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Influence without Authority

Published by O'Reilly Media, Inc.

How to get things done beyond the org chart

Course Outcomes:

  • Diagnose the currencies that colleagues, stakeholders, and executives value, using the five categories of the Cohen-Bradford exchange model: inspiration, task, position, relationship, and personal
  • Map the stakeholders of a real initiative on a need-versus-relationship grid, and prioritize where to invest credibility-building effort before the ask
  • Structure and propose mutually beneficial exchanges that convert resisters into allies, including peers, skeptical senior leaders, and overloaded partner teams
  • Build a personal 30-day influence plan for one current initiative, including how to influence up and how to recover when the answer is no

Course description

At some point in your career, you’ll be responsible for an outcome that depends on people who don’t report to you. You’ll need the platform team to prioritize your migration, the design lead to lend you a resource, or the VP two levels up to bless your proposal. Your title won’t help you, and neither will the org chart. What will help you is influence; and influence is a learnable skill.

Spend two hours with Anjuan Simmons to learn why a traditional hierarchical structure no longer runs modern companies, how to diagnose what the people you need to persuade value, and how to structure exchanges that turn skeptics into allies. The frameworks draw on decades of research on reciprocity, persuasion, and organizational behavior, but every exercise uses one real situation from your own work. You’ll run an authority audit, profile the currency of the person whose cooperation you most need, map your stakeholder landscape, and leave with a 30-day influence plan you can start executing the next morning.

This live event is for you because...

  • You’re an individual contributor or senior engineer driving an initiative that needs cooperation from other teams, such as a migration, a standards rollout, or a platform change.
  • You’re a project, program, or product manager accountable for delivery with no direct reports on the teams doing the work.
  • You’re a new or aspiring manager who’s discovered that a title guarantees attendance at your meetings, not enthusiasm for your ideas.
  • You’re a staff-plus engineer, architect, or tech lead whose job is to influence across organizational boundaries.
  • You work in a matrixed, flat, or cross-functional organization and need support from bosses, peers, partner teams, vendors, or clients you don’t control.

Prerequisites

  • Come with one real, current situation where you need something from someone who doesn’t have to give it to you; write down the outcome you need and the name of the person who controls it
  • Download the course worksheets from the Resource downloads widget before the session starts

Recommended follow-up:

Schedule

The time frames are only estimates and may vary according to how the class is progressing.

The authority illusion (30 minutes)

  • Presentation: Course roadmap and the anchor question—“What do I need, and who has it?”; why titles stopped working; the shift from hierarchy-led to project-led organizations; the difference between compliance and commitment in individual performance
  • Group discussion: Think of the most influential person you’ve worked with who had no formal power over you—what specifically did they do that made you want to help them?
  • Hands-on exercise: List the three outcomes you’re currently accountable for and mark which ones you could actually mandate
  • Q&A

The currency exchange (30 minutes)

  • Presentation: The Cohen-Bradford exchange model and the law of reciprocity; the five currency families people value at work; how to diagnose someone’s currency from their calendar, their complaints, and what they brag about
  • Group discussion: Recall a time your pitch failed even though your idea was good— which currency were you paying in, and which currency did your audience actually accept?
  • Hands-on exercise: Using your real situation, profile the one person whose cooperation you need most—what pressures that person is under, what success looks like for them this quarter, and which of the five currencies they would trade for
  • Q&A
  • Break

Building influence capital (30 minutes)

  • Presentation: Credibility and trust as the reserve currency of influence; the three deposits that compound fastest—demonstrated expertise, ruthless reliability, and generosity
  • Group discussion: Who do you contact only when you need something, and what has that cost you?
  • Hands-on exercise: Chart three to five stakeholders for your real initiative on a two-axis grid (need versus relationship strength), identify the highest need and weakest relationship gap, and script one concrete deposit you can make this week, asking nothing in return
  • Q&A

Influence under pressure (25 minutes)

  • Presentation: Making the request and handling the hard cases; how to frame a proposal in the other person’s currency, anchor it to their goals, and make the exchange explicit without making it transactional; what to do when the answer is no—distinguishing a rejected proposal from a rejected relationship; why negative exchanges (escalation, withholding) almost always cost more than they buy
  • Group discussion: What’s the most common reason your requests get declined?; What would you do differently on your next ask?
  • Hands-on exercise: Draft a short plan for your real situation—the outcome you need, the key stakeholder and their currency, one deposit you’ll make in week one, and the exchange you’ll propose in week three
  • Q&A

Wrap-up and Q&A (5 minutes)

Your Instructor

Anjuan Simmons

Anjuan Simmons has led software development teams for over two decades, shipping features that customers love while also managing healthy teams. He’s delivered software for large global management consulting companies like Accenture and Deloitte as well as several startups. Anjuan’s approach to leading teams combines the rigor of large corporations with the scrappy style of new ventures. He’s also an energetic and informative speaker who presents at conferences, universities, and corporations around the world on topics including leadership, diversity and inclusion, and effective software development practices. Anjuan has an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and an MBA from Texas A&M University.

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Skills covered

  • Talent Management
  • Team Management