Review

‘Influencing without authority’ is a phrase most product managers will have heard and used, but few will tie it back to this book or the concepts within it. The key premise is that influence is based on reciprocity and value exchange. Practically, this means being a team player, building strong relationships and understanding what people value.

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Key Takeaways

The 20% that gave me 80% of the value.

Modern work is cross-functional, fast, and interdependent, so formal authority rarely suffices; to achieve great things you need to influence people you don't control. Influence rests on reciprocity: exchanges of value that let both sides win. You can reliably earn cooperation by understanding others' worlds, trading in currencies they value, and tending relationships so future exchanges get easier. Blame and heroic leadership myths impede progress; effectiveness grows when you assume good intent, focus on shared organisational goals, and measure success by both task outcomes and the quality of ongoing relationships.

The influence model has five moves that loop:

• Treat everyone as a potential ally
• Clarify your own goals and priorities
• Diagnose the other person's situation (measures, pressures, culture, stakeholders, history)
• Identify the currencies they value and those you can offer
• Relate to them in the way they prefer while executing give-and-take

Currencies span inspiration (vision, excellence, teaching, moral purpose), task (resources, challenge, assistance, organisational support, speed, information), position (recognition, visibility, reputation, insider access, importance, contacts), and relationship/personal (inclusion, listening, support, gratitude, ownership, identity fit, comfort). Negative currencies exist too. e.g., withholding support, public accountability, escalation - but are last-resort tools and should be paired with a path back to collaboration.

Diagnosis starts with situation before personality: how people are rewarded, what their bosses expect, their unit's culture, task demands, visibility and risk, interdependencies, and external constraints. Treat early impressions as hypotheses; listen for the language of value, ask non-accusatory questions, observe what draws attention or sparks concern, and check your read with those who work well with the person. Common barriers include attribution errors ("they're difficult"), confirmation bias, and avoidance that starves you of data; counter them by increasing contact and curiosity, by naming process issues ("let's be candid about how we're trading"), and by testing assumptions quickly and lightly.

Self-management is equally central. Know what you truly need versus what would be nice; separate task goals from ego goals; surface your own currencies and reluctances; and notice where you habitually overplay a style or tool. Many people own more tradable value than they realise - recognition, responsiveness, risk-reduction, access, synthesis, facilitation, follow-through - and much of it costs little to give. Influence failures often trace back to self-created barriers: writing people off, asking for too much at once, ignoring what matters to others, or refusing to pay in currencies you dislike but that are legitimate in the setting.

Relationships amplify influence. Good connections expand information, reduce suspicion, and lower the precision required in payback; poor ones increase burden of proof, distort perceptions of intent, and make even fair trades feel risky.

One practical lever is work-style fit:

• Focused on Problems | Focused on Achievement
• Divergent thinking | Convergent thinking
• Structure | Ambiguity
• Analysis, then action | Action before analysis
• Big picture | Details
• Logical/rational | Intuitive
• Seek risks | Avoid risks
• Respect authority | Discount authority
• Relationships first | Task first
• Seek conflict | Avoid conflict
• Competitive | Collaborative
• Own needs | Others' needs
• Like control | Let others control
• Optimistic | Pessimistic
• Working alone | Working with others

Friction emerges when styles polarise.To handle style differences, notice where clashes show up in the work. Then choose to:

1. Adapt your approach
2. Explicitly discuss the difference and co-design how to proceed
3. Restructure the work to reduce friction (e.g., separate ideation from execution)
4. Reserve confrontation/threat for last, and only with real leverage. Target behaviour, not personality labels—behaviour is easier to change.

Exchange strategies can range from straightforward trades when value is obvious, to framing cooperation as directly advancing the other side's goals, to uncovering hidden value (e.g., cycle-time, turnover, loyalty, bottleneck costs) to improve the case, to compensating the other's costs with different currencies.

Time also matters: build credit early through useful favours tied to real work; call in past debts for non-routine asks; or borrow on credit with future payback or collateral (e.g., early visibility, public support) when trust is thin. Avoid manipulative "deposit taking" by being explicit when appropriate and by foregrounding organisational benefit.

Choice of counterpart and venue is strategic. Map power and dependence and choose among mutual exchange, isolating a blocker, pleading and getting help when you lack leverage, or pleasantly ignoring low-power, low-dependence actors. Meet on their turf or neutral ground when trust is low; avoid cheap tactics; set clear time boxes.

Five dilemmas to manage (and how to choose):

• Escalate or back off? Start with the lightest pressure that could work; escalate in steps only if stonewalled (name the obligation → request commitment → signal withholding future help → make consequences visible). Use “heat” sparingly; public pressure or anger can backfire and should be last‑resort tools.
• Openness or partial truth? Don’t lie, and beware exaggeration/hoarding currencies—it erodes trust and creativity. Use “meta‑openness” to name the game (“I’d like us to be candid; I don’t want to be a sucker nor make you one”).
• Stick to plan or react in the moment? Plan deeply so you can abandon the script quickly; treat objections as clues to currencies and style; adapt in real time.
• Positive or negative exchange arguments? Lead with positives; reserve negative consequences for resistant actors and only when you have power and are willing to live with the relationship cost. Never threaten from a low‑power position.
• Stick to task or work the relationship? Choose based on animosity, interdependence, culture, and your/their comfort with directness (you may need to toggle: task → relationship → back to task).

Start at the right time and pace for them; monitor your hot buttons; after agreement, confirm details, surface second thoughts, and leave dignity on the table. Don't take the last nickel, look for win-win scenarios, and/or make it feel like your concessions were painful.

