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For those times that need more systematic attempts to be influential and preliminary planning to help you determine what to offer that's attractive enough to gain cooperation, here are the parts of the model (Figure 2.1).

Figure 2.1 Summary of the Cohen-Bradford Model of Influence without Authority

Assume All – the Other Person or Group – Are Potential Allies

One major challenge to influencing the uncooperative is to keep the view that they eventually might cooperate. We tend to prematurely write such people off, concluding they are impossible.

Instead you must think that everyone you want to influence could, with work, be a potential ally. That frees you up to become curious about their world and to assess a potential alliance by discovering where there might be overlapping interests. The view that the other will always be an adversary prevents accurate understanding, creating misperceptions, stereotypes, and miscommunication, perhaps even a self-fulfilling prophecy. Furthermore, treating the other person as an enemy produces adversarial responses. This same mind-set of assuming the other person is a potential ally also applies to your manager; if you assume that managers are partners in the organization with subordinates, then it is also part of your responsibility, along with the manager, to figure out how to make the relationship mutually beneficial. (Chapter 9 explores in detail how to do that.)

Clarify Your Goals and Priorities

Knowing what you want from the potential ally isn't always easy. These dimensions affect your choice of how to proceed:

● What are your primary versus your secondary goals?

● Are they short-term or long-term objectives?

● Are they “must-haves” or “nice-to-haves” that can be negotiated?

● Is your priority to accomplish the task or to preserve (or improve) the relationship?

You need to think hard about your core objectives, so you won't get side tracked into pursuing secondary goals. Just what do you require, what are your priorities among several possibilities, what you are willing to trade to get the minimum you need? Do you want cooperation on a specific item, or would you settle for a better future relationship? Would a short-term victory be worth creating hard feelings, or is it more important to be able to come back to the person later?

Too often, the person desiring influence does not sort personal desires from what the job truly needs, thus creating confusion or resistance.

For example, if you are overly concerned about being right at all costs, humiliating the other person, or always having the last word, your personal concerns can become central and interfere with other more important organizational goals. Would you rather be right or effective?

Diagnose the Ally's World: Organizational Forces Likely to Shape Goals, Concerns, and Needs

The challenge here is to determine the organizational situation of potential allies that drives much of what they care about. These forces usually play an even greater role in shaping what is important to them than their personality. If for any reason you can't ask that person directly, examine the organizational forces that might shape goals, concerns, or needs. For example, how a person is measured and rewarded, the manager's and peer's expectations, where the person is in his or her career, and so on, have a powerful effect on what the person might want in exchange for cooperation, and what the costs would be for getting what you want.

This diagnostic activity helps overcome the tendency to blame bad personality, character, or motives for behavior that you do not like or understand, and can help you to see the person behind the role. Understanding the pressures that person is under can help you avoid “demonizing,” and start seeing a potential ally.

Identify Relevant Currencies (What Is Valued): The Ally's and Yours

We have named the things that people care about “currencies,” because that equates something of value you have that you can exchange for something valuable they have. Most people care about more than one thing (e.g., information, resources, prestige, money, being liked). If you can identify several applicable currencies, your range of possibilities to offer in exchange is wider (Table 2.2).

Table 2.2 Sources of Currencies

Assess Your Resources Relative to the Ally's Wants. It is not unlikely that your ally wants some things that you can't offer. Therefore, it is important to know what resources you command or have access to, so that you can use a currency that fits. Because many people underestimate their resources, they conclude that they are powerless. But a careful look at the many things you can do without a budget or formal permission – your alternative currencies – can reveal potential bargaining chips. Employees lose influence, for example, by failing to see the wide range of currencies they can offer their manager, such as getting work done on time, passing on important outside information, defending their manager, or alerting the manager to potential disasters.

