Influence without authority
Influencing without authority is the ability to have an effect on how others act or think without having any power or right over them.
When thinking about your approach to influencing someone you need to think about how many Degrees of seperation they are from you. The approach and time it takes to successfully influence someone is correlated to how far away they are from you in the organization.
Lastly, you also need to be open to having your opinion changed. Keep in mind Strong opinions weakly held.
How to influence
Atlassian has three influence plays they have created to help guide the product management team.
Psychologist
With this approach, you seek to understand the motivations and context of the people you are trying to influence.
To apply this approach:
- Understand context and motivation - Understand what their goals and success are. Discover a common vocab to talk about the situation and solutions.
- Confirm your understanding - Playback your understanding of the situation.
- Trade-offs or optimizations - Decide on the trade-offs or optimizations to your ask that need to be made based on your new understanding.
- Iterate on the ask - Use the shared vocab and understanding to reword your ask. Focus on how your ask can help them achieve their goals.
Pitcher
This is a variation of Constantly Repeat Yourself. With this approach, you are constantly trying new and different ways of communicating your ideas. It's generally used with your immediate team not 2nd or 3rd Degrees of seperation.
It's important to talk about your ideas early, keep it informal, and ask for feedback.
Some different ways you can use this approach:
- Brand your concept
- Whiteboard and collaborate with your team on a problem
Activist
This is a variation of evagenlizing or more specifically Product leaders are evangelists first. This approach is useful when you are aiming to create shifts amongst many people. You leverage stories and data to shift people's opinion.
Some different ways you can use this approach:
- Tell a story -
- Work with folks from every level of the organization -
- Demonstrate passion
- Be patient -