Societal expectations and implicit bias can distort how behaviour is read (e.g., role incongruence for women leaders), affecting airtime, risk tolerance from others, and credit attribution. Treat stereotypes as hypotheses to test; use enquiry to replace assumptions with data. Build confidence through action and visible wins; where useful, translate asks into organisational benefit to reduce stereotype backlash.

Managing up benefits from a partnership mindset. Your boss's effectiveness is partly your job.

Apply the five-step model to your boss:

• See them as a partner
• Clarify what you want
• Diagnose their world and pressures
• Inventory currencies you can pay (time savings, analysis, stakeholder alignment, risk reduction, clean execution, discretion, making them look good)
• Deliver the ask in their preferred style.

Three principles guide the pitch: link changes to their interests, tie your success to their results, and match their format and tone. For common issues - resistance to ideas, desire for more scope, aversion to partnership, error-prone directives, or leadership skill gaps - reframe requests around unit benefit, treat objections as currencies to pay, offer pilots and checkpoints, use cost-benefit language for process changes, and show respect for hierarchy while firmly debating means. Barriers include punitive tone, withholding information out of fear, self-focus that ignores constraints, and oscillation between over-compliance and reflexive defiance.

Cross-functional leadership hinges on winning commitment from people rewarded elsewhere. Clarify the charter and senior sponsorship; craft a compelling purpose; map each member's currencies and assign work that pays them; design participative processes that surface conflict constructively; and pick members who are credible in their home units. At a distance, compensate for thin cues by matching technology to task, over-clarifying goals and norms, tightening meeting hygiene, listening actively, and investing scarce face-to-face time in trust building.

Influencing whole groups or functions mirrors influencing individuals: avoid stereotyping, understand their incentives and language, clarify the outcome and minimum coalition you need, and decide whether to work the relationship or deliver early joint wins.

With difficult colleagues, balance "co-opetition" by helping others look good while protecting your own obligations; repair mistrust through direct enquiry and small, reliable exchanges; treat hard bargaining as a style you can match without personalising; and assume style clashes before malice when behaviour annoys. Leading major change requires a compelling vision anchored in customer or mission benefit, calibrated tension between current pain and feasible future, early stakeholder mapping, and patience and persistence to sequence exchanges across many actors.

Across contexts the discipline is the same: assume potential allies, clarify your aims, understand others' worlds, pay in the currencies they value, and protect relationships while getting work done. Build credit before you need it, check your ego, keep records clear, and develop a broad behavioural repertoire so you can meet people where they are. Start with honey, keep some vinegar in reserve, and design every tough moment so partnership remains possible tomorrow.

Deep Summary

Longer form notes, typically condensed, reworded and de-duplicated.

Chapter 1: Why Influence: What You Will Get From This Book

Why influencing without authority is more important now than ever?

So much work today is cross team, cross function, project oriented where the leader and the person accountable rarely has formal authority. If you do, and you use your formal authority, it doesn't tend to go well.

You need to influence your manager, people above you, those in other teams, other departments, other devisions.

You’ll never have enough authority, but you can enough influence to make things happen.

Few people can do anything significant alone.

Blame doesn’t help. We all win if this works, and we all lose if it doesn’t.

If you talk only to managers, they just say that all is fine.

Several individuals and groups are pursuing their own agendas. No one person or group has the correct answer and cannot be ordered to help. Collaboration is needed. Groups working at a distance can easily stereotype one another. Mistrust blocks open and honest communication, causing poor and costly decisions. Instead, careful listening and responsiveness are needed to regain sufficient openness to really understand the issues. The various parties must feel that they are gaining something they care about to get them to cooperate. Early successes lead to greater cooperation. Individual recognition has to come from accomplishment, not obvious self-promotion.

When you want to influence those you don't control, you will have to get to know them, figure out what they want, build reasonable trust so they will consider making exchanges, satisfy them, and slowly build cooperation. If you already have close relationships, mutual influence is a free-flowing byproduct that seems to happen naturally.

The model we developed is based on a universal principle of interaction social scientists call the Law of Reciprocity. It states that people expect to get “paid back for what they do for others.

Assume everyone is a potential ally. With this mindset, no matter how difficult the interaction might be, it is possible that the other may eventually help. With enough exploration, it is likely that almost everyone cares about something that you could offer in return for what you seek.

Clarify your goals and priorities. Be sure you know what you want, what is most important, and what you would settle for. Be specific; “good working relationship” is too general to be useful.

Diagnose the world of the other person. In organizational life, people care about many things including how they are measured and rewarded, what their boss expects, their unit's culture, the actual tasks they are assigned, and so on. Knowing what they care about helps in (tentatively) figuring out what you might offer.

Identify relevant currencies, theirs, yours. Since exchange is involved, currencies provide a useful metaphor for what someone values. Most people value many different currencies, and fortunately, most people wanting influence often have more currencies than they might think.

Dealing with relationships. This has two aspects: (a) how good (or strained) is the present relationship and (b) how does the other person want to be related to?

Influence through give and take. In this process you give something the other party values (a currency) in exchange for what you want. This can be done implicitly or explicitly, casually or formally, depending on the relationship, the organisation's culture, and both parties' personal preferences.

Use an influence model when faced with one or more of the following conditions: The other person is known to be resistant.

• You don't know the other person or group and are asking for something that might be costly.
• You have a poor relationship (or your group has a poor relationship with the other person's group).
• You might not get another chance.
• You have tried everything you can think of but the other person still refuses.

