Influence

In a company, influence means getting people with different goals, including some who don’t report to you, to support a plan and act on it, because they can see their own concerns answered in it.

Almost nothing at work moves on one person’s say-so. A new schedule needs the people who will work it, and a budget needs the person who signs it. Influence decides whether a good idea gets that support, or stays a good idea.

Influence starts with credibility. A person acknowledges where the listener is, like a busy week, before asking for their time. They back a request with a reason and a number, like a rise in errors, and draw on experience the room already trusts.

Further along, the person works with the group as a whole. They build support before a decision, so they can say which teams are already on board. They also show people what each of them gains when everyone moves together, like a goal the whole team reaches sooner.

In its most developed form, Influence changes what people believe is possible. A leader can turn the story of a failure into the plan for what comes next, and bring a skeptical board behind a new direction for the company.

Where it shows up

A regional manager runs four gyms, each with its own manager. Members keep asking for a 5 a.m. opening, and a competitor nearby already opens at five.

She could send an email with the new hours. Instead, before the monthly meeting, she calls each manager and asks one question: what would an earlier opening cost you? Two answers stand out. One manager has staff with young kids who can’t start at five. Another worries about paying for an extra hour on days when nobody shows up.

At the meeting, she brings one plan for the whole group, and each manager can find their own concern in it. The early shift is voluntary and pays more per hour. The 5 a.m. opening runs only on weekdays, the days members asked for. She also brings the member survey, where 140 people asked for earlier hours. All four managers agree, and two of them offer to start the following week.

Three months later, the first hour is one of the busiest of the day in those two gyms, and the other two managers ask to join.

The regional manager had the authority to change the hours on her own. Influence was asking each manager before deciding, and coming back with a plan in which everyone could see their concern answered, so the four gyms moved together.

What it changes at work

A decision moves as fast as the people who agree with it.

In May 2025, Gartner published a survey of 632 B2B buyers, people who decide on a purchase together with colleagues from other areas. In 74% of those buying teams, the process showed what Gartner calls unhealthy conflict, with members holding conflicting objectives or disagreeing on the best course. Buying groups that reached consensus were 2.5 times more likely to report that their deal was high-quality. Tailoring information to the group as a whole improved consensus by 20%, while content focused on each individual’s interests hurt it.

The sellers in that survey face what the regional manager faced: people with different interests who have to agree before anything happens. Influence is the work of getting them there, with one plan the whole group can recognize itself in. On a team of four managers, it can start with a question asked before the meeting, while the plan can still change.

What it looks like, from 0 to 20

Skill Deck’s scale gives Influence a Practice at every level from 0 to 20, each with a name and an example of what it sounds like. Three of them, from one objection to a skeptic who changes their mind:

10, Objection Displacement

Names a doubt before the other person raises it, like the cost, and answers it right away with the return.

13, Chess Player Logic

Brings the goals of someone who isn't in the room, like the client's, into the discussion, so the group lines up behind what that person needs.

17, Belief System Dismantling

Wins over a skeptic by respecting the logic of how things have always been done, and showing how the new way protects what that logic was for.

Skill Deck draws each person’s level from the way they win support for their ideas in the meetings they already have.

One thing to try if you want to develop this Skill

We recommend starting with Practice 11, Lexical Mirroring. It’s about vocabulary.

1. Pick a request you need to make to someone in another area, like budget from Finance or time from the IT team.
2. Before the conversation, find out which number that person reports on every month.
3. Build your request around that number.

The request is the same. The first version asks the finance lead to care about your team’s week, and the second speaks in the numbers the finance lead answers for.

Pay attention to what the other person asks next. If the questions are about the details, like when the overtime would stop, they’re already weighing the request in their own terms.