This chapter presents a helicopter view of the book, a perspective that reveals the sweeping landscape around and ahead of us, hovering briefly over each feature. Equipped with this overview, we will go on to land and explore each mode of influence in Part II.

How (so far)

Traditionally, influence has been about hard power (good old command and control), soft power (consulting, connecting, collaborating) and story power (inspiring through storytelling). These are what I call the ‘how (so far)' modes of influence.

Hard power

Hard power describes the kind of influence wielded through systems of command and control, coercion or the carrot-and-stick approach.

Martin Scorsese's 2013 movie The Wolf of Wall Streetshows stockbroker Jordan Belfort (the wolf of the title) ordering his salespeople to ‘get on the phone and don't hang up until the customer buys or dies'. This bullying and intimidation is hard power in its worst garb. It's definitely not the way to create long-lasting, sustainable influence.

We all have an instinctive understanding of pecking orders and hierarchies and other expressions of hard power.

Prestige power is one such expression. When I was growing up in India, family photos were rare. I have a small black-and-white photo of me, my mother, sister and family friends from the 1970s. We are standing in front of a car — unusual in itself, but in this case it was a Hindustan Ambassador, which was a huge status symbol then. Amusingly, the car wasn't even ours. But we understood the power of prestige, even if borrowed.

At work, hard power is expressed through status symbols such as the corner office, bureaucratic hierarchies and reporting structures.

As shown in the following chapter, hard power focuses on results and actions, but often rules through fear. The accepted view is that action and results need supervision, and people do what is required because the boss is watching. Generally the impact of this mode of power is only temporary. While the tiny despot in all of us does like to use hard power (hopefully only occasionally), in chapter 3 we will show you how hard power hurts you, other people and your chances of success as a power player.

Soft power

Soft power focuses on people, delivering results through attraction, cooperation, consultation and connection. The concepts of hard power and soft power were developed in the work of Harvard business professor Joseph Nye.

Nye applied these terms initially to diplomatic power and later to leadership. Of course the wisdom around soft power as an influence tool has always existed in our society. Consider this proverb: ‘It is easier to catch flies with honey than vinegar.'

Soft power builds relationships, encouraging cooperation, teamwork and collaboration. In chapter 4 we will explore this mode of power, when to use it and its limitations as an influence strategy.

Where hard power creates an impetus for action, soft power, if used well, sparks desire. What if you want to foster both?

Story power

While storytelling is as old as time itself, the business world has rediscovered its power as a contemporary tool through Steve Denning's seminal work. Business storytelling is purpose and results driven. Here's an example.

Two young goldfish were swimming along when they met an older fish, who said, ‘Morning, boys. How's the water?'

One of the young goldfish looked over at the other and said, ‘What the hell is water?'

The late, great David Foster Wallace, a brilliant American writer, shared the goldfish story in his commencement address to the 2005 graduating class of Kenyon College, Ohio. The story illustrates how the most obvious, ubiquitous and important realities are often those that are hardest to see and discuss.

It would be almost impossible to convey this point in an effective and memorable way except through a simple but powerful story.

Storytelling as an influence tool creates connections to you and your message, inspiring your audience and moving them to action.

Good stories spread through an organisation by way of repetition. They take time to craft, and they require a level of self-disclosure that makes some people uncomfortable.

With story power, your goal is to engage your audience, connect them with your message and create a ripple of inspiration.

Chapter 5 gives you tools to help you find, craft and share stories, and discusses some of the obstacles that can stop us from being compelling storytellers.

Hard power, soft power and story power aren't novel. So what is new? What is the latest iteration of influence and how can you use it to become a power player?

The new how

In chapters 6 to 14 we look at the following strategies: context power, empathy power, message power, love power, humour power, positioning power, fierce power, co-creation power and the power of cause leadership.

Note this is not the ‘Same old, same old' or ‘Do what everyone else is doing' section. These modes are the ‘new how' of power play. Some of the ideas will challenge you and may sometimes even feel a bit new agey. But they are all based on robust research and commercial smarts, and they all focus on a single agenda: to set you up for success as a power player.