Barriers to Influence

External Barriers

• Power differential: Too great a hierarchical distance making contact difficult, though we often overestimate inaccessibility of those a few levels above us.
• Different goals: Personal and organisational objectives seem incompatible, though this may reflect not searching deep enough for common ground.
• Incompatible performance measures: Reward systems may give little latitude to respond to your requests.
• Rivalry and competition: Previous adversaries or competitors may resist cooperation, though even fierce competitors (like IBM and Microsoft) can find common ground on specific projects.

Internal Barriers

• Lack of knowledge: Many don't understand influence as exchange, focusing on what they value rather than what the other person values.
• Blinding attitudes: Believing others should just recognise truth, rapidly writing off resistant people, or backing off when you dislike what motivates them.
• Fear of reactions: Worry about making others angry, facing retaliation, or not being liked can paralyse action.
• Fear of failing: Concern about embarrassment or shame may make no attempt seem better than risking rejection or failure.

Core Premises

• Influence is about trades, exchanging something the other values in return for what you want.
• Relationships matter; the more good ones you have, the greater your odds of finding the right people to trade with and having some goodwill to help the trades along.
• To gain influence, it’s necessary but not sufficient to… know what you are doing, have reasonable plans, and be competent at the task at hand.
• Genuine care for the organisation's goals makes you more credible and trustworthy, keeps you from being seen as only in it for yourself, and prevents those whom you have influenced from ruining your reputation or seeking retaliation.
• Often your influence deficit comes from something you are doing-or failing to do.
• Just about everyone is potentially much more influential than they think they are.

Part 2: The Influence Model

Chapter 2: The Influence Model: Trading What They Want for What You’ve Got (Using Reciprocity and Exchange)

To have influence, you need resources that other people want to trade for what you want. This is the law of reciprocity. The belief that people should be paid back for what they do.

The law also works in reverse - when you make threats about what will happen in future.

Reciprocity is present in some form in most forms of influence behaviour:

• Rational Persuasion: Using logical arguments and evidence to convince someone.
• Inspirational appeal: Appealing to values or emotions to generate enthusiasm.
• Consultation: Involving others in planning to gain their support.
• Ingratiation: Using praise or friendly behaviour to create goodwill.
• Personal appeal: Asking for help based on friendship or loyalty.
• Forming a coalition: Building alliances to strengthen your position.
• Relentless Pressure: Using persistent demands or threats to push for compliance.

The Cohen-Bradford Influence without Authority Model

1. Assume All Are Potential Allies

Don't prematurely write people off as impossible to work with. View everyone as a potential ally, which frees you to explore overlapping interests rather than creating adversarial dynamics. This mindset applies to managers too, treat them as partners in figuring out mutually beneficial relationships.

2. Clarify Your Goals and Priorities

Be clear on what you actually need:

• Primary vs. secondary goals
• Short-term vs. long-term objectives
• "Must-haves" vs. "nice-to-haves" that can be negotiated
• Task accomplishment vs. relationship preservation

Avoid confusing personal desires (like being right or having the last word) with what the job truly needs—would you rather be right or effective?

3. Diagnose the Ally's World

Understand the organisational forces shaping what the other person cares about, these forces often matter more than personality. Consider how they're measured and rewarded, their manager's expectations, and where they are in their career. This helps you avoid "demonizing" and see the person behind the role.

4. Identify Relevant Currencies

"Currencies" are things people value that you can exchange. They come from three sources:

• Organisationally determined (expectations, norms, rewards)
• Job determined (performance measures, required work)
• Personally determined (preferred style, reputation)

Most people underestimate their resources and conclude they're powerless, but you likely have more "alternative currencies" than you think. Remember: if exchanges are seen as purely self-interested rather than for mutual organizational benefit, they backfire.

5. Deal with Relationships

Consider two aspects:

• Your current relationship quality (positive, neutral, or negative)
• How the person prefers to be related to (do they respond to analysis, co-creation, being presented with choices.

Be careful to avoid relating in your preferred style instead of the other person's. You will have more influence if you use an approach the other person finds comfortable.

If there's mistrust or no prior contact, proceed carefully and build trust first. Adapt to their preferred style (detailed analysis vs. brainstorming, alternatives vs. final conclusions) rather than using your own.

6. Influence through give and take (value exchange)

Your approach should depend on the attractiveness of your resources, the ally's needs, your desire for what they have, organisational norms, your relationship quality, and your willingness to take risks. Four general exchange options exist:

• Mutual interest: Show that what you want also benefits them.
• Alternative currency: Compensate by offering something else they value.
• Future payment: Promise to repay the favour later.
• Past credit: Draw upon favours you've previously provided.

When thinking about the outcomes of the exchange, think about both the task outcome and the relationship equally. Trust is essential, being seen as too calculating undermines future cooperation. Build relationships early and often, ideally before you need them. Good relationships create credit you can draw on later, whilst damaged ones may require repair before any task work can progress.

Positive exchanges work best (I do something beneficial for you, and in turn you do something valuable for me). Start with positive exchanges whenever possible. Negative approaches (threats, retaliation) may occasionally be necessary as a last resort, but they often trigger defensive responses and escalate conflict. Even when mentioning negative consequences, pair them with positive alternatives. People with reputations for negativity face resistance before they even make requests. Positive expectations create conditions for win-win outcomes and preserve future working relationships.

