How People Without Formal Power Gain Influence

**Alison Beard** (0:01)
Southern New Hampshire University is an accredited institution with over 80 online graduate degree programs. That means you get the flexibility you need, the credibility you expect, and career-focused courses you can count on. Visit snhu.edu/idea.
I'm Alison Beard.

**Pamela Meyer** (0:33)
I'm Adi Ignatius, and this is the HBR IdeaCast.

**Alison Beard** (0:44)
Adi, I don't know if you've noticed this, but because of the way we work today, a lot of us are often leading people we don't have direct authority over. That's true whether you're working cross-functionally with clients or outside vendors, when you're trying to manage up.

**Pamela Meyer** (0:57)
When you're trying to manage your podcast co-host.

**Alison Beard** (1:00)
Yeah, that too. It is very hard. And so today we're going to talk about the rising importance of indirect influence to persuade people to buy into your ideas, marshal resources, succeed in your work, and advance in your career.
Our guest argues that it's one of the most important skills to develop.

**Pamela Meyer** (1:18)
All right, consider me influenced. Tell me what to do.

**Alison Beard** (1:21)
Well, she argues that it starts with listening and observing. It's about recognizing the informal networks, emotional dynamics, and hidden decision makers that exist inside every organization and among external stakeholders and knowing how to work with them rather than against them. And she's going to share some of the best ways to go about that. Pamela Meyer is the founder and CEO of Calibrate. She wrote the book, How to Read the Room, The Art and Science of Social Observation, and the HBR article, Five Ways to Weald Influence When You Lack Authority. Here's our conversation.
So why is indirect influence so much more important now than it was in the past?

**Pamela Meyer** (2:04)
Well, one of the reasons is that we don't live in a hierarchical world anymore. In fact, in most organizations, authority is really distributed. And so we need to learn ways to work ourselves around an organization, have influence, but not at the same time cause what we call reactants. So what we find oftentimes is when someone tries to influence someone and they put pressure on them, it almost always threatens their autonomy.
And when their autonomy is threatened, they pull back, they have reactants, and they're not able to be influenced. And so now what we really need to do is teach people a sort of artful way to make their way through much more complicated organizations with much more complicated people, with different ages and different generations at different levels of seniority and find ways to match their path to the person that they're actually trying to influence.

**Alison Beard** (2:54)
Yeah.
And we do hear so much about how important it is to be authentic and transparent. But what psychologically is going on that just telling someone what you would like them to do or what you think they should do doesn't work when you're not their boss?

**Pamela Meyer** (3:14)
You know, it actually goes back to social determination theory, which is a very stable theory of psychology developed in the 80s. And it's a theory of motivation. Human beings have three very profound needs that they express in the workplace. One of those needs is for competence. One of those needs is for relatedness. And one of those needs, which is really profound, is for autonomy. We really need to feel that we have agency. And what happens with influence and what happens with reactance is that it takes away our sense of autonomy.
So what happens? People start distorting the way they express it in the room.
You know, somebody, for example, who you've probably seen this many times in an organization, you can't get them to do what you want. You just keep asking them. Oftentimes, those people are declared, oh, they have executive function issues. No, that's not what's happening usually. It's usually a bid for autonomy. They just don't want to be told what to do.
And so oftentimes, what we need to do is think through psychologically when we're asking somebody to do something for us or we're trying to get something done, we're trying to steer a group. What are the needs that each of these people have and how can I satisfy that so that I can actually provide them with a sense that they are actually making the decision themselves?

**Alison Beard** (4:28)
So you talk about five paths to indirect influence, and the first is figuring out who might not be at the top of the org chart but still has hidden power. So how do you get better at spotting those people?

**Pamela Meyer** (4:45)
I call these people the influence spotters. The bad influence spotters, the one who looks at job titles and says, OK, that person has influence. The good influence spotter walks in the room, they pause, they look around, they've done a lot of research on who's who ahead of time.