Laying this process out explicitly can sound a bit cold and impersonal, like pure horse-trading, but in organizational life, influence is mostly for the superordinate goal of meeting organizational objectives, whether they are mentioned or just understood. As we have mentioned, if the exchange methods become (or are seen as) only about self-interest, and not mutual benefit for organizational good, suspicion and mistrust are aroused, rendering the efforts ineffective or negative. Furthermore, the relationship with the person you are trying to influence matters going in, during, and usually after the discussions.

Dealing with Relationships

This has two aspects: (1) What is your current relationship with that person – positive, neutral, or negative? (2) How does that person want to be related to?

If you have a prior relationship that is good, then it will be easier to ask for what you want without proving your good intentions. If, however, the relationship has a history of mistrust – whether for personal reasons or departmental conflicts – or if there has been no prior contact, proceed with caution. You will need to pay attention to building the requisite trust and credibility.

Each person has preferred ways of being related to. Some like a thorough analysis before you launch into discussion with them, while others would rather hear preliminary ideas and brainstorm. Some want to see alternatives, whereas others want only your final conclusion. 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.

Make Exchanges: Determine Your Approach

Once you have determined what goods or services can be exchanged, you are ready to offer what you have for what you want. Your approach will be shaped by:

● The attractiveness of your resources

● The ally's needs for what you have

● Your desire for what the ally has

● Your organization's unwritten rules about how people can express their wants and needs

● Your prior relationship with the potential ally and the preferred style of interaction

● Your willingness to take chances for what you want

This helps you plan an approach that has the best chance of being judged on its merits. There are four general options:

Can I show that what I want is also in your best interest?

For example, can you show that your boss's long-term interests are best served if you take a short-term assignment on a time-consuming task force so your area will have a voice on a critical issue and build relationships with two other departments that have not been fully cooperative?

Can I compensate by paying in another currency?

For example, you want a colleague's help on a critical market research study to validate your product idea that does not yet have a budget, so you offer an introduction to a senior executive he wants to work with in another division, with whom you happen to have a close relationship.

[These first two options are preferred when available, because they are more tangible and easier.]

Can I promise future payment?

For example, consider something like, “If you help me on this, I will owe you big time. Would you like to be on the team making the final presentation if we are successful?”

Can I draw upon past payments that I have made?

For example, when a respected colleague is reluctant to back a project proposal that needs support, gently remind him that you worked through two weekends last year to help him finish a client project by an “impossible” deadline.

We will discuss all of these issues in more detail later in this book, but for now it is important to understand that expectations of reciprocity are vital in gaining influence.

Outcomes of Exchange: Task and Relationship Are Both Important

In organizations, all influence attempts simultaneously contain both a task and a relationship component. There is the work at hand and the nature of the relationship; in addition, people seldom interact without past experiences or knowledge somehow shaping the discussion. (In fact, you don't need to have actually interacted with someone for your reputation from other interactions to be a factor in how the person will treat you.)

Furthermore, ideas about the future results for the relationship are likely also to affect the discussion. Ignoring the future risks winning the battle but losing the war. You can choose to ignore the history or the consequences of your exchange attempts on the relationship, but that could be a problem when dealing with the same party again, as you usually will in organizations.

Trust plays an important part in achieving influence. If other people consider you too calculating or interested in influence for personal benefit rather than organizational work, they will be wary, resist, or go underground to retaliate later. Thus influence in organizations over time goes to those genuinely interested in the welfare of others, those who make connections and often engage in mutually profitable exchanges. Machiavellian self-seeking behavior may work for a while, but eventually it creates enemies or lack of interest in helping, making the person who will do anything to win ineffective.

Because good relationships make it easier to gain cooperation, it pays to be generous and engage in win-win exchanges. You improve relationships by doing good work together, living up to promises, or just providing what the other party values. Making successful trades tends to make people feel better about one another.

Make Connections Early and Often

At times a poor relationship makes it almost impossible to get others to make task exchanges, even ones in their best interest. Then you must spend time rebuilding the relationship before doing any task work. To prevent this, find a way to make relationships before they are needed. Suppose you want a special analysis from a colleague to proceed with new product planning. If the relationship is strained, you may first need to relieve the strain and reestablish the relationship. This will ease the conversation about the information you need and aid in finding a basis for getting the help you want.

