Influence and Authority: Using Your Personal …Influence and Authority: Using Your Personal Power...

Influence and Authority: Using Your Personal Power to Get

Things Done

Johanna RothmanNew: Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects

@johannarothmanwww.jrothman.com

jr@jrothman.com781-641-4046

© 2012 Johanna Rothman

Here’s a Story About Influence and Power

2

© 2012 Johanna Rothman3

Would You Like to Be More Influential?

© 2012 Johanna Rothman4

© 2012 Johanna Rothman

Would You Like More Power?

5

© 2012 Johanna Rothman6

© 2012 Johanna Rothman7

How Do You Obtain Influence or Power?

Earn it, through proven competence

Repeated small and large wins

Other people vouch for you

You claim competence

© 2012 Johanna Rothman

Verbal Persuasion

Build rapport

Let’s build rapport together, right now.

Build rapport with the person next to you.

Take one minute, and then you tell me what you did

What did you do?

8

© 2012 Johanna Rothman

Congruent Influence (Laborde)

1.What is the specific outcome that you want?

2.Be positive.

3.Stay in the moment;

Listen and watch for the sensory data.

4.Can you make your desires match those of the other

person?

5.Look for short-and long-term objectives.

9

© 2012 Johanna Rothman

Does Verbal Persuasion Always Work?

10

© 2012 Johanna Rothman

Resistant Problems Need More

What are resistant problems?

Personal problems

Technical problems:

Multitasking

Technical debt

Call out some others

11

© 2012 Johanna Rothman

Deep-Seated Beliefs

We need to change personal experience

Vicarious experience works

Stories that make an emotional connection

Simulations (games) work

12

© 2012 Johanna Rothman

When Do People Change Behavior?

It’s worth the change

They know how to change behavior

Too often, we know it’s worth it, but we don’t know how

13

© 2012 Johanna Rothman14

© 2012 Johanna Rothman15

© 2012 Johanna Rothman

Stories

Help someone know it’s worth the change

Offer some starts to how

Another Story

16

© 2011 Johanna Rothman17

Motivation Ability

Personal Make the Undesirable Desirable Surpass Your Limits

Social Harness Peer Pressure Find Strength in Numbers

Structural Design Rewards and Demand Accountability

Change the Environment

Patterson’s Influence Model

© 2012 Johanna Rothman

Personal Motivation

All motivation is intrinsic

“Try it, you’ll like it”

Make the undesirable desirable with small goals and feedback

Simulations and games

Logic does not work

When we set our own goals and are able to meet them,

we feel fulfilled

18

© 2012 Johanna Rothman

What You Can Do

Motivational interviewing

Link your desires to something that would be an

intrinsic motivator for the other person

What would be something intrinsically “right” for the

other person?

19

© 2012 Johanna Rothman

Ability

Practice is key to any change

Does the person know how to make the requested

change?

20

© 2012 Johanna Rothman

Deliberate Practice

Coding and testing dojos

I am not aware of management dojos

21

© 2012 Johanna Rothman

Harness Peer Pressure

The power of the right one

Enlist opinion leaders

Become an opinion leader

Opinion leaders are knowledgeable and trustworthy

They are accessible and speak their minds

22

© 2012 Johanna Rothman

The Power of Everyone

Makes the undiscussable discussable

23

© 2012 Johanna Rothman

Strength in Numbers

Social capital: enabling power of an essential network of

relationships

Instead of “my” or “your” problem, it’s “our” problem

Requires collaboration

24

© 2012 Johanna Rothman

Rewards and Accountability

Connect the behaviors

Social support

Money breaks the social contract

Money is a last resort

25

© 2012 Johanna Rothman

Change the Environment

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and

expecting different results -- Einstein

If you leave the environment the same way, how can you

change?

Change the environment so you don’t have a choice

26

© 2012 Johanna Rothman

One Way to Change a Project Environment

27

© 2012 Johanna Rothman

One More Story

28

© 2012 Johanna Rothman

For Your Reading Pleasure

29

Laborde, Genie Z. Influence with

Integrity. Crown House Publishing.

Wales, 1998.

Pfeffer, Jeffrey. Power: Why Some

People Have it and Others Don’t.

HarperBusiness. 2010.

Patterson, Kerry and many others.

Influencer: The Power to Change

Anything. McGraw Hill. 2007

© 2012 Johanna Rothman

Let’s Stay in Touch

Tons more on jrothman.com (articles and blogs)

Sign up for my email newsletter, the Pragmatic Manager,

with the yellow form, or email me to sign you up.

Please invite me to connect with you on LinkedIn

30