At Wharton, there are a few "famous classes" that every alum recommends you try to take. This semester I had the opportunity to take one such class. Influence, taught by Professor Cade Massey was about the theory, strategies, and tactics of exerting influence on others both personally and professionally. Now, this was a class I entered into with a not-small degree of skepticism. I have worked in highly-political environments before and hated it. I viewed political behavior as the sort of brown-nosing and maneuvering that people did when they didn't have the skill to succeed on their own merit. I have always tried my best to be genuine and direct about my thoughts, feelings, and positions on things. So what was I to gain from a class all about politics and power?
Turns out, a lot.
Three things changed my mind about the concept of influence. In our first class, the professor hammered home the idea that influence is not a substitute for merit, but an accelerant. A point of leverage when you already are in a position of strength. The ability to outmaneuver an opponent when backed into a corner. An option to win against adversaries who are larger, more powerful, and backed by better resources than you are. Throughout the course, this concept that neither merit nor influence will likely be sufficient for you to accomplish your goals on your own was hammered home. We also explored how influence was itself a skill that needed to be honed and so really was an aspect of your merit itself. It opened up my eyes to the fact that utilizing influence wasn't something that people did when they didn't have anything else to rely upon, but an important part of anyone's professional development.
Second, we talked about the "Just World" hypothesis. The idea that too often people operate as if the world was perfectly just and that there were cosmic scales that automatically balanced out every act with an equal reward. Do good, good happens to you. Take the expedient route, it'll come back to bite you. The danger with the Just World hypothesis is that it hinders people's agency. If you believe that what goes around always comes back around, there is little reason for you to take it upon yourself to improve circumstances. Now I personally think that in the long-term, there is an aspect of balancing that occurs. If you spend your life burning bridges, eventually you are going to lose our credibility, reputation, and any goodwill from others. But one need only turn on the news for 5 minutes to see that bad things happen to good people and vice versa. Now, this isn't to say that the world is completely unjust, just that it is a bit rough around the edges. Good and bad things happen to both good and bad people. Hard work and good intentions usually pay off, but not always. Merit matters, but it isn't the only thing that matters. In the "rough world" that we live in, influence matters. We may not like it, but to argue otherwise is naive. And I feel confident saying that as someone who has made the argument myself all too often.
Now I know what you are thinking. "Oh great, a bunch of Ivy League MBAs learning how to manipulate people. What could go wrong?" The same thought crossed my mind and that is why I was so glad that ethical considerations were a crucial cornerstone of this course. At the end of the day, influence tools are just that, tools. And as tools, they can be used for good or ill. The matter of real importance comes from deciding when and how to use these tools. Whether to use them for expedience's sake or with honor. Whether to use them to treat people as means to your own ends or to use them with the conscious belief that others are ends unto themselves. Wielding influence is not only an avenue to accomplish your goals but also a defensive mechanism. A shield from bad actors who would spoil your cause for their own selfish gain. If you are like how I used to be and simply refused to participate in "politics" out of principle, you may open yourself, your friends, and your causes to manipulation by others who aren't as principled. It may not be ideal, but in the world we have, being aware and capable of wielding influence is especially important if you are a good person with noble ends. If these tools really are effective, we need the people using them to be thoughtful, ethical, and conscientious of their impact, not just those who will do whatever it takes to see their goals realized. In my first semester at Wharton, I wrote an ethical manifesto about how I wanted to be an ethical leader. Of the 6 pillars I highlighted, two are especially salient to the guidance of when and how to use influence tactics: Treat everyone with Honor and Don't take shortcuts. On the last day of our class we discussed the importance of integrity as it related to influence. Of making decisions by principles instead of simple cost-benefit calculations. Of the fact that not only can we exercise influence with integrity, but that sometimes, in order to act with integrity, situations will require us to exert influence and to do so effectively. The foundational importance of ethics and integrity in conversations of politics and power was a pleasant surprise to me and a throughline I wish that more of my classes grappled with. Often even more important than the question of whether or not we can do something is the question of whether we ought to.
What exactly are these influence tactics that I am referencing? Each class we would hit on one or two tactics and a figure whose behavior served as an example of them. I can't do them all justice in a simple blog post, but I will outline the tactics at a high level here. Our professors’ research broke the tactics into three buckets, hard power, soft power, and smart power.
Influence Tactics
Hard Power
Hard power is what it sounds like and what many of us first think of when we think of influence. Hard power is using your position or authority to get someone to do what you want. It is easy to have negative feelings about hard power, but a real challenge is thinking about how to use these tactics in a relationship-preserving way instead of burning bridges with them. The two tactics in the hard power bucket are Ethos and Might.
Ethos - Someone's credibility and a key element to persuasion. The trick with Ethos is displaying your credentials within an appropriate context so it doesn't come across as obnoxious.
Might - Coercive Power. Might is the ability to address difficult issues and to tolerate conflict or unpleasantness. Might may be the most challenging strategy to use the appropriate amount of and most people tend to over-rely on it or to completely neglect it.
Soft Power
Soft power is the more subtle side of influence. It is all about getting others to want to do what you want them to do versus forcing them to do it. It is about building bridges and relationships and using those connections to accomplish your goals. The six tactics in the soft power bucket are Coalitions, Pathos, Networks, Team Building, Exchange, and Allocentrism.
Coalitions - The ability to garner support from other actors and to align incentives towards a common goal. Coalitions are crucially important because they are the most effective way for someone with low power to overcome a more powerful opponent.
