Chapter 8: Influence Tactics of Leaders
KnowledgeBank #1, p. 237
Two More Essentially Ethical and Honest Influence Tactics
Getting Network Members to Support Your Position. Networking is an important strategy for managing a career and becoming an influential person. The ability to establish a network and call on a member of the network when needed helps you exert influence. Other qualified people supporting your position lend credibility to it, as illustrated in the following example:
A plant general manager wanted to convince upper management that running the plant continuously would be profitable for the company. So he contacted two people to support him. The first was a plant manager from another company whose plant runs continuously, and the second was a professor of operations management. The manager in question organized a breakfast meeting with his boss, the vice president of manufacturing, and the two network members to discuss continuous plant operations. The informal discussion of the potential advantages in running three shifts convinced the vice president of manufacturing to give continuous operation a trial.
Displaying Personal Magnetism. Another way of influencing people is closely related to charisma and inspirational appeal. Personal magnetism refers to a captivating, inspiring, personality with charm and charismatic-like qualities. The magnetic individual literally draws other people to him or her, and thus can influence others. Personal magnetism encompasses a variety of personality traits and behaviors, and it can be developed along the same lines as charisma. Many of the leaders mentioned throughout this text have high personal magnetism. One of the best examples is Andrea Jung, CEO of Revlon (described in Chapter 3), who has a celebrity allure as she addresses large groups of Avon representatives. Even outside the glitter of being on stage at a company meeting, Jung has a magnetic impact on work associates.
Chapter 8: Influence Tactics of Leaders
KnowledgeBank #2, p. 242
Two More Essentially Unethical Dishonest Influence Tactics
Game Playing. Leaders, as well as others, often play games in order to influence others. A game in this context is a repeated series of exchanges between people that seems plausible but has a hidden agenda or purpose. Influence is exerted in a game because the person against whom the game is played is made to feel humble.
Blemish is an example of a simple game often used by managers to keep team members in line. All that is required is for the leader to find some flaw in every assignment completed by team members. The game-playing boss stays one up with comments such as “You did a great job on that report except in your conclusion. It just didn’t seem to fit the body of the report.”
One-time transactions between the influence agent and the influence target sometimes resemble a game. One such tactic is the door-in-the-face technique. The person attempting to exert influence makes a major request that will most likely be rejected. Shortly thereafter comes a more modest request, which was really intended in the first place. [1] In rejecting the first request, the target person may feel guilty and thus be responsive to a future request. For example, a security manager wanted a larger budget for cellular telephones and pagers for her group. At the time the company was carefully controlling expenditures. The security manager approached her manager and requested authorization for new office space for her staff. Her budget request was rejected quickly. She returned two weeks later with a request for an increased cellular telephone and paging system budget to compensate for the denial of new offices. Her request was granted within one week.
Silent Treatment. A leader uses the silent treatment through saying nothing, sulking, or other forms of passivity until the influence target complies. Research questionnaire items related to sulking are as follows:
I don’t respond to him until he does it.
I ignore him until he does it.
I am silent until he agrees to do it.
I refuse to do something he likes until he does it. [2]
[1]Chad T. Lewis, Joseph E. Garcia, and Sarah M. Jobs, Managerial Skills in
Organizations (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1990), p. 234.
[2]David M. Buss, Mary Gomes, Dolly S. Higgins, and Karen Lauterbach, “Tactics
of Manipulation,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, December 1987, p. 1222.