Self-Created Barriers to Influencing The most common ways that people block their own effectiveness at each stage:

• Not assuming the other person is at least a potential ally: Writing someone off as impossible to work with after being turned down creates a self-fulfilling prophecy where your negative assumptions get communicated and cause the person to close off.
• Not clarifying your goals and priorities: Overloading requests with too many desires or mixing personal needs (like recognition or winning) with organisational objectives makes people back away and reduces your chances of getting what's truly needed.
• Not diagnosing the ally's world: Failing to understand the organisational forces, measurements, and constraints that shape what the other person cares about leads to blindly bumping up against their real concerns instead of addressing them.
• Not determining the ally's currencies: Being so focused on your own goals that you ignore what the other person values means you "miss by a mile" and assume everyone likes what you like.
• Not accepting the ally's currencies: Understanding what someone cares about but rejecting it as undesirable (when it doesn't violate ethics) prevents you from making exchanges, since influence is about giving what they want, not changing what they want.
• Not assessing your resources relative to the ally's wants: The biggest mistake here is not recognising that you already have many currencies in abundance (recognition, appreciation, respect, understanding, help) that don't require anyone's permission to give.
• Not diagnosing your relationship with the potential ally: Ignoring the importance of trust and positive relationships, or being perceived as only self-interested or manipulative, makes it very difficult to get partners to take any risks in working together.
• Not figuring out how you want to make trades: Either being too transactional (making everything tit-for-tat) or presuming past goodwill should override current self-interest creates problems, as does failing to adapt your interaction style to the other person's preferences.

Chapter 3: Goods and services: The Currencies of Exchange

Inspiration-Related Currencies

• Vision: Portraying an exciting future vision and showing how cooperation helps achieve it
• Excellence: People want the opportunity to do high-quality work and take pride in it
• Mentoring/Teaching: Satisfaction from coaching others and helping them grow
• Moral/Ethical Correctness: Doing what's considered right, allowing people to feel good about themselves

Task-Related Currencies

• New Resources: Access to budget, people, space, or equipment
• Challenge/Learning: Opportunity to work on tough tasks that stretch abilities and provide growth
• Assistance: Help with tasks, relief from workload, or customised products/services
• Organisational Support: Public backing or behind-the-scenes help in selling projects
• Rapid Response: Quick turnaround on urgent requests
• Information: Knowledge about trends, customer concerns, strategy, insider news, or organisational happenings

Position-Related Currencies

• Recognition: Credit for contributions and accomplishments
• Visibility to Higher-Ups: Opportunities to perform for or be recognised by powerful people
• Reputation: Building or maintaining good standing in the organisation
• Insiderness: Being in the inner circle, close to important events and people
• Importance: Being acknowledged as an important player
• Contacts: Networking opportunities and introductions

Relationship-Related Currencies

• Inclusion/Personal Connection: Warmth, liking, and feeling of closeness
• Understanding/Listening/Sympathy: A sympathetic ear without judgment
• Personal Support: Thoughtful gestures during stress or vulnerability

Personal Currencies

• Gratitude: Thanks and appreciation for help provided
• Ownership/Involvement: Chance to control or contribute to something important
• Self-Concept: Actions consistent with personal values and identity
• Comfort: Protection from hassle, embarrassment, or disturbance

Negative Currencies

Negative currencies come in two forms:

1. Withholding payment of a known valuable currency (Not giving recognition, not offering support, not providing challenge, threatening to quit the situation)
2. Using directly undesirable currencies (Raising voice or yelling, refusing to cooperate when asked, escalating issue to common boss, going public with issue and making lack of cooperation visible, attacking person's reputation or integrity, making the relationship much worse)

Chapter 4: How to know what they want: Understanding their worlds better

People act the way they do mostly because of two forces: personality and situational context. Personality matters but is hard to read and hard to change. Situational forces usually dominate and are easier to diagnose, so start there if you want influence.

Contextual forces that shape behaviour (alongside personality)

• How the person is measured and rewarded.
• The expectations of their boss
• The expectations of their peers
• Organisation-wide culture and immediate unit culture.
• Nature of required tasks (repetitive vs. varied; accuracy vs. originality; initiator vs. responder; degree of external/internal interaction; risk/visibility; dependency on others; uncertainty).
• Career history (inside/outside moves, number of roles, perceived potential or plateau).
• Education/background.
• Major external forces (economy, competitors, legal/regulatory moves, job security/mobility climate).
• Environmental contacts (customers/clients, suppliers, regulators, top management, HQ, salesforce, factory floor, specialized equipment, media).
• Current worries/uncertainties and assumptions about how the world works (e.g., views on people, change, competition).

Use an Inquiry Map to form a working hypothesis about a stakeholder: write what you know about the above forces, rate your certainty, note the best sources to verify, and locate gaps…so you can target learning and test assumptions before you act.

How to gather the data (treat all findings as hypotheses)

• Listen to language for “currencies”: metaphors (war/sports vs. gardening), what they ask first (“who’s involved?”, “what’s in it for me?”, “mission fit?”).
• Attend to expressed concerns (“what I’d worry about is…”) and non-verbal cues (tone, pace, visible emotions).
• Scan visible signals (status tells, repeated school/company mentions).
• Ask colleagues who work well with the person: seek concrete behaviours, not gossip.
• Just ask directly with open, non-accusatory questions (“What pressures are you under? What keeps you up at night? How could I reduce that risk?”).
• Immerse when warranted (short stints inside their world) to internalise incentives and rhythms.
• Avoid stereotyping; use early insights only to continue the dialogue.

