Avoiding Positional Power

Achieving your goals requires working with other people who may not be willing to share information or who do not agree with your priorities. Using effective influence skills helps you gain the willing commitment of others and build the relationship without using positional power to enforce compliance. What influence skills help you in your organization?

Tune-Up Teamwork With Influence: Great Work Gets Done

"If high performing teams are like engines running on all cylinders, then influence skills are like the oil that makes them hum."

Despite constant challenges with tight deadlines, abundant projects, and stretched resources, effective influence skills help team members resolve conflicts with each other as well as other teams, individuals, or stakeholders from whom they need information or assistance. However, those who rely solely on using their positional power may find themselves without the vital support they need to be successful!

Let’s face it! We need to work together to combine our skills, knowledge, and expertise just to stay ahead of the competition, meet growing customer demands, and generate the financial results we’re expected to produce! Knowing how to balance our needs with the needs of others is essential for reaching acceptable agreements for all involved.

It takes more than just good communication skills. Individuals who succeed in this environment have learned the secret. They adapt their influence communication and strategies to fit the needs of the person they’re trying to influence - building collaboration and commitment needed for others to willingly contribute to personal, team, and organizational goals.

Spending just a few minutes thinking about the following four questions in preparation for an influence situation will dramatically increase the chances for success:

• What do I want or need?


• What is my mindset and what are my assumptions?


• What is their mindset and what is important to them?


• What has or is happening in the organization?

Influencing others does NOT mean manipulating others. Manipulation only damages relationships. Knowing how to influence without authority helps leaders, individual contributors, and teams achieve success in a way that values, supports, and nurtures positive, long-term working relationships with others.

For more than 20 years, Lash Associates, Inc., has worked with organizations in multiple industries to equip leaders and individual contributors with skills, practical tools, and strategies for influencing others without having authority.