Politics and influence
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8 min read
Key findings
An influence attempt ends in resistance, compliance or commitment, and quiet resistance often looks like agreement in the meeting.
A budget holder moves when the problem is priced in numbers they already report, such as overtime or missed dispatch slots.
Rational persuasion, consultation, inspirational appeal and collaboration are the four tactics Yukl found most effective.
Agreement without action usually means the cost was never stated or the first step had no owner, date or budget line.
Engagement scores and external benchmarks move budget holders least, because they describe the problem in HR's vocabulary instead of the leader's.
Influencing without authority is the work of getting people who report elsewhere to act on a recommendation.
For an HR adviser, that person is usually a budget holder with targets of their own.
It works when the request is priced in the leader's own numbers, the first step has an owner and a date, and the adviser offers something the leader already wants.
The usual failure comes after a meeting that went well.
The operations director agreed with the analysis, thanked the HR business partner for the work, and then the programme never appeared in the budget.
What Influencing Without Authority Means
Peter Block defines a consultant as anyone with some influence over a person or group but no direct power to make changes or implement programmes.
He puts every support function in that position, because it has direct authority over little beyond its own time, its own staff and the service it offers.
An HR business partner, a talent lead or an L&D head works under that condition every week.
The business owns the budget and the headcount, and HR owns neither.
Gary Yukl's classification separates three outcomes of any attempt to influence someone.
Resistance. The person opposes the request openly or quietly
Compliance. The person does what is required, with minimal effort
Commitment. The person endorses the request and puts sustained effort behind it
Resistance includes the quiet form, where someone agrees in the meeting and then puts roadblocks in the way of the work.
For an adviser, that quiet form is the most common result and the hardest to see at the time.
A recommendation that needs money, a manager's time or a change in how a leader runs the team needs commitment, because compliance stops as soon as nobody is checking.
The Budget Holder's Position
The leader across the table is measured on something other than the adviser's recommendation.
A plant director is measured on output, cost per unit and safety incidents.
A sales director is measured on revenue, margin and forecast accuracy.
Any request from HR competes with those targets for the same money and the same management time.
This is why a good argument about capability often produces polite agreement and no budget line.
The leader accepted the diagnosis and never accepted the cost, because nobody stated the cost in a form the leader could weigh against the targets.
Evidence That Moves A Budget Holder
A budget holder moves when the problem is priced in the numbers they already report.
Take an HR business partner supporting the operations director of a warehousing business.
Twelve of the forty shift managers left in the past year, and each vacancy stayed open for about ten weeks.
The partner wants money for a first-line manager programme.
The operations director reports pick rates, overtime cost and missed dispatch slots, so the case uses those three numbers.
Overtime hours spent covering the twelve vacancies, taken from the payroll data
Dispatch slots missed in weeks when a shift ran without its own manager
Agency cost for cover, taken from the purchase ledger
The programme is then priced against the cost the business is already paying for the problem.
Every figure comes from a system finance already trusts, so the case survives the budget review.
Three further kinds of evidence carry weight with a budget holder.
A comparison with another unit in the same business that solved the problem
A named risk, such as a key account or a regulatory audit, with a date
A small first step the leader can stop after one quarter
Engagement scores and external benchmarks move budget holders least, because they describe the problem in HR's vocabulary instead of the leader's.
A fuller treatment of the money side sits in building a business case for a people programme.
Tactics That Build Commitment
Yukl lists eleven proactive influence tactics and identifies four as the most effective and most widely used.
Rational persuasion. Logical argument and factual evidence that the proposal is feasible and relevant
Consultation. Asking the person to improve the plan or help design it
Inspirational appeal. Connecting the request to the person's values and ideals
Collaboration. Offering resources or help if the person carries out the request
The seven supplementary tactics are apprising, ingratiation, exchange, personal appeal, legitimating, pressure and coalition.
Rational persuasion is the tactic HR advisers reach for first, and its effect depends on the adviser's standing.
Andrew DuBrin notes that credibility makes the person arguing more convincing and adds to the power others see in them.
An adviser whose last three recommendations were delivered on time gets a hearing that a new adviser with a better argument does not.
Consultation is underused in HR work.
A leader who has redesigned part of the proposal owns that part, and defends it in the budget round.
Collaboration is the tactic an HR function is best placed to offer, because it controls things the leader needs, such as recruiter time, assessment capacity and design support.
Pressure and legitimating work against an adviser.
Citing policy or a group directive may win compliance for one cycle, and the leader remembers it at the next request.
Close every meeting by naming the first action, its owner, the date and the budget line it comes from.
Expressive And Receptive Behaviour
Kim Barnes divides direct influence into two families of behaviour.
Expressive behaviours send ideas toward the other person, and Barnes names four of them.
Tell. State the action wanted
Sell. Give reasons, goals and benefits
Negotiate. Give the other person a stake
Enlist. Build alignment around a shared picture of the result
Receptive behaviours draw information and commitment out of the other person.
Inquire. Open questions that draw the person out
Listen. Check understanding and test implications
Attune. Build trust by identifying with the person and disclosing
A fourth behaviour clarifies the issue and poses the challenging question, so the other person takes responsibility for action
Most advisers are fluent in one family and avoid the other.
Analytical advisers push evidence and wonder why nobody moves.