Barriers to acting on what you know

• Negative Attribution Cycle: frustration breeds avoidance, less data, harsher motives assigned, and accusatory tests that confirm resistance.
• Selective confirmation bias: once you have a hunch, you notice only confirming evidence and miss disconfirming cues.
• Distancing difficult people: you interact less with dissimilar or resistant stakeholders, starving yourself of the data needed to influence.
• Over-weighting personality: you label people (“jerk”), ignore situational drivers, and shut down options for exchange.
• Spiralling disengagement: hardened assumptions reduce contact; any confrontation becomes accusatory, “proving” your belief and closing the door.

Barriers to understanding others

• Preoccupation with your own goals so you fail to tune in.
• Attributing resistance to personality and demonising motives or intellect.
• Low familiarity with their world, so you fill gaps with assumptions.
• Not listening to their language, especially stated concerns.
• Not asking, because it threatens your preferred answer.
• Accusatory questions that trigger defensiveness.
• Avoiding the person because they’re hard to deal with.
• Leaping to conclusions from a single data point.
• Disapproving of their world instead of understanding how it shapes behaviour.

To influence, model the other side’s world. Map it, test it, and frame your asks in their valued currencies, especially the ones their situation pays for.

Chapter 5: You Have More to Offer Than You Think if You Know Your Goals, Priorities and Resources

Self-Awareness Checklist:

• What exactly are your task or project goals?
• Which goals are primary, and which can be set aside if necessary?
• What are your personal and career goals, and do they help or hinder task success?
• Are you using all available resources?
• Do you see the many potential currencies you can earn and have available to trade?
• Can you be collaborative or confrontational as needed?
• Are you willing to assert your legitimate claims for collection?
• Are you reluctant to use some currencies, even when they would work?
• Do you know what is stopping you?

Chapter 6: Building Effective Relationships: The Art of Finding and Developing Your Allies

Strong relationships are a catalyst for influence. Many organisations are full of “strangers” (different functions, backgrounds, incentives), you have to make connections to get complex work done.

Good relationships pay off. Communication is fuller; people take your word; you can repay favours more flexibly; personal currencies become usable.

Poor relationships do the opposite: they dampen willingness to be influenced, skew perceptions of motives and “currencies,” raise the burden of proof (on performance, promises, value, and timing), lower tolerance for ambiguity, and can trigger spite (“I’d rather fail than help them”).

After you diagnose what matters to the other party, consider the relationship itself: its current state and how they prefer to be related to. One of the most usable levers is work style, how each person likes to define problems, make decisions, and interact.

Different Work Styles (full list):

• Focused on Problems | Focused on Achievement
• Divergent thinking | Convergent thinking
• Structure | Ambiguity
• Analysis, then action | Action before analysis
• Big picture | Details
• Logical/rational | Intuitive
• Seek risks | Avoid risks
• Respect authority | Discount authority
• Relationships first | Task first
• Seek conflict | Avoid conflict
• Competitive | Collaborative
• Own needs | Others' needs
• Like control | Let others control
• Optimistic | Pessimistic
• Working alone | Working with others

Style preferences come from training, roles, culture, and personality. There’s no “right” style, but mismatches (e.g., a divergent ideator with a convergent closer) create friction unless surfaced and managed.

To handle style differences, start with self-reflection: identify your defaults, infer theirs, and notice where clashes show up in the work. Then choose to

1. Adapt your approach
2. Explicitly discuss the difference and co-design how to proceed
3. Restructure the work to reduce friction (e.g., separate ideation from execution)
4. Reserve confrontation/threat for last, and only with real leverage. Target behaviour, not personality labels—behaviour is easier to change.

When the relationship is bad, decide whether to start with the task or the relationship:

• Start with Task when: animosity is mild; the work can proceed despite tensions; success is likely to soften feelings; the culture discourages explicit “relationship talk”; the ally dislikes directness; or your style isn’t suited to a candid interpersonal reset; and when failure would hurt both sides.
• Start with Relationship when: animosity is strong and blocks work; even success won’t fix feelings; the culture supports frank discussion; the ally welcomes it; your style fits it; and the other side can shrug off task failure.

Additional cues: High interdependence and information flow needs push you toward addressing the relationship first; divisible work allows separation. Cultures vary in comfort with directness. People vary in skill and appetite for explicit discussion, and in fears (retaliation, embarrassment, being “the problem”).

Whatever path you choose, follow a sequence: diagnose situational causes (including your contribution); suspend demonising attributions; acknowledge the strained state; share intentions (“let’s make this workable”); listen for their “currencies” and pressures; then move into joint problem solving. Make specific behavioural agreements, not vague pledges, and plan how to handle inevitable lapses, often the second conversation is what changes things.

Common self‑traps (avoid these):

• Waiting to build relationships until a crisis hits.
• Assuming “people like that” can’t be reached, so never trying.
• Bottling frustrations until an outburst poisons the relationship.
• Slipping back into negative motives (“they’re selfish/evil”) instead of asking what pressures or overloads they face.

You don’t need intimacy; you need sufficient trust and fit to trade value. Knowing the other’s world and meeting them in their work style, or widening your own repertoire to match turns reluctant counterparts into workable allies.

Chapter 7: Strategies for Making Mutually Profitable Trades

Exchanges work best when you aim for two wins: achieve the task and strengthen (or at least preserve) the relationship. Plan carefully, then stay adaptable and authentic.

