In the past, as you have tried to influence your peers, your direct reports, and your bosses—selling them on a new idea, for example, suggesting a process change, requesting resources—you have probably noticed that you use different approaches for each. One of the first steps to take toward more successful influencing is to consider individual personalities, goals and objectives, and organizational roles.
Organizational leaders, managers, and different work units often describe various stakeholder groups as critical to their success. Each stakeholder has some particular interest in the outcome of decisions, the performance of work teams, a relationship to the organization, or any number of matters. Stakeholders often have their own agendas, perspectives, and priorities.
It’s not unusual for any of us to experience an ongoing struggle in learning how to influence different stakeholders. Sometimes you have to influence your boss, who occupies a more powerful position than you, or you have to influence a client whose main interest is its own satisfactory result. Sometimes you have to build partnerships with peers across organizational boundaries. And there is always the challenge of motivating direct reports. Providing specific rules for how to influence each of these groups is impossible because each leader’s situation is different. Some organizations create a collegial atmosphere with open communication and broad collaboration, while other organizations maintain a rigid hierarchy and focus on individual star performers. Does your boss give you the latitude to design and control your team’s work and schedule, or does your boss exert direct control? Do you and your peers work together on projects and share overlapping responsibilities, or do you interact indirectly and not often? Some of your direct reports may ask for guidance and detailed directions, while others prefer to work more independently.
Because of these shifting contexts and constituents, it’s important that you understand that influence works relationally. Your locus of influence ebbs and flows because as you influence others, your actions return to you and may influence your next action. If you use influence tactics as only transactional actions, you may be successful in expanding the borders of your function beyond where the organization has set them. But those borders will remain fragile without capitalizing on the trust born of relational encounters. When you base influence on mutuality and reciprocity, trust increases and can lead to sustainable change. Instead of simply increasing the scope of your managerial function, you increase the scope of your leadership role. That is the kind of increase that potentially leads to expanded organizational capacity by gaining commitment from others.
A manager we know supervises a team of four people. One weekend, he came into the office and moved everyone’s desk into a format that he thought would be more efficient. When his team came to work Monday morning, all four were really upset—so upset that he allowed them to move everything back to where it had been. Then he had them get together and give him a recommendation on how the office could be redone to make it more efficient. Interestingly enough, they came up with the same plan! So they moved the furniture back to where their supervisor had placed it. This time they felt comfortable with the change because it had been “their idea” and not a prescription from the boss.
In addition to considering stakeholder interests, you should consider the kind of power relationship you have with those you are attempting to influence. Two types of power relationships are especially relevant: personal power and positional power. Personal power refers to the level of trust, respect, and relational commitment you share with a particular stakeholder (think of the difference between a peer and a client relationship). Positional power refers to the organizational power given through title or specific responsibility (as noted above about influencing bosses).
The Influence Stakeholder Wheel on the next page can help you think about how your use of influence tactics can change, depending on the relationship, the agenda, and other factors among people you want to influence. As you examine the wheel, consider this question: How does your choice and use of influence tactics change around this wheel? The blank wheel lets you generate your own set of stakeholders.