About the Revised Edition

At some point, almost all of us will find ourselves in the same bind at work: we know what needs to be done and how to do it, but we can’t get the right people on board. The risk is allowing frustration to become resignation or unproductive retaliation. The new and improved Influence Without Authority, Second Edition, offers a proven, effective model for breaking through the impasse and building collaboration, mutual assistance, and real achievement.

Leadership gurus Allan Cohen and David Bradford show how to coax cooperation from the people who control the resources, information, or support you need to succeed. You’ll learn how to get past your restrictive assumptions, figure out the interests and needs of potential partners, and negotiate mutually beneficial exchanges that help you both achieve your goals. It’s a powerful and proven way to cut through interpersonal and interdepartmental barriers to turn coworkers and competitors into allies.

This new Second Edition adds clarity, depth and insight, with  new chapters on applying the “Exchange Model” to entire organizations, making it even more useful for team leaders and managers. It includes many more practical applications such as working cross-functionally, leading major change initiatives, using direct influence, and overcoming organizational politics.

No matter what level you are at an organization, or what kinds of clients and customers you deal with, part of your success depends on being able to influence people over whom you have no formal control. Influence Without Authority, Second Edition, presents a clear model and effective, practical strategies for convincing and influencing those around you in order to accomplish important workplace goals— to the benefit of you, your colleagues, and your organization.  

Expert Comments

If you want to be a successful leader at any level,  you must learn the mastery of managers and groups without using formal authority.  You need the ideas and skills this book delivers. 

Ram Charan
Author of the best-selling books, Execution and Confronting Reality

This book manages to do the near impossible. It delivers sound advice without falling into the quicksand of misleading management clichés or the forest academic abstraction. Of greatest significance, it draws on the accumulated genuine wisdom of good leadership studies to provide immediately applicable tools to influence the people and events in the totality of life regardless of the positions we hold at work.  Despite the elimination game format of “reality TV,” which distort the use of influence, this book shows how your primary enemy is not the person sitting next to you. Influence Without Authority, could also be titled Influence with Integrity and Lasting Impact. I am a longtime enthusiast of the career contributions of Cohen and Bradford, but this new edition could not come as a more timely antidote to the dangerous leadership bromides filling the media. 

Jeff Sonnenfeld
Professor and Associate Dean of Executive Education
Founder, President of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute
Yale School of Management

In its first edition Influence Without Authority established itself as a useful guidebook to modern organization practice.  With the added content of this new edition it becomes a "bible"! Bradford and Cohen have provided today's thoughtful manager with an essential manual for effectiveness in an increasingly complex organizational universe.

Len Schlesinger
Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Officer
Limited Brands

Table of Contents, Revised Edition 

I.  INTRODUCTION

1. Why influence: what you will get from this book 

II. THE INFLUENCE MODEL

2. The Influence Model; Trading what they want for what you’ve got.(Using Reciprocity and Exchange)
3. Goods and Services: The Currencies of Exchange
4. How to Know What They Want: Understanding their Worlds (and the forces acting on them)
5. You Have More to Offer Than You Think If You Know Your Goals, Priorities and Resources  (The Dirty Little Secret About Power)
6. Building Effective Relationships:  The Art of Finding and Developing Your Allies
7. Strategies for Making Mutually Profitable Trades

 III.   PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS OF INFLUENCE 

8. Influencing Your Boss
9. Influencing Difficult Subordinates
10. Working Cross Functionally: Leading and Influencing a Team, Task Force or Committee
11. Influencing Organizational Groups, Departments and Divisions
12. Influencing Colleagues
13. Initiating or Leading Major Change
14. Indirect Influence
15. Understanding and Overcoming Organizational Politics
16. Hardball: Escalating to Tougher Strategies When You Can No Longer Catch Flies with Honey

Appendix A: Extended Case Examples Available On the Web

Appendix B: Additional Resources