Trading strategies and when to use them

• Straightforward (free‑market) trades: You each have something the other wants; values are roughly equal; there’s at least neutral trust. Use when benefits are obvious and the “price” feels fair on both sides.
• Frame cooperation as helping their goals: Show how saying “yes” advances their priorities (their currencies). Use when interests align but the link isn’t self‑evident.
• Uncover hidden value: Surface non‑obvious benefits (e.g., faster cycle time, lower turnover costs, inventory carrying costs, loyalty, bottleneck relief). Use when a standard business case looks thin.
• Compensate for costs: Acknowledge their burdens and offset them with other currencies (time, help, access, visibility, flexibility). Use when you can’t show upside but can lower their downside.
• Make hidden costs visible (tactic): Briefly show what refusal or delay costs you/the org and what you’ve already invested—so “exchange rates” feel fair.

Using the time value of currency (credit, debt, promise)

• Build credit now: Do useful favours tied to real work to “deposit” goodwill before you need it. Be explicit when appropriate and keep the organisation’s interest front and centre to avoid sleaze.
• Call in past debts: Signal that this ask is non‑routine and merits reciprocation; adapt your language to the culture’s directness.
• Borrow on credit (deferred payment/collateral): Promise specific or open‑ended payback later; offer “security” (public support, inclusion, early visibility) if trust is thin.

Other strategic considerations

• Who to engage (and how much):
• Centrality/power: What resources/opinion do they control? How much can they help/hurt?
• Effort/credits needed: Do you share history? Can you access their preferred currencies?
• Alternatives: Who can influence them indirectly? Can you neutralise or work around?

• Where to meet: Prefer their turf or neutral ground (conference room, lunch) when trust is low; avoid manipulative settings; set clear time expectations.

Five dilemmas to manage (and how to choose)

• Escalate or back off? Start with the lightest pressure that could work; escalate in steps only if stonewalled (name the obligation → request commitment → signal withholding future help → make consequences visible). Use “heat” sparingly; public pressure or anger can backfire and should be last‑resort tools.
• Openness or partial truth? Don’t lie, and beware exaggeration/hoarding currencies—it erodes trust and creativity. Use “meta‑openness” to name the game (“I’d like us to be candid; I don’t want to be a sucker nor make you one”).
• Stick to plan or react in the moment? Plan deeply so you can abandon the script quickly; treat objections as clues to currencies and style; adapt in real time.
• Positive or negative exchange arguments? Lead with positives; reserve negative consequences for resistant actors and only when you have power and are willing to live with the relationship cost. Never threaten from a low‑power position.
• Stick to task or work the relationship? Choose based on animosity, interdependence, culture, and your/their comfort with directness (you may need to toggle: task → relationship → back to task).

Starting and stopping the exchange process

• When to start: Time your approach to their cycle and pace (early vs. compressed decisions). Accommodate how they like to absorb information (hallway preview vs. memo vs. sit‑down).
• During: Monitor your own hot buttons; don’t attack the person; take time‑outs before saying things you can’t retract. Be willing to slow down, re‑diagnose, or re‑sequence asks.
• After: Confirm shared memory of the agreement, nail specifics (who/what/when), surface second thoughts (“buyer’s remorse”), and tend the relationship so the next trade is easier. Leave them dignity—don’t take the “last nickel.”

I've been able to perpetuate what my dad started... He always told me that in any negotiation to let the other guy feel he won. Don't take the last nickel from the table. Brian Roberts

Self‑traps (avoid these)

• Not doing your homework on what they actually value.
• Ignoring new evidence in the moment because you’re wedded to your plan.
• Insisting on your solution instead of getting the problem solved.
• Bluffing: especially from a low‑power position.
• Fearing pushback so much that you never use the full range of exchange tools (including measured escalation).
• “Winning” this round at the expense of a relationship you’ll need tomorrow.
• Building credit in ways that feel manipulative (cures: be explicit when appropriate; prioritise organisational good).
• Underselling your own costs (“no trouble”) then resenting the thin payback.

Part 3: Practical Applications of Influence

Chapter 8: Gender and Influence: Beyond Stereotypes

Gender shapes influence because it shapes expectations. It’s a social construct that assigns “masculine” (agentic) and “feminine” (communal) traits and, through quick categorisation, fuels implicit bias and role incongruence (e.g., “think manager, think male”). Those snap judgments can distort how people read intent, evaluate competence, and allocate airtime or credit. The first discipline is to treat stereotypes as hypotheses to test, not truths: slow down, notice your assumptions, and use inquiry to replace guesswork with data.

Apply the Influence‑Without‑Authority model with a gender lens. Start by diagnosing the other person’s world (measures, rewards, pressures, culture) and treat everyone as a potential ally. Map currencies they value and adapt your approach and work style accordingly; don’t assume “one right way.” Because relationships are often a high‑value currency, invest early: clarify how each party prefers to work, when to be direct versus diplomatic, and whether to address the task first or the relationship. Context matters: power differences and being the “only one” in a room change norms and raise the bar for preparation, framing, and venue (their turf or neutral ground often helps).

Communication choices carry extra weight under gendered expectations. Use meta‑communication (“name the game”) to set norms for candor and collaboration without inviting a win‑lose test of wills. When behaviour crosses lines, respond in ways that preserve dignity and standards: choose timing (private vs. public), be specific about impact and expectations, and separate the person from the position. Hold both connection and accountability: strong relationships do not preclude tough feedback.

Manage the self‑side. Gendered socialisation can amplify stereotype threat, self‑doubt, or reluctance to ask on one’s own behalf (while finding it easier to advocate for others). Build confidence through action: rack up small wins, make your contributions visible, convert favours into explicit exchanges, and practice asking for what you need in clear, organisational terms. Guard against giving up too much to “keep the peace”; balance relationship care with principled pushback when it matters.

