How To Influence People Who Don’t Report To You – Influence Without Authority

The higher you rise in an organisation the more you will be expected to work with those outside your team to deliver results and desired outcomes. Being able influence without authority is vital when you get to middle management ranks and beyond.

A sign of not having enough influence is when you ask others to help you and they make their excuses. Or you ask them to deliver a piece of work for you and they miss the deadline agreed or email you with why they are delaying. To avoid this happening, learning how you influence people who don’t report to you is extremely useful. The more influential you are, the quicker you will be able to work, the less delays and frustrations you will suffer and the more effective you will be.

How To Influence People Who Don’t Report To You – Influence Without Authority

Make working with you a pleasure
Be interested in them and their world
Offer them value first
Create common goals
Build a reputation of influence

Creating and building influence with people that don’t report to you does take work. That work is an investment in your own ability to your job better and to be even more effective. Learn how to be influential without authority. These skills will become invaluable to you.

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1 – make working with you a pleasure to influence people who don’t report to you

Who likes to work with difficult, rude, unhelpful, selfish and problematic people. Very few, if any. Have you met any of these difficult people that have any real influence outside of their position? The very few I have met were very good at their jobs, so people grudgingly put up with them.

Being nice, friendly, helpful, approachable etc does not take much extra effort and it makes people happy to work with you. Even more important being easy to work with open doors for you to use other actions to really build influence.

Individuals are much more receptive to people they like and appreciate. If they don’t like you, you have to work 3 times as hard to influence them in other ways. It pays to be an easy person to work with.

the changing amount of management - from employee to manager

2 – to influence people who don’t report to you is to be interested in the other person

You like other people who like you. You are prepared to listen to people you like a lot more than you are prepared to listen to those you don’t like. Think abou tit – you are happy to be influenced by those you like and probably are quite resistant to being influenced by those you don’t like.

By genuinely being interested in another person, you can quickly get them on side and start building a good relationship with them. Practice listening and I mean really listening to them with your full attention. Ask questions to learn more about what they are telling you. Find the areas you admire and appreciated about them and focus on them. Be empathetic and caring towards them. Make them feel important.

Do all this consistently and they will feel you like them and care about them. This is a great basis to build professional and personal relationships with them.

The stronger your relationships and the stronger the mutual trust and appreciation between you, the more influence you will have over them. Be interested in the other person and build a good relationship with them to maximise your influence.

3 – offer value first to Influence Without Authority

Reciprocity is very powerful. When we help others first, they feel obligated to help us in return. There are so many ways you can help others. Four of my favourites are:

Making the effort to help them when they ask for help. Being approachable and receptive are important. Putting yourself out to help them when they need it creates a lot of influence with that person.
Looking for opportunities to help them or do them favours. It might be spending 30 minutes guiding them through a problem, organising resources they need but are unable to get, sharing information or insights with them etc. Doing favours means being able to ask for favours back.
Teaching, mentoring and coaching are also great ways to offer them value. Share your experiences and skills to help them build their own. Give them career advice. Help them navigate the politics. Being a helpful expert is a great way to build influence.
Protect them when they are under pressure or stressed or being taken advantage of etc. These types of actions are always appreciated and build your influence with them.

Go out of your way to help others. Building up favours owed to you means you can ask for a lot more help later on. We all need help to be effective. The more senior we become, the more help we need from others as we no longer create value directly. The most effective people in any workplace have learnt the reciprocity lesson well and use it all the time. Working to help others is a key part of teamwork.

4 – influence people who don’t report to you is to create common goals

Most people work harder when they are helping themselves rather than when they are helping others. This is human nature.

Think through the benefits the other person will get when they help you. Think through the benefits their team will get. What about the benefits gained by the function or business unit they are in and the company overall.

Another really important point – most people are happy to help when they know you are working to help the wider group, which indirectly helps them. People are a lot less happy to help when they suspect you are asking for help primarily to help yourself.

Communicate as clearly as possible the goals you are trying to achieve and link them directly to the benefits the other person will get directly or indirectly.

Creating common goals are a great way to influence the actions and direction of others, especially when they don’t report to you.

People you like and don't like - how to influence people who don't report to you

5 – build a reputation of influence to Influence Without Authority

Building a reputation takes time and consistent actions on your part. When you have a reputation for being

Trustworthy – i.e. you consistently do what you say and deliver what you commit to
Competence – i.e. you are regarded as good at your job by your team, peers and bosses
Respected – i.e. you are an easy person to work with, you help others, you are trustworthy and you are competent, you will be respected throughout the business
Influential – you gain influence by being trustworthy, competent, respected and by helping others, being a good team player and easy to deal with etc.

Being an influential person creates more influence by itself. Others know that you are more capable to helping them that less influential people. You become a sort after person, a go to person to get things done.

This gives you more opportunities to help others, build relationships, and build favours owed to you etc. This in turn means you become even more effective in your role because you suffer less delays and get a lot more help when you need it.

in summary

Building influence with people who don’t report to you is an incredibly useful skill to develop. You will become more effective in your role because other people will help you first before helping others and you will get lot more help when you ask for it.

Building influence is an investment in your own effectiveness at work and is especially important in management positions.

As a reminder, how to influence people who don’t report to you includes the following actions:

Make working with you a pleasure
Be interested in them and their world
Offer them value first
Create common goals
Build a reputation of influence

If you have any questions on “How To Influence People Who Don’t Report To You – Influence Without Authority”, please email me at support@enhance.training and I will get back to you.

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