Positive influence (without authority) is the superpower that most people never learn to use at work.Millions of subject-matter experts, functional leaders, requirements gatherers, and problem solvers have opportunities to influence every day. Instead, too often they merely respond to requests and take orders from their stakeholders. By not exercising their unknown superpower, they miss opportunities to break down silos, improve collaboration, and accelerate the best decisions for the organization.
Organizations desperately need more positive leadership and influence to innovate, solve big challenges and develop healthy culture. If more people could discover how to use their superpower, they’d not only drive impact, but they would elevate their own perceived self-worth, leading to higher engagement and better mental and emotional wellbeing.
What do people do instead of using their untapped superpower?
When attempting to influence without much leverage, most people employ logical arguments and repeated pressure. They build a rational case and keep asking.
But that rarely works. Facts, arguments and pressure don’t work well trying to influence social/emotional creatures.
As Dale Carnegie said, “When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.”
This book is designed to help people discover the most impactful approach to influencing without authority, coercion, manipulation or force. It is a practical guide to influence that builds trust and relationships. It provides clear patterns and mental models, grounded in neuroscience, for communicating in a way that generates engagement, buy-in and cooperation.
Anyone trying to influence without using “leverage” or “control” will benefit from this book. It’s especially suited for influencing in today’s fast-paced organizations where so many people have the ability to influence change, even if they don’t have the biggest title or the most political capital.
Other books on leadership, influence and trust, offer broad strategies, theories and truisms, but this book provides something more practical and applicable:
- Proven mental models and communication patterns that can be utilized in nearly every communication.
- It’s based on Dale Carnegie Training’s over 10-years of workshop, laboratory, and field testing with thousands of professionals across the world in multiple cultures and languages, from small organizations to large multi-national, from non-profit to for-profit, from government to the private sector.
- It provides hands on structure and guidance for things like what to write in an email, how to ask the best question in a conversation to unlock new thinking, how to explain a controversial idea, and how to communicate when someone pushes back on you.
If you want to learn to utilize your superpower of influence, you have to figure out how to. It's not self-help, it’s how-to.
Matt Norman coaches and advises executives on how to build great people and culture. He is President & CEO of Norman & Associates, which offers custom coaching and consulting in the areas of talent strategy, personal effectiveness, planning, and goal alignment. Norman & Associates is also the largest North American provider of Dale Carnegie cohort-style action learning programs which help people improve how they communicate, lead, influence, and work together. Matt is regularly recognized as a top revenue producer, executive coach, facilitator, speaker and leader of award-winning teams. And he has been named to the Minnesota Business Power 50 for his contributions to the community. He’s also the award-winning author of Four Patterns of Healthy People, Flourishing Leadership and Flourishing Couples. You can find his articles on personal and organizational effectiveness at http://mattnorman.com.
