Influencing Up E-Book

Allan R. Cohen

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 351

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

The authors of the classic Influence Without Authority explain the unique challenges of influencing powerful people Learn to overcome your difficulties with a boss who is uninterested in your concerns, or resistant to giving needed support. Or discover how to win the cooperation of senior managers who are hard to reach, and hard to sell on your ideas, products, or services. In their classic book, Influence Without Authority, Allan Cohen and David Bradford provided a universal model of how to influence someone you don't control. Influencing Up applies those ideas to problematic bosses and other powerful people, with sophisticated tactics for building partnerships with them. If you're afraid of retaliation or just unclear as to how to change a senior person's behavior, don't stay paralyzed. Influencing Up gives you the tools to bridge the power gap. * Offers practical advice about how to turn your relationship with your boss into a partnership in which both parties benefit * Explains what powerful people care about * Shows how to overcome power gaps by developing more partner-like relationships Learn what a great partnership with your boss can do for your career--and your mental health!

Leseprobe

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Part I: Fundamentals

Chapter 1: The World Has Changed

The Impact of Large Power Differentials

Becoming a Partner

The Book’s Organization

Chapter 2: How Power Differentials Blind Smart People

Introduction

Common Negative Consequences of Having Relatively Great Power

The Necessity of Power—But “Mind the Gap!”

Sources of Power—Organizational and Personal

Bad Patterns, Not Bad People

Chapter 3: How Power Differentials Give Smart People Laryngitis

Actual versus Virtual Power

The Danger of a Dysfunctional Dance

The Costs to Both Parties

Conditions for Altering Power Relationships and Narrowing the Gap

Chapter 4: Overview of the Steps Required to Access and Influence Powerful People

1. Determine Who Has to Be Influenced

2. Assume That Each is a Potential Partner

3. Determine Their Power and the Power Gap

4. Diagnose the World of the Powerful, Their Currencies (What They Value), and Which Ones You Can Offer

5. Figure Out How to Gain Access

6. Clarify What You Need and Your Priorities

7. Diagnose Your Relationship and the Preferences for How to Approach

8. Negotiate Win-Win Exchanges

Chapter 5: The Influence Model at Work

Next Meeting

Part II: Building a Powerful Partnership with Your Boss

Chapter 6: Partnership

The Gaps That Make Influence Necessary

The Meaning of Partnership

The Characteristics and Expectations of True Partnership

Why Partnership is Needed

What Does Partnership Require from You?

Whose Responsibility is It?

What Does an Elusive Boss Look Like?

The Partnership Approach Can Work with Senior Powerful People

Chapter 7: Building a Partnership Relationship with Your Boss

1. Examine your own beliefs for barriers

2. Adopt a Partnerlike Mind-Set

3. Accept That Your Boss Isn’t and Can’t Be Perfect

4. Assess the Gap in Power between You and Your Boss

5. Stop Giving Away Your Potential

6. Understand Your Boss’s World or Specific Situation

7. Raise Your Concern in a Direct But Nonblaming Way

8. Acknowledge Your Part in Any Difficulties

9. Accept Your Boss’s Concerns as Legitimate

10. Don’t Undermine Yourself

Chapter 8: The Art—and Responsibility—of Helping Your Boss Succeed

Taking on Some of the Boss’s Tasks

Relieving the Boss of Heroic Tendencies

Proactively Giving Support

Knowing the Impact of Your Boss’s Behavior

Helping Your Boss Be a Better Boss

For Whose Sake?

Chapter 9: Recovering from Failed Talks with Your Boss

Ways You Might Have Trapped Yourself

Can We Discuss the Way We Can Talk?

Disagreeing with Your Boss . . . and Surviving or Thriving

But What If Directness Does Not Work? Andy’s Vanishing Boss

But What If I Have a Truly Toxic Boss?

Your Fallback Position

Part III: Influencing Powerful People

Chapter 10: Framing Your Change Strategy

Failing to Identify Key Stakeholders—in or outside of the Company—Can Be Extremely Costly

Difficult Founder

Progress after Baker

Known Stakeholders Ignored—At Great Cost

Start with a Power Map

Stakeholder Power

Partnership Mind-Set

Sequencing of Action

Chapter 11: What Do the Powerful Care About?

Factors in the Organizational World That Shape the Currencies of Powerful People

Are You Seeking to Influence People inside or outside the Organization? About One Event, or Multiple Issues?

