Influence Without Authority: 5 Ways To Boost Your Persuasion Skill

Imagine being in this scenario: You are a project manager assigned to lead a cross-functional team of experts from different departments within your organization. The team members you are working with consist of senior-level team members with extensive experience in their respective areas. Additionally, some of these team members hold senior managerial positions.

You don’t have any formal or managerial authority over them, which means that you can’t make decisions for them. Your role is to facilitate the project, provide consultation and direction, and ensure everyone is aligned towards the common goal.

Does this sound like a scenario you’ve been in? Most professionals in the workplace have.

If you have struggled with leading cross-functional teams with senior leaders (like I have), this post is for you!

There are many strategies to use, but one of the most important is the ability to influence without authority over cross-functional teams. Your influence can mean the difference between project success or failure.

In this post, I’ll talk about the different tactics I’ve cultivated over the last 11 years of my career to help build my influence in an organization.

Authority vs. Influence

For most of my career, I have not held a position of authority. Despite this, I have been able to accomplish some amazing results such as: 

• Saving organizations millions of dollars by consulting them on process improvements
• Coached senior leaders to improve their problem-solving skills
• Created strategies for the C-suite level to deploy initiatives across a whole organization
• Lead the creation of innovative products to improve pediatric patient outcomes

I did this by developing and honing my skill to influence decision making in the workplace, which in turn has boosted my leadership skills.

Photo Cred: [Twitter]

Both authority and influence are associated with the ability to influence the behavior or decisions of others. But what’s the difference?

Authority is the power or right to give orders, mandate decisions, and enforce obedience. It’s a more formal and explicit form of power. It’s derived from a formal position or role within an organization such as a manager, supervisor, etc. Lastly, authority is often short-lived and tied to a specific position or period.

Influence on the other hand is the ability to affect opinions, behavior, and / or decisions of others without having direct authority over them. Influence comes from a variety of sources such as, expertise, charisma, reputation, and more which I’ll explain more below. Influence extends beyond just direct reports and reaches broader audiences, including peers, executive leaders, stakeholders, and customers. Influence doesn’t rely on rules, policies, or positions. Instead, it relies on one’s ability to persuade, negotiate, and leverage social dynamics.

It’s important to acknowledge that there is a great deal of power in being able to influence others. For the right reasons, it can help accomplish amazing things. For the wrong reasons, it can be manipulative and destroy trust and relationships. Please remember to use your power of influence to create positive changes.

Read more below to learn the tactics I use which you can adopt to increase your influencing power in the workplace.

1. Build your social capital
2. Show up with confidence
3. Practice emotional intelligence
4. Be a storyteller
5. Give your suggestions and recommendations

How To Influence Without Authority

1. Build Your Social Capital

The first strategy to building your influence without authority is building your social capital. Social capital is the ability to build relationships and networks in your community, whether that be the workplace, friend groups, in your family network, etc. The stronger the relationship you have with people in different communities, the greater potential to exert your influence.

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When coming into a new community, for example a new workplace or team, I prioritize building relationships with people. Just of note: I don’t build relationships with the sole intention of building my influencing capability. I genuinely want to build meaningful relationships with people.

I ask them questions, learn about their interests, passions, actively listen, etc. which helps to build the relationship. When relationships begin to form, an element of trust is also formed. As trust grows, so does influence.

Building up social capital in your communities expands your network creating, better working relationships, more collaboration, trust, etc.

Start joining different communities in your workplace. You’ll not only quickly build your network but also learn about different perspectives, flex your communication skills, and open yourself up to knowledge sharing with others.

2. Be Confident In Yourself

Confidence is a foundational trait for leaders who wish to exert their influence. I remember one of my mentors telling me that when I have a strong sense of self-assurance, belief in my own abilities, and trust in my decisions, that other’s will feel the same about me. This is why confidence is another core strategy for influencing others.

A great quote by Norman Vincent Peale is, “Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.”

Being confident bubbles down to a few core areas that you can practice learning. Here are the specific focus areas I have developed to build my confidence.

1. Being decisive: Trusting my technical knowledge, expertise, and intuition to make decisions quickly and effectively.
2. Practicing empathy: Being able to understand the needs of other’s.
3. Being Flexible: Adapting to ever-evolving circumstances, meeting people where they are, and inspiring others to do the same.
4. Having a clear vision: Being explicit with goals and objectives to show I am intentional, strategic, and clear about the direction to move in.
5. Admitting you’re not perfect: Be humble. Let people know you’re not always right and don’t have all the answers but are dedicated to continuously improving yourself and learning.

Putting in consistent effort to develop these focus areas has bolstered my leadership skills and success in my career. Building confidence in myself has also enabled me to thrive personally. I feel like I trust in myself more to make the right decisions and overcome challenges.

Reflect on the focus areas above and think about what you could improve upon. Better yet, ask a trusted peer or family member how to improve on the focus areas above and actively listen to their insight. You’ll show that you are dedicated to self-improvement (a trait of confident people  )

3. Build Emotional Intelligence

Learning about emotional intelligence skyrocketed my ability to influence decisions. Emotional intelligence or (EQ) is the ability to identify, comprehend, and manage one’s own and others’ emotions. Emotional intelligence is so powerful in fact that it can Make or Break Your Organization, according to an article by Entrepreneur Magazine.

