What if lives were saved or lost based on your ability (or lack of it) to influence people and events? How do you exert influence when the stakes are so high?

Pet Rescue Australia faces this challenge every day.

Tragically, 100 000 rescued dogs are put down every year in Australia. In an effort to make a difference, Pet Rescue set out to persuade more Australians to adopt rescued dogs. First they had to break down their biggest barrier: getting people to visit a shelter.

Their strategy was simple: ‘If we can't bring people to the rescued dogs, we'll bring the rescued dogs to the people.' How, though? Pet Rescue is a not-for-profit organisation with limited marketing budget and resources.

A perfect match

But they had a secret weapon. Japanese researcher and psychologist Sadahiko Nakajima has made a study of dog–owner resemblance. Nakajima's research shows that pet–human resemblance is empirically valid, a key reason being that some pet owners consciously or unconsciously choose dogs that look like them! Pet Rescue Australia used this insight to deploy their strategy.

They commissioned an app called Dog-A-Like. You download the app and upload a photo of yourself, and the app scans through all the photos of dogs in rescue shelters to find your perfect dog match.

Bingo! Dog-A-Like was an instant hit, becoming the number one app in the Australian iTunes store for a couple of weeks. Whether or not they were thinking of getting a dog, thousands of people started using it and uploading their ‘perfect match' images to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The result? A 36 per cent increase in dogs rehomed — that's more than 2200 dogs every month. It has been Australia's single most successful dog rehoming campaign to date, and that's nothing short of inspiring.

But influence is not all dancing unicorns, rainbows and adorable rehomed dogs.

The dark side

Just as the sun casts a shadow, influence has a dark side. It often earns a bad name because people mistakenly interpret it as manipulation, but manipulation is the flip side of influence. Too many books on influence focus on techniques best described as manipulative or exploitative.

Sixteenth-century diplomat and political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli, in his controversial but enduring political treatise The Prince, declared, ‘It is better to be feared than loved'.

Could that be true, then and now?

Machiavelli was a man of his times, and the city-states of 16th century Italy were snake pits of intrigue and deviousness where the powerful ruled through fear and by controlling information. But that was 500 years ago. Today the internet and social media have created unprecedented levels of transparency and accountability, right?

We all love stories of human endeavour, especially when the underdog beats the odds and triumphs over adversity. We admire heroes, invest in their success and learn from their wisdom. In a world overwhelmed by bad news, these inspiring stories offer rare beacons of hope. We are eager to believe.

A breach of trust

In 2013 wellness blogger Belle Gibson shared her personal story. She portrayed herself as a brave young Australian mother who had survived brain cancer and fought back, reinventing her life based on health and wellbeing.

She won a worldwide social media following through her Whole Pantry philosophy, released a bestselling app and scored a book deal with Penguin. Belle's journey and apparent transformation touched people's lives profoundly. She was an inspiration for cancer sufferers and ordinary people all over the world.

In March 2015 investigative journalists broke an even bigger story, alleging that the entire saga — from multiple cancers and heart surgery through heroic recovery — was a fabrication. When proof of the cancer was requested, none emerged. Claimed charitable donations from Gibson's app sales were unsubstantiated. Penguin and Apple pulled their support. Gibson's followers all over the world were left feeling angry and hurt. The fallout was ferocious.

We experience dishonesty and manipulation, whether personal or public, as a deep violation. They breach our trust by exploiting our empathy and compassion. We feel abused in the worst way, emotionally and sometimes monetarily too. The public backlash in the Belle Gibson case was fast and furious.

Sometimes we are fooled and victimised by master manipulators. In other contexts we are simply made to feel powerless.

Powerlessness — an influence vacuum

In both your professional and your personal life you will probably experience moments of powerlessness, when you feel you cannot even speak up, or be heard or listened to, let alone make an impact.

In 2009 we did some work on storytelling with a senior leadership team. It was one of our first experiences of a toxic management group.