Finally, a discussion of what you want and the quality of the relationship is always concurrent. Pay attention to the process of discussion about exchange. Focusing only on the task outcome – getting your way – may not only harm future dealings but make you lose the deal.

When you make many relationships and create a positive reputation, your credit will be good, and you will have longer to pay back the help received. A good reputation is a form of saving for a rainy day, like making a goodwill deposit in a bank, so you can draw on it later. Try not to mortgage the future; you never know when you will need to call in your chips.

Exchanges Can Be Positive or Negative

As mentioned earlier, exchanges can be positive or negative. Positive ones take the form, “I do something beneficial for you and in turn you do something valuable for me.” But you can also exchange negatives for negatives: “I have little inclination to go out of my way for your requests since you won't do that for mine.” Negatives can be about impact on the organization, consequences for the other party, or something unfair.

Note two forms of negative exchange: (1) implicit or explicit threats of what you might do or what might happen because of the other person's responses, and (2) negative retaliation, in which both sides lose. Negative payback can feel unpleasant for both the sender and the receiver but can sometimes be necessary (as we will explore below) for positive exchanges to eventually occur. Lose-lose retaliatory exchanges are the least desirable, to be used only as a last resort.

You May Occasionally Need to Use Negative Exchanges

Even offers of positive exchange, however, implicitly contain a message about negative consequences if they are not accepted. If compliance will result in mutual benefit, there is always the underlying possibility that not complying will lead to negative results for both parties. You can make the consequences clear or leave them unsaid. “If you can loan me that chemical engineer, I can complete this essential project,” implies that failure to comply will stop the project and something valuable will be lost. Finally, you can use negative exchanges to gradually up the ante, making it increasingly undesirable not to cooperate.

Being overt about possible negative exchanges can be useful in moving things along, putting teeth into the request. It shows seriousness and can be a powerful way to impact others – if the threat is a real one the other person cares about.

While the threat of negative consequences is a less friendly way to make exchanges, it may be necessary in difficult situations. The mule may need a whack with a two-by-four to get its attention when no amount of coaxing will move it. When mentioning negative consequences, it is usually helpful to also hold out a carrot: “I don't want to have to resort to this; I would much prefer X, but if that can't occur, I will be forced to…” We say more about this in Chapter 7 on making exchanges.

A problem arises, however, when frustration with lack of cooperation – now or in the past – causes you to open with threats of negative exchanges from aggravation instead of careful diagnosis. People who feel stymied can move rapidly to negative ways of operating, relying on threats as a first resort rather than a distant last one. That may cause a negative reaction in itself, hindering any possible deal.

Have a Bias toward Positive Exchanges

Although negative exchanges can be powerful influencers, we encourage beginning with positive ones. Some people find it more difficult to get tough when necessary later, but we believe that a positive emphasis will expand the influence repertoires of most people.

As we have suggested, a negative approach may create its own form of reciprocity, with the other person feeling compelled to oppose you. You create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Threatened people often automatically start to fight fire with fire, increasing their resistance. The person becomes more difficult, reinforcing your negative opinion, which induces you to be tougher. The negativism escalates until each of you is irritated and unbending. Even worse, if you gain a reputation for the negative, some potential allies will be negative toward you before you do anything to them. The potential threat of your setting fires causes them to burn you first.

Another reason for accentuating the positive is that peers and superiors may be stronger, with at least as many resources for retaliation as you have, which heightens the potential dangers of a spitting contest. They may salivate at the chance to show who is tougher. Positive expectations, on the other hand, create an atmosphere making win-win outcomes more likely. Much of what transpires after you make a request depends on not only how well you speak to the person's needs but also how much the person trusts you – a product of your past actions and the extent to which the person views you as a good corporate citizen.

And don't forget the future. Since people often come back in other roles, assume the possibility of finding mutual objectives. Should the assumption later prove to be untrue, you can fall back on other strategies and assumptions.