For the first step in my EQ building journey, I developed self-awareness around my own emotions. The book Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves, was an awesome resource to learn about the concept and build self-awareness of my own emotions.

After reading the book, I could get a better handle on the emotions I was feeling in a difficult conversation or meeting and adjust my body language, tone, verbiage, and more to meet the outcomes I wanted.

The second step in my EQ journey was being able to recognize the emotions others were feeling in different interpersonal interactions. I could get a better sense if people were tense, feeling anxious, or feeling other uncomfortable emotions.

Once I (internally) put a label to their emotion I could better empathize with them and help to manage their emotions. This was especially useful in meetings and projects where there was disagreement between team members and myself or between team members.

Improving my emotional intelligence resulted in so many positive benefits. Here’s what I experienced with individual and group interactions: better and more effective communication, the ability to resolve conflict faster, developing more trusting and deeper relationships, and of course, being able to influence decisions.

If you haven’t already, I highly recommend checking out The book Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves.

Check out the short video below that gives a brief introduction into what emotional intelligence is:

4. Be A Good Storyteller

Another mentor once told me early in my career, if you want to be a successful leader, you need to be a good storyteller. Why? A good storyteller clearly articulate ideas, inspires people, and ignites curiosity. It’s also a foundational skill to being able to influence without authority. Here are some important elements I was coached on to be a good storyteller.

• Start by knowing your audience. Ask questions to yourself like: Who are they? What do they care most about? What are their interests? What may cause them to get distracted from the information I want to convey? This will help tailor your message to be more engaging and relevant to your audience.
• Make it personal. Sharing personal experiences will help to connect with your audience on an emotional level which can help them resonate with your message.
• Keep your message simple. Again, this comes back to knowing your audience. If you are throwing around jargon or topics that your audience is unfamiliar with, you will quickly lose their attention and engagement. I typically outline the message I am trying to convey ahead of time. If I’m going into a meeting, I use the Purpose, Process, Outcome method to prepare so that I build my message and talking points with my audience in mind.
• Incorporate different learning modalities. Recognize that people have different styles of communication they engage with. Good storytellers understand this and creatively use different modalities to convey their message There are 4 learning modalities: Visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile. See the diagram below from HelpfulProfessor to see examples of each modality.

• Use facts and data to strengthen your message. Good storytellers strategically reference  facts and data to create compelling messages and stories. Often times, it can be easier for people to hear quantitative and objective information like dollars, percents, rates, etc.

Good storytellers can convey a message in a way that resonates deeply with others. It can galvanize people and drive them to action.

The next time you lead a meeting, give a presentation, or engage in your next public speaking event, try incorporating the elements listed above. You’ll start to see your audience react more positively to your message and increase their engagement.

5. Be Comfortable Making Recommendations

A pivotal point in my career is when I became comfortable making recommendations and suggestions to higher level leadership vs just taking the backseat and being a “yes” person. I began to realize that my voice had weight and could influence decisions even among team members who were more senior than me.

I’ll admit that personally, this was one of the harder competencies for me to develop. But as hard as it was, I consistently worked with mentors and peers to normalize making recommendations as part of my professional role. Here are the three tactics I learned and practiced to become more comfortable making decisions.

1. Understand the problem, situation, or current state thoroughly: To do this effectively I would ensure that I collected relevant facts and data, did firsthand observation, and conducted extensive research on the topic. Additionally, I try to stay up to data on the latest trends and best practices to bring an outside perspective.
2. Label recommendations: When making suggestions and recommendations I start by saying “I think we should do this” or “here’s my recommendations on next steps based off the information I learned”, referencing the data I researched in the prior step.
3. Start small: It can be nerve-racking and uncomfortable to make recommendations, especially in the presence of senior leaders. I recommend (See what I did there ) starting with small, low-risk recommendations in smaller team settings first. Then, work your way up to larger and more complex ones.

Speaking up to give suggestions and recommendations shows that you are engaged and committed to the work. It’s a strong leadership quality that gets noticed and open’s doors to leadership and more senior opportunities in the workplace. Lastly, it’s a direct way to influence the people you work with.

Before attending a meeting where decision making will need to happen, consider a role play where you practice giving recommendations with trusted peers. Do they find the recommendation convincing? What questions are they asking you about your suggestions / recommendations? How can you strengthen your recommendation based off their feedback?

This will help you gain the confidence and experience you’ll need to feel more comfortable.

Conclusion

Influence is deeper rooted, is sustained for longer, develops trust, and builds relationships. Authority is typically shorter term, doesn’t build relationships, and reinforces traditional leadership hierarchies.

Remember, you don’t have to be a manager, supervisor, or in any other leadership position to exert your influence.

Develop your influencing capability by: Building your social capital, gaining confidence, building emotional intelligence, being a good storyteller, and getting comfortable making recommendations. They are highly valuable and necessary skills in the workplace. 

Finally, if you are not yet in a position of leadership but want to be, this skill will help you stand out and get noticed.