The CEO snapped at anyone who spoke, talked over staff and publicly humiliated the team members, all of whom were direct reports. The CEO was obnoxious, aggressive and intimidating. You could have cut the atmosphere with a knife.

No one, apart from one woman leader, could stand up to this.

Since then that organisation has often been in the news for all the wrong reasons, hurtling through leadership crises and financial mismanagement scandals. Given the low levels of trust and high levels of toxicity emanating from the top, few people familiar with the company were surprised.

Viktor Frankl wrote in Man's Search for Meaning, ‘Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom'. We hope the individuals in that leadership team find the courage and power to leave the organisation.

Powerlessness is dangerous. It makes us shrink and focus only on ourselves. It makes people feel hopeless and, in the long term, can lead them to breakdown.

Manipulators — power for power's sake

Manipulators focus only on themselves and are driven by greed. They act opportunistically and their impact, while often devastating, is transient.

In his epic poem Paradise Lost, John Milton retells the biblical story of the Fall. The snake (Satan) manipulates Eve into eating the apple (forbidden knowledge). The snake uses a toxic blend of blasphemous flattery and falsehood, promising her that eating the fruit will make her as powerful as God.

Those rigid threats of death: ye shall not die: How should you? By the fruit? It gives you life to knowledge; by the threatener? Look on me, Me, who have touched and tasted; yet both live, and life more perfect have attained than Fate meant me, by venturing higher than my lot.

Eve is seduced into eating the apple, and Eve and Adam are banished from the Garden of Eden.

Watch out for the snakes that can infest the gardens of work and life. Some people set out to manipulate and damage others by their behaviour. They may seek only short-term advantage, but they can damage relationships and trust for ever. Such tactics cause stress and anxiety and create long-term negative outcomes.

Masters of influence

Influence power is like fire: you can cook with it, or burn down your neighbourhood. The issue is not fire itself, but how you choose to use it. When you set out to influence, you assume a power to change lives — and even the course of history. How you do this, and for what end, is what really matters.

Every day we face the choice of whether to influence for long-term good or to manipulate for short-term gain. The tools provided in this book focus on positive influence, not manipulation.

Dale Carnegie was a master of influence. Since he first published his blockbuster, How to Win Friends and Influence People, in 1936, more than 15 million copies have sold worldwide.

Can a book published 80 years ago still be relevant? Yes, it can. The book advocates integrity and champions enduring, timeless concepts. It is built on rock-solid foundations and speaks to a profound, universal truth: to positively influence others, you must first get along with people; otherwise success either will be transient or will elude you.

Carnegie's classic work is the quintessential guide to human relations. Power Play builds on his ideas, emphasising the importance of influence rather than manipulation.

Another source of inspiration is Influence: The psychology of persuasion, publishedin 1984 by Robert Cialdini, Regents' Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University, and particularly his Six Principles of Influence (also known as the Six Weapons of Influence).

Cialdini identified the six principles through experimental studies and by studying salespeople, fundraisers, recruiters, advertisers and marketers — people skilled in the art of influencing and persuading. His six principles are reciprocity, commitment, social proof, liking, authority and scarcity.

Depending on how they are deployed, these principles are powerful tools or potent weapons. So every day you have a choice: you can choose to influence with integrity. Remember, every time you influence the most important thing in the world is at stake — your reputation.

A good reputation takes time and effort to build, but only moments to destroy. Legendary investment genius Warren Buffett has declared, ‘We will not trade reputation for money'.

A new movement has formed around the concepts of conscious capitalism and conscious marketing. The ethos hinges on the idea of building purposeful, prosperous businesses that can at the same time make the planet a better place.

Here is the sacred contract I hope you will commit to. Use the ideas in this book to help you make the world a better place for everyone, not just for yourself. Choose wisely for positive change so as to inspire yourself and others. If you want to build a prosperous business with a purpose, this book will help you get there. If I have found inspiration in developing and sharing my ideas about influence, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants such as Dale Carnegie and Robert Cialdini. I invite you to do the same.