Influencing Up

Preface

This began as a book about managing your boss. Although we had addressed this topic in Influence without Authority, we discovered that more and more organizational members were struggling with this issue. Some still complained about overcontrolling, micromanaging bosses who gave them far too little latitude, yet many others were concerned about distant bosses—often located far away—whose attention they could barely get and who seemed not to care about them. From dealing with “toxic witches” to “elusive withholders,” many asked our advice about what to do. The writing for this edition was under way when our editor at John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Richard Narramore, asked us to consider the possibility of widening the scope of the book to deal with influencing other powerful, senior people, whether at the top of one’s own organization or in another organization as potential customer or client, business partner, or vital stakeholder.

We soon saw that even in situations where the powerful person or group to be influenced was less accessible, our core concepts of reciprocity/exchange and treating the powerful as potential partners could ameliorate the negative impacts of great power differentials between the powerful and less powerful. Partnership might be tougher to implement when the powerful don’t know you exist—or care to—but it is still a useful mind-set for transforming relationships. Power differentials harm both the powerful and the less powerful, yet influence always involves ...