Finally, reduce bias structurally where you can. Strip identity cues from evaluations (the “blind audition” lesson), monitor interruptions and credit attribution, normalise feedback across genders, and track outcomes (promotions, pay, high‑visibility assignments). Curiosity, explicit process, and thoughtful exchange—not assumptions—are the levers that let you navigate gender dynamics and increase your influence.

Chapter 9: Influencing Your Boss

Manage up like a junior partner: prioritise the organisation’s success, leverage complementary strengths, tolerate foibles, and assume missteps come from constraints or misinformation, not malice. Your boss’s effectiveness is part of your job because of three realities:

• Your boss has only half the information; only you know what clarity you need and what you’re seeing on the ground.
• Work is too complex for any boss to anticipate everything; they’re juggling many styles and pressures.
• You hold unique skills, expertise and insight into how you’re managed; excellence requires your active contribution.

How to Influence Your Boss:

1. See the boss as a potential ally/partner.
2. Clarify your goals and priorities.
3. Diagnose the boss’s world (measures, pressures, stakeholders, style).
4. Inventory currencies you can trade (time, analysis, risk‑reduction, access, credit, implementation help).
5. Relate the way the boss prefers (format, timing, cadence, tone).

Influence strategy (3 principles):

• Link to their interest: Show how the change helps the boss achieve goals/ROI.
• Tie your success to theirs: Explain how your effectiveness and satisfaction raise their results.
• Match their style: Deliver the ask in the language, evidence, and tempo they prefer.

Problems / Answers:

• Boss resists my ideas. Prove you're on their side; present benefits and costs; treat objections as currencies to pay. Reduce their workload: bring a worked-through plan, stakeholder support, and implementation steps. If "we want initiative" conflicts with pushback, ask non-accusatorially, "How can I shape ideas you can back?"
• I want more scope/challenge/autonomy. Reframe to what helps the boss/unit; surface specific concerns (risk, readiness, visibility). Trade for concerns: propose pilots, checkpoints, staged authority; request clear criteria for "ready."
• Boss rejects partnership. Act like a partner without permission: anticipate needs, do avoided but valuable tasks, build credit. Use business language (brief cost-benefit of current vs. improved information flow) rather than "feelings."
• Boss is often wrong; I'm seen as insubordinate. Align on goals, debate means; signal respect for authority while naming risks and offering safer routes. Keep tone loyal ("protecting you from pitfalls"), not oppositional; avoid adding to their overload.
• I want to help develop my boss. Tie suggestions to valued currencies (often time): agendas, facilitation, crisp follow-ups, clearer requests. Offer help first, then feedback; plan → do → review cycles that speed decisions and model better practice.

Barriers to implementation:

• Critical or punishing tone that “teaches the boss a lesson” instead of helping them win.
• Withholding crucial info out of fear or “not my job.”
• Self‑focus that ignores the boss’s constraints and currencies.
• Over‑compliance/people‑pleasing that hides what they need to hear.
• Trying to show up the boss rather than help them look good.
• Defaulting to independence (“their problem”) or counter‑dependence (reflexive pushback) instead of interdependence.

Chapter 10: Working Cross-Functionally: Leading and Influencing A Team, Task Force, Or Committee

The core challenge is gaining genuine commitment from team members whose primary loyalty, rewards, and evaluation come from their home departments rather than the cross-functional team. Members face divided loyalties, with committees typically requiring 70:30 home-to-team commitment, matrix teams 50:50, and task forces needing 70% commitment to the team itself.

Key strategies for building commitment:

• Understand individual currencies: Learn what each member values: challenge, visibility, learning, networking and allocate work accordingly.
• Clarify the charter: Ensure the team's mandate is clear, exciting, and has senior backing before starting work.
• Create an inspiring vision: Members need to believe the work makes a real difference and has meaningful outcomes.
• Enable participation: Move toward collective decision-making on major issues, legitimise constructive conflict, and ensure all voices are heard.
• Select wisely: Choose respected members who think beyond their own areas and can help sell recommendations later.

The fundamental approach is trading valuable benefits for commitment: linking individual goals with team objectives through the currencies each member cares about.

Chapter 11: Influencing Organisational Groups, Departments, and Divisions

The core principle: trade valuable "currencies" that matter to each group to gain their commitment.Influencing organisational groups requires a parallel approach to influencing individuals, built on four key steps:

Avoid stereotypes and seek alliance. Don't demonise other groups; instead, view them as potential allies even amid competition. You don't need to be friends, but you must respect their work and understand that role differences create different perspectives.

Understand their world. Learn what they value, how they're rewarded, and what pressures they face. Consider their work nature, educational backgrounds, language, and professional currencies. For example, finance values measurability and precision, while HR prioritises soft skills and people care. However, always verify assumptions individually to avoid stereotyping.

Clarify your goals. Determine whether you need full compliance or partial buy-in, whether you're prioritising task completion or relationship improvement, and whether behaviour change or attitude shift matters most. Narrower requests and pilot projects typically succeed more easily.

Address relationship dynamics. Recognise mutual stereotyping exists. Choose whether to discuss relationship issues directly (when trust exists) or build trust gradually through small collaborative tasks.

Chapter 12: Can You Hear Me: Influencing at a Distance

Language and cultural differences can cause serious misunderstandings in cross-cultural management.

Remote influence has become critical, driven by multiple sites, mergers, geographical dispersion, remote work, and global time zones. Distance work succeeds when team members already know each other, have trust, share goals, are comfortable with technology, and feel valued.