Relational advisers ask good questions and never state a recommendation.
Barnes adds a ninth option, which is to disengage and return to the conversation another day.
A practitioner who treats disengaging as a planned move stops pushing a meeting that has turned defensive.
Barnes also makes a point about fit that applies directly to talent proposals.
An idea aligned with the organisation's current goals is easier to sell than one that is unrelated or pulling another way.
The first step is to look at where the organisation is spending its energy.
A capability proposal attached to the integration everyone is already working on gets heard.
The same proposal presented as a new talent initiative competes for attention it will not get.
What An HR Function Can Offer
Advisers often describe themselves as holding nothing a business leader wants.
In practice an HR function holds several things of value to a leader.
Information about how other units solved the same problem
Early sight of the executive agenda and its timing
Scarce capability, such as assessment, recruitment priority and design time
A defensible method for a contested people decision
The fourth is the most undervalued.
A leader taking a hard decision about a restructure or a senior hire wants to say afterwards that the process was sound.
An adviser who supplies that method earns standing for the next request.
A Worked Sequence Across Three Meetings
A talent lead wants a business unit to fill senior roles through an assessed shortlist, instead of through the unit head's personal network.
The evidence is clear, and the unit head believes the current approach works.
One meeting of argument will fail, because it asks the unit head to concede a judgement in front of a peer.
A sequence across three contacts takes about a month.
The first meeting is receptive. The talent lead asks how the last four senior hires were made and how each has performed
The second brings one piece of evidence. It bears on a problem the unit head named in the first meeting, such as two hires who left inside a year
The third makes the recommendation. It includes a first step the unit head can stop, and leaves the decision with the unit head
Before the first meeting, the talent lead checks who else the unit head listens to on hiring, using a power map drawn before the decision.
Agreement Without Action
Agreement followed by no action is the most common failure in internal advisory work.
Three causes account for most of it.
The leader accepted the analysis and never accepted the cost
The action needed a peer's cooperation that nobody secured
The agreement was to a direction, with no first step and no date
The correction is the same for all three.
Close every meeting by naming the first action, its owner, the date and the budget line it comes from.
Send those four items in writing the same day, in two or three lines.
If the leader will not name a budget line, the meeting produced compliance at best, and the next conversation is about the cost.
Influencing Senior Stakeholders
Influence upward carries a specific risk, which is that the adviser starts agreeing to keep access.
A monthly check helps.
Count the recommendations the adviser made that the leader did not want to hear.
A count of zero over a quarter usually means the advice has softened, which is the subject of managing up without flattery.
When a senior leader overrules a recommendation, DuBrin's advice on sequencing applies.
Start with the gentler tactics and use an appeal to someone more senior only as a last resort, because abrasive tactics invite retaliation.
The steps for recording a view and then committing are set out in challenging a leader you advise.
Influence And Manipulation
The ethics of influence matter more inside an organisation than outside it, because the adviser meets the same leaders every quarter.
Influence leaves the other person free to say no.
Manipulation removes that freedom, usually by withholding information or inventing urgency.
Three practices keep an adviser on the right side.
State your own interest in the outcome
Give the evidence that weakens your case as well as the evidence that supports it
Accept a no without escalating in the same week
Measuring Influence Over A Year
An HR function can measure its own influence with three counts, kept across four quarters.
Requests that arrive as questions instead of instructions
Invitations to discuss a decision before it is taken
Recommendations implemented without escalation
The second count matters most, because it shows whether leaders consult HR while the decision can still change.
Where The Tools Sit
Trusted Talent Advisor covers this work in its component on stakeholder conversations, including the three-meeting sequence and the close.
Its template pack includes a stakeholder map and an influence plan that can be completed before the first meeting.
Sources
1. Block, P. Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used. Pfeiffer.
2. Scharlatt, H. and Smith, R. Influence: Gaining Commitment, Getting Results. Center for Creative Leadership.
3. Barnes, B. K. Exercising Influence: A Guide for Making Things Happen at Work, at Home, and in Your Community. Wiley.
4. DuBrin, A. J. Leadership: Research Findings, Practice, and Skills. Cengage.
From the system
Trusted Talent Advisor sets out the full method: seven components, 51 tools, The Talent Template Pack and The Prompt Library.
See the system
Questions this answers
What does influencing without authority mean?
It means getting people who do not report to you to act on your recommendation. For an HR adviser, those people are usually budget holders who own the money and the headcount that the recommendation needs.
How do you influence people who do not report to you?
Price the problem in their own numbers, ask them to improve the plan, offer something they need, and close every meeting on a first step with an owner, a date and a budget line, confirmed in writing that day.
What are examples of influencing without authority?
An HR business partner securing budget for a manager programme from an operations director, or a talent lead persuading a unit head to fill senior roles from an assessed shortlist over three meetings.
How do you influence senior stakeholders?
Build credibility through delivered recommendations, use consultation and collaboration before pressure, and keep a monthly count of unwelcome recommendations made. Escalating to someone more senior is a last resort, because it invites retaliation.
How do you get budget for an HR initiative?
State the cost of the problem in figures the budget holder already reports and finance can check, price the initiative against that cost, offer a first step that can be stopped after a quarter, and name the budget line before the meeting ends.
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