Use a Powerful Proposal Style Whether Dealing Internally or Externally

Chapter 12: Action Steps for Gaining Access to Powerful People

The Bold, Direct Approach

Networking Advice

Summary of Overall Access Approach

Chapter 13: Clinching the Deal

Dual Focus: Determining What You Want and Constantly Improving the Relationship

Addressing the Power Gap

Other Strategies for Increasing Your Power with Senior Management in Your Own Organization

Connecting to Frequently Important Personal Currencies

Where You Have Little Relationship and Trust is Low

Chapter 14: The Contours of Change

Background: The Need

Finding Allies

Overcoming Institutional Objections

A Complex Integrated Plan—and Real Time Corrections

Outside Influences

Remembering Less Prominent but Still Important Stakeholders

Conclusions

Chapter 15: Influence across Multiple Organizations

Key Players

Gaining Credibility

An Early Test

Nearing Agreement, Internal Dissent from Unplanned-For Stakeholders

Saving Face for Elected Officials

Legal Hitches

Lessons for Influencing on a Grand Scale

Additional Resources

Index

Copyright © 2012 by Allan Cohen and David Bradford. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, [phone], fax [phone], or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, [phone], fax [phone], or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Cohen, Allan R.

Influencing Up / Allan R Cohen, David L Bradford.

Includes index.

ISBN: 978-1-118-03845-1 (hardback)

ISBN: 978-1-118-22223-2 (ebk)

ISBN: 978-1-118-23609-3 (ebk)

ISBN: 978-1-118-26091-3 (ebk)

1. Influence (Psychology) 2. Persuasion (Psychology) 3. Interpersonal relations. 4. Business communication. I. Bradford, David L. II. Title.

BF774

658.4’09—dc23

2012001520

Preface

This began as a book about managing your boss. Although we had addressed this topic in Influence without Authority, we discovered that more and more organizational members were struggling with this issue. Some still complained about overcontrolling, micromanaging bosses who gave them far too little latitude, yet many others were concerned about distant bosses—often located far away—whose attention they could barely get and who seemed not to care about them. From dealing with “toxic witches” to “elusive withholders,” many asked our advice about what to do. The writing for this edition was under way when our editor at John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Richard Narramore, asked us to consider the possibility of widening the scope of the book to deal with influencing other powerful, senior people, whether at the top of one’s own organization or in another organization as potential customer or client, business partner, or vital stakeholder.

We soon saw that even in situations where the powerful person or group to be influenced was less accessible, our core concepts of reciprocity/exchange and treating the powerful as potential partners could ameliorate the negative impacts of great power differentials between the powerful and less powerful. Partnership might be tougher to implement when the powerful don’t know you exist—or care to—but it is still a useful mind-set for transforming relationships. Power differentials harm both the powerful and the less powerful, yet influence always involves exchanging what the powerful care about in return for what is desired.

Furthermore, broadening the scope let us utilize what we know about making change from below, another increasingly important topic. Organizations have discovered that in a complex, competitive and changing world, initiative has to come from all levels in order to develop new products, services, and processes that can increase the top line after years of focus on cutting costs. But how do people below take initiative effectively?

At the same time, there has been a leap of interest and research about the behavior of the powerful when there are power gaps. Probably stimulated by the misbehavior of so many corporate and financial leaders, with the attendant parade of corporate and financial executives through the headlines or into court, researchers in many fields designed experiments, surveys, and fieldwork to examine the phenomenon. This was intriguing but somewhat one-sided in focus: seeing the behavior of only those with high power arouses great indignance but omits the role of the less powerful in perpetuating their perceived disempowered state. Seeing the interrelationships between those with high differences in power is a necessary part of the story. It is somewhat less satisfying because it reduces the ability to portray the powerful in totally negative ways—admittedly, occasionally totally deserved, as the victims of Bernie Madoff would attest—but includes the systemic effects collaborated with by the less powerful.

Most important, we concluded that the less powerful didn’t have to wait for the powerful to magically be transformed into receptive supporters. They can use our concepts to influence even when those above aren’t particularly welcoming or receptive.

The subject turned out to be incredibly intriguing. Although all influence is about exchange, it is extremely hard to make exchanges when the power gap is too large. This calls for reducing power gaps, not by reducing the power of those who have it, but by increasing the power of those who do not have enough. Making senior executives weak is not a very good strategy for growing healthy organizations. For powerful people to be really effective in the long run, they need to have powerful people below, even though many do not recognize this or even fight it. The blindness of the powerful that is a consequence of large power gaps often prevents them from seeing the benefits to them and the organization of having or helping strengthen strong players below.