Context power

Everything in life is about context. To be a successful influencer you have to be a master of your context. Like a Bollywood hero.

Bollywood heroes have many attributes: they're handsome and dashing, with a moral compass so finely tuned it would put most of us to shame. Above all they are masters of their context.

One moment you watch the hero judiciously deploying hard power by punching up the bad guy; the next he is dancing soulfully in the city square, using soft power to romance the woman he loves.

Tellingly, when he dances in the square everyone — passing students, shopkeepers, even homeless street people — knows the steps, and all dance soulfully in perfect synchronicity.

Caution: think twice about trying this in your city square!

In chapter 6 we explore the anatomy of context (the what, why, where and who) and how, by understanding this anatomy, we can become masters of context.

Exercising context power, you adapt to your circumstances rather than trying to force the situation to adapt to your every need. Does your situation call for hard power, soft power or story power?

The impact of context power can vary, but if you get it wrong, it can work against you.

The world witnessed a notable cringeworthy moment at the 1997 Oscars presentation when James Cameron, the director of the movie blockbuster Titanic, declared in his acceptance speech that he was ‘king of the world'.

The announcement provoked an instant backlash. While such musings might have been appropriate at home or in his own mind, the Oscars platform was the wrong context for such arrogance.

So while hard power rests on coercion, soft power on collaboration and story power on inspiration, context power is situational.

Empathy power

What sets you apart as a power player is a deep empathic understanding of your audience. By caring for your audience, you understand what drives them, which helps you create connection and initiate courageous action.

Sometimes the line between sympathy and empathy blurs. Empathy is not feeling sorry for a person or indulging their self-pity, but recognising their perspective sufficiently to help generate change through action. With empathy power, your focus is external, your attitude is one of courage and service, and the impact is change.

Chapter 7 discusses how we can grow our empathy through caring, connection and courage.

You may have come across a YouTube clip of this wonderful story, thought to have originated with the great David Ogilvy, who is often viewed as the father of modern advertising and market research.

Every day a young London copywriter walks past a blind beggar with a tin cup beside a sign that reads, ‘I'm blind. Please help'. The tin is always nearly empty.

One day the copywriter picks up the sign and writes something on the back. She has barely replaced the sign before passersby start to drop money into the tin.

When the copywriter stops by on her way home that evening the beggar, whose cup is now overflowing, asks, ‘What did you do to my sign?'

The young woman replies, ‘I wrote the same thing, but in different words'. She had changed the sign to read, ‘It's a beautiful day and I can't see it'.

The new approach won immediate empathy from his audience who, moved by emotion, emptied their pockets.

This is the power of empathy.

Message power

In Fascinate: Your 7 triggers to persuasion and captivation,author Sally Hogshead points out that our attention span 100 years ago was 20 minutes. Guess what the current figure is? We're now down to just nine seconds.

We've become lean, urgent scanning machines. And the habit is hardening as a survival tactic in a digital age that swamps us with information.

Today, more than ever, we must not underestimate the power of words.

The Jubilee Project, to raise support and awareness for the American Society for Deaf Children, poignantly demonstrated the power of words in a short video (also available on YouTube). The film shows a boy and a girl sitting at either end on a park bench. He flicks through a newspaper while she listens to music through her earphones as she does her crossword puzzle.

Over a few days they pass notes to each other and move closer. One of the boy's notes asks: ‘What are you listening to?' She eventually offers him her headphones, and it turns out to be the sound of silence.

She uses sign language to tell him she is deaf and he writes, ‘You're still beautiful'. The video concludes with this message: ‘Words have a strong impact on our daily lives. You have the power to speak encouragement or persecution over others'.

To master the power of influence you must build messages that grab attention, stand out in a crowded marketplace and deliver results. To achieve success, you craft your messages using skills and tools that help you create, confirm or challenge your audience's identity.

This might sound like a task for a talented copywriter or your marketing department, but it's an essential influence skill for all power players.

In chapter 8 we will outline easy ways to create message power, focusing on content that connects with people's identities and persuades them to take mutually productive action.