However, remote settings lack nonverbal cues and informal interactions that build relationships naturally. This makes it harder to understand others' worlds, identify potential allies, and build trust.

Leaders can compensate through five approaches: using appropriate technology, clarifying goals, improving meeting processes, practicing attentive communication, and maximising face-to-face time. Technology helps but isn't a cure-all, video conferencing works well for structured agendas and small groups, while phones suffice only for brief meetings.

Chapter 13: Influencing Difficult Colleagues

Everyone at work depends on colleagues to complete their work. Modern organisations require cross-departmental collaboration due to complex, interdependent tasks. While earlier chapters addressed problematic collegial relationships, some colleagues are particularly difficult to influence. Exchange and reciprocity remain central to gaining their cooperation.

Friendly Competitors: "Co-Opetition": The challenge is balancing dependence on peers with competition for resources, attention, rewards, and promotions. Even flat, collaborative organisations have resource limitations. Simultaneously, peers need each other's information, expertise, resources, and support. You must balance meeting your own needs with responding to others' requests. Acting too competitively creates resentment and retaliation; being too selfless leads to failure in meeting obligations. The art is being "more collaborative and helpful than everyone else": competing without being competitive. This requires authenticity and creating win-win outcomes. Help colleagues look good automatically; research shows that people making daily exchanges had higher status and productivity.

Overcoming Mistrust. Address mistrust directly by asking what bothers them and listening carefully without defensiveness. Acknowledge past events, admit mistakes, and show vulnerability to build reciprocal openness. Ask questions about their interests and challenges. Demonstrate trustworthiness by taking the first risk: offer pilot projects, be accommodating, or provide information upfront.

Dealing with Hard Bargainers. Don't take tough bargaining personally; depersonalise it as a sport. Match their style if toughness is valued. Tough bargainers often respect opponents who hold their ground. Use humour to deflect attacks and ease tension. Don't concede too quickly: let them feel they've extracted every concession.

Treat Everybody as a Long-Term Customer. Frame requests in terms of others' interests, not yours. Consider colleagues as people you could lose. Your stake in their success builds credit and enhances your reputation.

Dealing with Annoying Behaviour: Often, bothersome behaviour reflects work style differences rather than personality conflicts. Examine your own expectations and contributions to the problem. Recognise reciprocal patterns where your behaviour triggers theirs. Test this pattern with them directly or admit what irritates you and ask if you're provoking it. Offer exchanges and use self-deprecating humour. Distinguish job-related disagreements from style issues: the former are easier to address through currencies and exchanges. Success requires mutuality and avoiding self-protective behaviours that spoil relationship-building.

Chapter 14: Initiating or Leading Major Change

Major change requires influencing multiple stakeholders across and above your position to secure resources, support, and approval. Success demands patience, persistence, and flexibility while managing organizational politics and building a committed team.

Key Principles for Leading Change

Vision: Develop a compelling vision showing how change benefits customers or the organisation. Vision attracts support and provides meaning, though different stakeholders need different "currencies."

Create moderate tension between current state and desired future. Too much tension paralyses; too little fails to motivate. Start with quantifying problems, then show feasible solutions.

Identify Stakeholders: Map all stakeholders early. Prioritise those you must influence versus those who'd be nice to win over. Understand what currencies each values through observation, their stated concerns, and their situational pressures.

Chapter 15: Understanding and Overcoming Organisational Politics

The Two Types of Organisational Politics:

• Self-oriented politics: Underhanded behaviour solely benefiting individuals through duplicity, false rumours, and manipulation.
• Structural politics: Natural pursuit of legitimate interests arising from organisational design, where different groups have different goals and power dynamics.

Key Principles

• Politics are inevitable and necessary: organisations create informal power structures that complement formal hierarchies.
• Don't be "above" politics: avoiding them means giving away power.
• Play hard but fair: navigate politics without descending into nasty behaviour.
• Know the game you're in: understand your organisation's culture around conflict and pursuing departmental interests.

Practical Actions

• Ask veterans about unspoken rules and the "ten commandments" of how things really work.
• Diagnose stakeholders by understanding their pressures, measurements, history, and what they value.
• Frame requests to emphasise benefits relevant to each stakeholder's interests.
• Know yourself: clarify your objectives, values, and boundaries before navigating complex trade-offs.

Chapter 16: Hardball: Escalating to Tougher Strategies When You Can No Longer Catch Flies with Honey

Lead with win-win; future relationships matter. When positives fail and stakes are high, use negative exchange (implied costs) tied to organisational goals - don't personalise.

When to get tough: no currency match, chronic nonresponse, one-way reciprocity, or threats to performance/ethics.

How to escalate: raise costs gradually - offer benefits first, then warn; set deadlines; document; copy stakeholders; withhold discretionary help; involve higher authority. Always leave a cooperative off-ramp.

With bosses: respect hierarchy while asserting your remit; align on goals, debate means; guarantee outcomes contingent on latitude; leverage reputation, information, and options; ultimate step: be willing to walk.

Against dirty play: bring issues into daylight; confront succinctly (ideally with witnesses); use controlled anger if needed; avoid smear campaigns; prefer credible threats before action.

Influence vs manipulation: tailoring language, selective disclosure, and favourable framing are acceptable; lying about intentions/costs/benefits, faking care, or promising payments you won't make is manipulation.

Safeguards: anchor asks in customer/company benefit; warn before acting; keep records; build allies and "go-to-hell" money.

Self-traps to avoid: backing off too soon; retaliating in kind; refusing ever to use negative tools; using them without a path back to partnership.