Once we directed our attention to all this, we found many examples of people stuck on how to make a difference from below who could benefit from what we knew. We also found exciting examples of people who were achieving incredible gains, despite having little formal power. Thus we incorporated interviews, observations, reports by others, and numerous personal experiences where we can now stand back and draw useful lessons. We have included many of the inspiring (and instructive) examples in the book, but we had to leave some on the cutting room floor just to keep the book manageable length. We have added these additional examples to our website, www.influencewithoutauthority.com.

Nevertheless, there is ample material in this book about how to gain influence to enable effective action by people who believe they don’t have enough authority to command the results they want. Even high-power people can benefit from the analysis and examples we bring. Wherever you stand, we hope you will discover how to influence up.

Allan Cohen (Oakland, CA)

David Bradford (Berkeley, CA)

Acknowledgments

Many people have contributed greatly to the book, and we are deeply appreciative to all of them. Yet again we recognize that it takes an influential and caring village to make a book, and we tip our hats to every one.

Our editor, Richard Narramore, helped expand the application of our ideas and made many useful suggestions about the content. Christine Moore did a great job of helping us edit the manuscript into a viable length.

A large number of people provided rich and illuminating examples of the dilemmas involved in influencing upward, and often, how they managed to actually gain influence. Not all of the examples made it into the final edition of the book, due only to space restrictions, but all of them helped shape our thinking and refine our concepts. Thanks to Kathy Brown, Kristen Callahan, Jocelyn Cascio, Lisa Couture, Michael Cummings, Peter Dames, Johan DeBorst, Sam Doblie, Liam Fahey, Ruth Gilleran, Kate Granso, Rachel Greenberger, Paul Horn, James Hunt, Noel Johnson, JB Kassarjian (both for his stunning example in regards to access and great editorial suggestions), Nan Langowitz, Matt Larson, John Maraganore, Michael May, Mike McGuirk, Jennifer Morais, Joel Peterson, Dr. Bohdan Pomahac, Kelly Prescott, Lauren Simkin, Howard Simon, Tom Snow, Richard Snyder, Barbara Spangler, Kaoru and Naruhide Takashima, Karen Vrabel, Bob Weissman, and Yasuhiro Yamamoto.

We also want to mention the inspiration we have received from Nettie Seabrooks, whose entire career demonstrated how a person can be incredibly successful using exchange and dealing effectively with those who have power without ever resorting to self-aggrandizement or nasty tactics.

Iva Toudjarska went out of her way to introduce us to fascinating managers from whom we learned a lot. Bala Iyer was our tutor in the uses of social media, with help from Rachel Greenberger, giving us enough to cause our editor to wonder “how such old guys knew this stuff.” Many of our students and managers who have attended our workshops also were very helpful through their questions, challenges, and suggestions.

Research assistant Dan Zolnierz unearthed useful material on power, while several people helped in various aspects of manuscript preparation: Mary Halpin, Wendy Glickenhouse, Kelly Hoover, Marlene Casciano, and Matthew McGuire. Without them, there could hardly be a manuscript!

We are especially grateful to Len Schlesinger, a person extremely savvy about power, both for the conceptual ideas he offered and the great examples from his own career. And as president of Babson, his support for working on the book was wonderful, as was the support of Provost Shahid Ansari and Dean of Faculty Carolyn Hotchkiss.

As always, the responses of our wives and kids provided not only support but instruction, and we are grateful.

PART I

Fundamentals

CHAPTER 1

The World Has Changed

To Be Successful You Need to Influence Up

Influence has always mattered at work. Whether it was necessary to obtain something—like a preferred assignment or a sale to an important customer—or minor favors like time off for personal events, it has always helped to have influence. Nowadays, having influence is even more important—because in order to move up in a company or impact other powerful organizations, you have to deal with a more challenging world.

The rapidity of change and uncertain economies has given way to more complex organizations that have a greater number of stakeholders whose cooperation is necessary—despite the simultaneous need for things to happen more quickly. Many people work in matrix organizations with multiple bosses, or they have jobs that cross departmental boundaries. This requires that they influence others who might not have the same goals or agree on what—or who—is necessary to succeed.