Love power

In 16th century Florence Niccolò Machiavelli advocated fear over love as an influence tool. Today, the pendulum has swung the other way, and most leaders and organisations realise they cannot and do not want to rule through fear.

The polar opposite of fear is love. We know love can move mountains and save children from burning buildings, but how can we channel love at work?

When we speak of love as an influence weapon, we define it as love for what we do (passion). Steve Jobs said, ‘The only way to do great work is to love what you do'. It is also love for the people we do it with (companionate love) and love for the people we do it for (our customers, clients . . . or patients).

In October 1982 a profoundly deaf Melbourne man, Graham Carrick, was able to hear for the first time in 17 years when a remarkable new invention, implanted in the shell-shaped cochlea in his inner ear, was switched on.

Since that world first, close to 200 000 people of all ages around the world have benefited from life-changing cochlear implant technology.

None of this remarkable story would have happened but for the vision, tenacity and perseverance of one man, the inventor of the cochlear implant, Professor Graeme Clark, who loved and believed in what he did, and who was driven by his own father's experience with hearing impairment.

‘I had much criticism and was referred to as “that clown Clark”, ' recalls Professor Clark. ‘But I was determined to persist and see it through, and I'm so pleased I did. I cannot imagine any technology that has had such a profound effect on transforming so many people's lives.'

Over 12 years he and a team of dedicated health professionals worked on a solution. Just as funding was about to dry up, with investors showing signs of pulling the plug, a simple collision of events triggered the breakthrough they needed.

Professor Clark was enjoying a much-deserved holiday at the beach, although his research was never far from his mind. He was playing with a sea shell (representing the human cochlea) and blades of grass (representing the electrode bundle he had concluded was needed to stimulate the auditory nerve in the hearing impaired), when it came to him. He bent the blade and inserted it into the sea shell. It was his eureka moment.

The chance convergence of shell and grass gave Professor Clark his breakthrough, and the hearing impaired a priceless gift — the gift of hearing. Welcome to the new world of influence.

In chapter 9 we demonstrate how focusing love on people — love bombing them with understanding and devotion — can create explosive results. Challenging — yes! Powerful — absolutely. You have to love that!

Humour power

In the Herald Sun article ‘Grin and share it', business culture expert Kyla Tustin notes that humour is an essential ingredient for positive organisational culture, in beating stress and increasing productivity.

Tustin's research indicates that people's brains are 31 per cent more productive when they are in a positive state. ‘Playfulness helps us perform better', she says.

But who would have thought that humour was a powerful tool for influence? Even if you think you aren't funny, or that it's not appropriate for business, in chapter 10 we'll show you how to bring humour into work (and it's not about telling jokes) in ways that are authentic to your style and compelling for your audience, and that will give you unprecedented results.

Positioning power

Often people set out to identify the influencers in their realm and then attempt to influence them. This is a robust way forward. But even better than trying to influence the influencers is becoming a mega influencer yourself. Position yourself in your organisation or industry as the expert who not only knows plenty but is known for having and sharing the knowledge.

In business, channeling influence by being a mega influencer translates through the power of positioning and profile.

A mega influencer is someone who amplifies their thinking by sharing it with the world through speaking, writing, profiling and positioning. Seth Godin, Marie Floreo and Jonathan Fields exemplify the power of positioning, which is sometimes called thought leadership. In their book Sell Your Thoughts, authors Matt Church, Peter Cook and Scott Stein describe what thought leaders do: ‘Our wish for the world is that you get to make the contribution that you were born to make. That you get to make a difference to thousands or even millions of people … you leave the world better than you found it.'

Chapter 11 gives you the tools you need to become a mega influencer by building your positioning and profile inside and outside your organisation for prosperity, profit and competitive advantage. And to do so with authenticity, integrity and longevity.

Fierce power

Can you influence not by doing what you do, but by being who you are?

In a society that fetishises doing, it's difficult to demonstrate that sometimes you can influence simply by being. Yet being who you are speaks volumes. It takes you back to your origins as a human being, rather than a human doing.

Now it may sound contradictory to point out what every parent knows: that our greatest power as role models for our children rests not on what we say but on what we do, or the example we set.

