that drives much of our adult behaviour because it's so hard to achieve – motivating us towards study, success, material acquisition and even criminality in its pursuit.

For Carnegie, someone's sense of importance is the most crucial piece of information we need to discover.

‘If you tell me how you get your feeling of importance, I'll tell you what you are’, says Carnegie. ‘That determines your character. That is the most significant thing about you.’

Making the other person feel important will give you enormous influence, says Carnegie. Of course, this isn't a million miles from Maslow's hierarchy of needs mentioned in Part One, although somewhat completes the picture: having worked out how our behaviour is dictated by needs (especially self-esteem), we can step through the mirror and calculate how others may be motivated. And how, therefore, we can influence them by aligning with those motivations – helping them achieve their goals.

Again, a key difference with persuasion comes into focus. With persuasion we're attempting to give them what we want them to have – by convincing them that they want it. With influence – we're finding out what they truly want, and are finding a way to help them get it, which also removes the notion that this may be manipulative.

Be liked

Understanding what drives others is only part of the story when it comes to exerting influence, however. You also have to be liked. Being liked is, indeed, powerful – not least because people will want to spend time with you. If you're not liked people will avoid you – and even become suspicious when you offer help.

Unsurprisingly, Carnegie also has some strong advice on how to be likeable.

He has six basic rules:

Be believed

Next comes credibility. Others can like us but they have to believe what we say for us to have influence. Again, Carnegie has plenty to say on this, (with some thoughts of my own):

• Avoid arguments. Arguments make other people defensive. Once in an argument, says Carnegie, you can't win because if you lose you lose and if you win, you also lose.
• Respect others' opinions. If you challenge their opinion they'll want to strike back. No matter what the provocation (and believe me I'm often provoked by others' opinions), their view should be respected.
• Admit when you're wrong. Making such an admission – quickly – can transform a situation. Far from thinking you're an idiot when you admit a mistake, it gives credibility to the remainder of your statements and encourages others to admit their own mistakes and weaknesses. Pride, meanwhile, turns us all into liars.
• Be friendly. No matter how angry you feel, you'll not win some­­one over with a hostile or negative approach. So you must suppress such feelings and exude friendliness and positivity – no matter how inwardly hostile you feel towards that person (a feeling you should try to suppress by actively trying to understand them).
• Get an early ‘yes’. A ‘no’ response, especially at the start, will mean they develop a ‘no’ frame of mind throughout the conversation. Evoking agreement in anything helps develop a ‘yes’ frame of mind that will help when the yes/no dichotomy becomes critical.
• Let them talk. Oddly, convincing others usually involves them doing the talking. This is especially true when trying to solve problems, as it means you can align your (brief) answers to their needs. In most cases – and with most problems – its unfettered airing is enough for a result to emerge (with you providing the answer simply by listening intently and empathetically).
• Make it their idea. That said, no matter how – in your view – the solution was generated, it's a good idea to let it be noted as their idea. Even if subconsciously, they'll notice this and come back to you when further advice is required (and it refutes at least one of Greene's 48 ‘laws’).
• See it from their point of view. You must put yourself in their shoes – fully and genuinely – to understand their needs. This will help see what motivates them, and how you can help them meet their objectives.
• Show sympathy to their wants. No matter if you disagree entirely with their premise, say ‘I don't blame you one iota for feeling as you do’.
• Appeal to the other person's nobler motives. People are idealists at heart, says Carnegie. They like to act out of good motives, even if these hide more selfish sentiments. The appeal, therefore, should be towards these higher motives – supporting the aims that help them feel good about themselves,
• Express your view dramatically. Some drama helps sell an idea, says Carnegie. Certainly, I find this true when selling PR concepts although, in the UK at least, there's a residual reserve that may cause raised eyebrows at overly theatrical demonstrations. In my view, what Carnegie's recognizing is the fact that emotions are powerful in decision-making, and dramatizing our views can help align emotional needs.

Gaining influence from below

Yet problems remain, of which the crucial one is the fact we may not be in a position to exert influence. We may be too lowly, or ignored, or out of favour. What then?

Well, if we feel powerless, we may first have to put power in its place. Anointed power may look omnipotent but it rarely is. Titles mean nothing because people that are disrespected or misuse their titles generate contempt rather than influence. Indeed, hiding behind a title in order to exert authority is almost certainly an expression of poor influence.

And this makes influence an egalitarian concept in the workplace. Important people can lack influence, while unimportant people can wield it.

So what makes the difference?

This is a conundrum attacked by that now familiar business-excellence pairing Perry McIntosh and Richard A. Luecke in Increase Your Influence at Work (2010). The building blocks of influence, they state, are ‘trustworthiness, reliability and assertiveness’, which have little to do with position.

Trustworthiness depends on how we're perceived, they claim. We should openly subordinate our goals to those of the organization and never betray secrets, no matter what the temptations. And we should not sugarcoat information, although we should never lie or exaggerate. In fact, we should try to discern – and stick to – the facts.

Perception also dominates reliability. We have to prove that we're dependable, not just state it. Being able to back-up what we say is important, so we must research subjects deeply before expressing an opinion. And we must focus on how things can be achieved, not on the barriers that prevent achievement.

Of course, it can take time for our efforts to be noticed, which is where assertiveness comes in. Certainly, we should not conceal our talents, denigrate our achievements or let others bully us into silence say McIntosh and Luecke. We should want to work with others, rather than on our own, and be eager to stand out. Shrinking violets will not gain the influence they deserve, they state.

Indeed, McIntosh and Luecke describe passivity as ‘a condition characterized by submissiveness and fear or unwillingness to stand up for one's needs and interests’, which will obviously harm our influence. That said, being overly aggressive can be equally destructive, especially with respect to colleagues either alongside or below us in the hierarchy.

We therefore need to find the Goldilocks scenario: neither too passive nor too aggressive. Yet this is a need that can leave subordinates confused, as well as frustrated. To overcome this McIntosh and Luecke suggest six supporting tactics that can help the junior gain influence (with some thoughts of my own):

Of course, none of this will generate influence overnight. Endurance is crucial – comforted by the fact that, given time and effort and resilience, we will become influential no matter what our station.

A cautionary note to end on, however. Although influence takes time to build, it can quickly collapse. Too bold a leap or too clumsy an execution, and we could find our influence whipped away – making it all the harder to rebuild having lost it. Having built influence, therefore, we need to nurture it – and guard it assiduously.