Influence without authority: eight exercises that show where you were wrong

These are exercises in the plain sense: things to do at your desk this week, taking ten minutes to a month and producing something you can look at afterward.

Each reveals a specific thing you cannot see by thinking about it. Several will be uncomfortable, which usually means the exercise measures something real.

Do them in any order, but do the first one first. It changes how you read the rest.

What to take away

1. The queue audit

Time: twenty minutes, plus one conversation.

Take one request you have made to someone outside your reporting line that was agreed to and has not happened. Write down where you believe it sits on their list: what is above it, what is below, who else can see the list.

Then ask them, plainly: "Where does this sit for you at the moment, and what is ahead of it?" Write the real answer next to your guess.

What it reveals. Almost everyone discovers that the request is not on any list at all. It lives in the other person's memory and good intentions, which is where agreed requests go to expire. The exercise is worth repeating for every open request you have, because the pattern is usually the same and the fix is the same: get it onto a list somebody else can see.

2. The measured-on interview

Time: three conversations of ten minutes each.

Pick three people you regularly need things from. Ask each one, in a conversation that has nothing else on the agenda, what they are actually judged on this quarter. Not their job description. The two or three things that would make their quarter go well or badly with their own manager.

Write the answers down. Then, beside each, write whether your most common request to that person helps, is neutral to, or costs them on those measures.

What it reveals. You will find at least one person whose measures you had wrong, and usually one whose measures your request quietly works against. That gap between what the organization wants and what one person is rewarded for is the everyday form of the principal and agent problem. That second discovery explains a great deal of prior friction, and it tells you whether to change the request or to ask for it honestly as a favor.

3. The forwardable paragraph

Time: fifteen minutes to write, five to test.

Hand the paragraph to someone uninvolved and ask them to read it once and then tell you, from memory, what you are asking for. Do not help. This is the same move that federal writing guidance calls testing for understanding, done with one reader instead of a panel.

What it reveals. How your request survives being carried by someone who does not care about it, which is how every request is actually decided. If they get it wrong, the fault is in the paragraph. Rewrite until a disinterested reader can repeat it, then send that version and nothing longer.

4. The smallest ask

Time: ten minutes.

Take a request that has been refused or deferred. Write down the full thing you want. Then write a version half the size. Then half again. Stop when you reach a request that could be answered in one reply without the other person consulting anyone.

Send that one.

What it reveals. Whether the block was the goal or the size. Most deferred requests are deferred because they cannot be assessed quickly, and the safe response to something unassessable is to wait. A request that can be answered in a sentence usually is, and the answer tells you what the next step is.

5. The offer inventory

Time: thirty minutes.

List five people you need things from. For each, write what you could offer from the short inventory available to someone without authority.

That offer may be information they lack, work you absorb for them, cover for a decision they are exposed on, or a specific favor owed.

Be honest about the empty cells.

What it reveals. The table is usually lopsided. There will be one person for whom you have plenty to offer and have never offered it, and one for whom you have nothing, which explains why that relationship is all asking. For the second, the fix is to build a cell before the next request, usually by absorbing a piece of work unasked. The same lopsided table appears in the stakeholder influence techniques of mapping each person's stake before you ask.

6. The no ledger

Time: one week, two minutes per entry.

For a week, record every refusal or deferral you receive, however small, and beside each one the answer to a single follow-up question you ask at the time: "What would have to be different for that to be a yes?"

What it reveals. How many of the refusals were about the request, how many were about timing, how many were about who asked, and how many were genuine and final. The proportion is nearly always surprising, and the answers give you a route for most of them. The ones with no route are the ones to stop asking about.

7. The agreement log

Time: one month, a line per entry.

Every time someone agrees to something for you, record it: what, who, when they said yes. When it happens, record that. At the end of the month, count.

What it reveals. Your actual conversion rate from yes to done, by person. It is lower than you think, and it is different by person, which tells you whose yes is information and whose is politeness. From then on, for the second group, you stop counting agreement and start asking for a date and a name.

8. The escalation sentence

Time: ten minutes, and then a moment of nerve.

Take a request that is stuck and that you are considering taking above or around the person. Before you do, write the sentence you would say to them first: that you think you are both stuck, that you are going to raise it, and that you would rather do it with them than around them.

Then say it to them.

What it reveals. About half the time, the sentence itself unsticks the request, because it makes the cost of continued deferral visible without making a threat. The other half, you have preserved the relationship through an escalation that would otherwise have ended it. Either way you learn how it feels to say, which makes the next one easier.

Running them together

The mechanics these exercises test are set out in influence without authority. Exercise 2 is the first step of the mapping described in stakeholder influence. Exercise 3 is the written form covered in executive communication. If you have authority and want the equivalent set for that position, the problem is different and the exercises are in leadership influence.

Common questions

Which one first, if I only do one?

The queue audit. It takes twenty minutes and it reframes every request you have open.

Some of these involve asking questions that feel intrusive.

"What are you judged on this quarter?" and "where does this sit for you?" are questions people are asked rarely and answer readily. The discomfort is yours, and it fades after the first one.

Can I do these with my own team?

Yes, though the results will be distorted: people who report to you will tell you what they think you want the list to look like. The exercises are designed for people you cannot instruct, which is where the information is honest.

What if the results are bad?

They will be, in places. A low conversion rate, an empty offer column, a request that nobody can repeat. Bad results are the point: each one is a specific thing to change, which is more than reading about the subject ever produces.