Here influencing by being starts to become more complicated. It also means you have to face your inner demons, which in turn means you must ask yourself, ‘Is being who I am enough?' For most of us, just being who we are drives all our insecurities to the surface. Are we enough?

Who you are is the mother lode of all influence. It is about fully owning and living your whole identity. Fiercely being you.

The foundation for this inner fierceness is your values. Building on a foundation of values creates robustness and sustainability. You express your values, creating congruence and connection through your behaviours.

But owning who you are takes both courage and humility. You want to do this elegantly … and for results.

When American actor Robin Williams died, tributes poured in from around the world. Among them was the following anecdote. Studio hands, occupying the lowest rank in the Hollywood pecking order, often get to see the true colours of the celebrities they encounter. On one occasion they were surveyed on who was the easiest star to work with and who was the hardest. Without exception they nominated Robin Williams as the easiest. He always made an effort to learn their names and to ask them about their day.

How can you fearlessly express who you are? Chapter 12 shares how you can channel fierce power through values, words and behaviour that make you a powerful role model.

Co-creation power

What would it look like if, instead of manoeuvring to influence those around you, you started to influence what the future might look like? What if you were to work shoulder-to-shoulder to shape and create this new future? This is the power of co-creation.

Co-creation harnesses your and your colleagues' capabilities and possibilities. Imagine what you could create together?

At its core, co-creation recognises that embracing greatness not only is possible but should absorb you every day as you live out the truth that you can build something that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Co-creation means elevating yourself and your associates, family and friends through focus and effort. It means embracing what people most want from work, which is meaning, purpose and recognition rather than money, status and other more obvious rewards. Co-creation creates power play — that moment when your influence takes that quantum leap forward.

At the same time you need to avoid the Pollyanna trap, believing co-creation can in itself resolve all issues. What if your interests are mutually exclusive to others? Co-creation happens when the two circles of your and your chosen collaborators' desires intersect.

Melbourne has a group of restaurants called Lentil as Anything (you just have to love that name). Founder Shanka Fernando believes that food is about community and trust, so the whole restaurant experience is co-created by the chefs, the waiting staff and the customers. The customers pay what they think the meal is worth.

The joy, and the success of the Lentil as Anything co-creation model, is that all parties in the equation receive what they most value.

Chapter 13 unlocks the secrets of co-creation to build a shared future, a future that represents a win for everyone.

Cause leadership

‘We don't ask you for free iPhones,' artist and pop star Taylor Swift wrote to tech giant Apple in an open letter titled ‘To Apple, Love Taylor'.

‘Please don't ask us to provide you with our music for no compensation.'

Taylor was publicly protesting the new music streaming service that Apple had launched with a three-month free trial during which artists would receive no compensation.

In a beautifully crafted letter, Taylor acknowledges her respect for Apple, but not on this call. Most importantly, she made her stand on behalf of young and new artists who could not afford the luxury of going unpaid for three months.

In an instant Taylor Swift became a cause leader. Less than a day after her public criticism the company reversed its decision.

Cause leadership is purposeful, giving people a reason to care and a way to get involved. It can centre on a one-off concern like Taylor Swift's, or represent a lifetime's dedication, such as the work of Indian activist Ela Bhatt, a Gandhian labour organiser who in 1971 founded the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) to protect textile workers.

Today Bhatt is a member of The Elders, a group convened by Nelson Mandela and made up of veteran leaders, organisers and human rights activists who contribute their wisdom, integrity and leadership to tackling some of the world's biggest challenges.

Chapter 14 shares how you can tap into people's heads and hearts, rallying them around a call to action for a cause.

Cause leadership is a call to arms not just around any cause, but around a cause that makes the world a better place. Cause leadership recognises that a brighter future is possible, no matter how grim the current situation, and that it is people who make the difference.

It's not easy or even necessary to turn everything into an opportunity for cause leadership. But if you are a power player seeking to create an impact that really touches people, in your world and the wider world, you will find you can achieve your greatest influence as a cause leader.

∗ ∗ ∗

During our helicopter tour we have hovered over each mode to get the lay of the land. In the chapters that follow we are going to touch down and explore each mode in more detail.