Persuasion and Influence: Your Guide to Success at Work

“The key to successful leadership is influence, not authority.”

– Ken Blanchard

The Trouble With Having No Influence

Is it hard to convince coworkers to follow your lead? Do top managers ignore your ideas? 

If it’s arduous work to get your team to execute assigned tasks, you’re missing an important leadership skill: the ability to persuade and influence others to do what you want. 

Most of the work we do today is done in groups. You may need to acquire resources to execute a project, but lack formal authority to demand them. This means you’ll need to persuade people–perhaps in other departments or with more seniority–to help you. Yet exerting influence without authority is a challenge for many executives. 

If you can’t get your point across, It’s a problem that can put the success of your projects and your own career advancement in jeopardy.

When You Can’t Influence Others

If you can’t master persuasion and influence, you struggle to: 

• Understand and successfully navigate office politics

• Deliver a logical, spirited, and emotional argument that persuades others to your point of view

• Influence direct reports, peers, and supervisors to take the actions you want

We call these the three P’s: Politics, Persuasion, and Principles of influence. 

If you’re not an effective advocate, you rarely have the resources–the team, budget, outside experts, time you need–to succeed. Executives who lack influence may be branded as not caring about their work, as they don’t project authority in a winning way. 

When you can’t ask for and get what you need as a leader, you rarely stand out. Meanwhile, managers who’re more able to persuade others to help them get noticed.

Read Harvard Business Review article How to Increase Your Influence at Work by Rebecca Knight

What are Persuasion and Influence?

Persuasion is the ability to make a convincing argument and win others over to your position. You’re able to get people to adopt your point of view, whether you’re speaking in person or virtually, emailing, or giving a presentation.

Influence is the art of using social psychology to motivate others to take specific, desired actions. Influencers don’t have to beg or repeatedly ask people to do what they want–people are eager to help because of their high regard for the influencer.

How many ways are there to influence people?

Watch The Brainfluence podcast–Robert Cialdini Explains the Seven Principles of Influence

Who Needs to Master Persuasion and Influence?

Managers at every level–and workers who hope to move up and become managers–need strong persuasion and influence skills to successfully manage teams, move their initiatives forward, and complete projects on time. 

How Persuasion and Influence Skills Open Doors

These abilities super-charge your career. You impress managers, attract high exposure opportunities and find yourself fast-tracked for promotion.

Without strong persuasion and influence skills, trying to advance in your organization is difficult and exhausting. Management sees you struggling to build a team or get peers to help you execute a project, and concludes you’re not a good candidate for promotion.

Meanwhile, those with strong persuasion and influence abilities seem to glide effortlessly up the corporate ladder.  They are able to profile their work, get colleagues promoted, attract talent, assignments and resources. It’s often easy for C-Suite and other senior managers to exert influence simply because of their role. It’s a bigger challenge for team members or leaders who may lack a managers’ authority.