Pathos - Creating emotional resonance with an audience and the second key element to persuasion. Pathos is often created through the telling of stories and allows the user to relate to the topic or issue at hand.
Networks - Building bridges between yourself and others. Effective networks are diverse and contain both formal and informal relationships. People who have the most valuable networks sit at the leverage points between different network nodes and can act as an intermediary between otherwise separate groups.
Team-Building - Team-building takes the idea of coalitions one step further. It is often not enough to bring desperate actors together in pursuit of a common goal, the real trick is in keeping all the diverging interests from tearing the group apart. Effective team-building means creating a sense of cohesion and loyalty between members of the team and ensuring that everyone's unique strengths are able to be leveraged.
Exchange - Human beings are naturally inclined towards reciprocity. A powerful way to win allies is to do things for them knowing that most people will naturally seek to even the scales. Those who are most effective using the tactic of exchange go beyond simple transactions and develop habits of helping others without short-term expectations of anything in return.
Allocentrism - The opposite of egocentrism. Allocentrism means being cognizant of and orienting yourself towards others' perspectives versus your own. Allocentrism is key for exhibiting empathy or looking at a situation from someone else's perspective.
Smart Power
Smart Power is the bucket that may be the newest to you. It deals with meta-level tools that are more about the appropriate recognition of when to use what tools versus the tools themselves. Research has shown that smart power tools have the biggest impact on whether you are effective or not with Agency being the most effective tactic to cultivate out of all the tactics discussed. The four tactics in the smart power bucket are Situational Awareness, Agency, Intent, and Logos
Situational Awareness - The ability to understand one’s environment and how it is changing. Those skilled in situational awareness understand the interests of different actors and can reliably make predictions about how situations are going to play out.
Agency - The understanding that nothing in the environment is fixed and that you can exert influence to change circumstances. Agency is found to be the most impactful of all influence tactics which makes sense because if you don't think you will be able to influence a situation, you are unlikely to even try.
Intentionality - Intentionality is a complete focus on achieving goals. It is the ability to sacrifice the battle to win the war and to compromise tertiary interests in pursuit of a larger design.
Logos - The logic of one's arguments and the final key element to persuasion. Logos can take the form of facts and figures or a simple logical flow.
Developing My Influence
A major aspect of the class was evaluating our own influence abilities and seeing where there were opportunities for improvement. As someone who had eschewed "playing politics" I expected that I would have some areas to work on.
Little did I know how un-influential I really was.
We were rated on our ability to use influence tactics by both fellow classmates as well as by former colleagues. And my ratings stunk. I had one rating, Network building, that scored in the 80th percentile of my class, and everything else was much lower. In some cases, much, much, much lower.
This definitely was a bit of a blow to my confidence, but I have decided to look at the positive side of things. I have been relatively successful so far in my career apparently without the ability to influence people at all! Imagine what I can do if I develop even just one or two of these skills!
Joking aside, these assessments were definitely a wake-up call, and as I think about how to practice some of the things I learned in influence I want to make sure that I have concrete strategies and tactics that I can employ moving forward.
My Influence Action Plan
One of my favorite parts of Influence was how the professor emphasized the importance of making these theoretical ideas highly practical and building tangible habits to improve these skills. As someone who has so much room for improvement across so many of these tactics, part of the challenge for me is simply narrowing down what I should be working on. After reflecting on the various influence tools I learned in the class, two stick out as key areas I need to improve on, Agency and Situational Awareness.
I think the first step of improving both of these areas was simply taking this class. It has opened my eyes to the fact that influence matters. That these tools can be powerful and that they really can shape situations when applied directly.
To improve my Agency I plan to:
Challenge myself to never assume that an environment is fixed. I know that the game board is constantly shifting and I need to act accordingly.
Always question whether there is a "third-way". There are often alternatives that haven't been considered or opportunities to break with "the way things have always been done" if you are willing to take them.
Take the initiative. I want to be someone who raises their hand and takes the initiative on things. Even when it doesn't work out I need to know that in the long-term, building that habit will be worthwhile.
In an attempt to keep the importance of Agency top of mind, I added these qualities to an identity affirmation I regularly review that describes the kind of person I am working on becoming.
To improve my Situational Awareness I plan to:
Practice regular mindfulness and meditation in order to be more aware of my own thoughts and to give myself the cognitive space to be aware of how others are reacting around me
Set aside 10 minutes before meetings to think through what environment I am about to walk into and what my objectives should be
Reflect on what has changed in my environment each week as a way to practice noticing any shifting ground
To help me stay on top of improving my Situational Awareness I added all of these items to my weekly self-check-in
To keep the lessons learned from Influence top of mind I plan to:
Send myself a quarterly recurring email containing this blog post as well as my ethical manifesto for me to review whenever it is in my inbox
Add a to-do list item to my quarterly self-review check in to re-evaluate where I am with improving my influence capabilities and to set up new habits according to the tactics I want to work on next
Add a to-do list item to my weekly check-in to ask myself if there are any little notes or thank you notes I should be sending to people in an effort to maintain my network
Influence was one of the most interesting, informative, and impactful classes I have ever taken. It challenged me and made me feel convicted about my attitudes and actions in ways that I had never even questioned in myself previously. If the hallmark of an excellent course is one that will stick with you long after your last assignment has been turned in, then I think Influence has the makings of a very excellent course indeed. Hopefully, you found this brief overview of what I learned interesting and informative!
Until next time. Journey before destination.
