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Image: deagreez/Adobe Stock
Everywhere I go in the world to speak or advise companies, I hear the same complaint: “No one listens to my ideas.” I hear it from young professionals trying to launch their careers, mid-career managers navigating internal politics, and even senior leaders struggling to steer their organisations in a new direction.
We like to believe that good ideas rise to the top, that if something is smart or right, people will naturally get behind it. But history shows that’s not true. From antiseptics and cancer immunotherapy to Chester Carlson’s Xerox machine, even the most breakthrough ideas faced fierce resistance. Countless others never saw the light of day.
As the computing pioneer Howard Aiken put it, “Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.” Getting traction has less to do with persuasion or even the importance of the idea itself than it has to do with power. If you want your ideas to have an impact, you need to learn how to build influence.
Power is, simply put, the ability to get other people to do stuff. Yet it is also a surprisingly complex concept. A more formal definition would be that “power is the capacity to influence, control, or direct the behaviour of others or the course of events.” That includes a lot of nuance, because there are a lot of ways to influence people and shape outcomes.
Hard power is coercive, and you gain it by controlling institutions or other assets. A dictator like Vladimir Putin can get people to do what he wants by threatening their freedom, their lives, or by promising them money or power of their own. A CEO has the authority to promote or fire people as well as considerable power to set direction and allocate resources. For example, when Steve Jobs directed Apple to make the iPhone, he was using hard power.
Soft power, a term coined by Joseph Nye, is the ability to influence others without coercion through attraction. For example, after Putin wielded hard power by invading Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy leveraged his soft power by speaking to parliaments across the world. In a similar way, Tim Cook exercises soft power when he touts his company’s commitment to privacy.
There is also a third form: network power. Anne-Marie Slaughter explained in The Chessboard and the Web, “Power in networks flows from connectedness: the number, type, and location of connections a node has… the most central nodes have the most connections and the highest likelihood of gaining more.” Influence in networks doesn’t rely on formal authority or charisma, but how you’re connected within a particular network.
When you look at all three types, it becomes clear why so many people in positions of authority are surprised by how little power they actually have. Hard power alone won’t take you very far, especially in a digital age when information moves at light speed. As Moisés Naím pointed out in The End of Power, in a networked world, “Power is easier to get, but harder to use or keep.”
Hard power tends to be hierarchical. Or, as Tony Soprano once put it: “This thing’s a pyramid, since time immemorial. Shit runs downhill, money goes up. It’s that simple.” That’s how most people tend to think about power, as an organisational chart. But power in a network isn’t top-down, it emanates from the centre out and that’s a crucial difference.
To understand the concept of network centrality, it helps to look at this kite network developed by David Krackhardt at Carnegie Mellon University in the early 1990s:
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Image: FC
This structure is far more complex than the pyramid structure Tony Soprano described. Technically speaking, Carol is at the top and Ed is at the bottom, but from a network perspective, they are connected in exactly the same way. At the same time, while Andre and Fernando appear to be on the same level hierarchically, Fernando is more connected.
On Valdis Krebs’ Orgnet site, he offers a helpful mathematical analysis of the kite network using three simple measures of centrality:
Once you understand how influence flows through a network, you can begin to apply some simple strategies:
Heather also illustrates the most counterintuitive thing about networks: your best strategy for moving to the center is to constantly connect outward. Central nodes, by their very nature, are often saturated and harder to access. But every time you reach beyond the current network, you shift the center of gravity toward yourself, gaining potential power and influence.
One last science-backed tip for expanding your network is that you are best served by working to connect with friends of friends. Not only are you able to benefit from a warm introduction from these second-degree connections, but the friends of your friends are also likely to be more influential than a typical random person.
Understanding how influence works in a network is only part of the equation. To truly gain traction, you need to learn how to attract people to your side—and that’s where soft power comes in. One common pitfall to avoid is trying to start by convincing the skeptics. That’s almost always a bad idea. You want to start with people who are likely to be enthusiastic.
The first step is to work to understand what they’re trying to achieve, what their personal ambitions are, what drives them, and what frustrations or obstacles are holding them back. The key challenge is to mode shift from your story—what your goals and priorities are—to theirs and show them how they can be a hero of the overall story.
An effective persuasive case is built on three foundational elements of ethos, pathos, and logos—you need to establish credibility, build an emotional connection based on shared values, and make an evidence-based case. Over time and through a bit of trial and error, you weave these elements into a compelling narrative that draws people in.
Most of all, you need to create a sense of safety around your idea. That means offering low-risk ways to engage, addressing concerns early, and showing you’ve thought through the implications. Research shows that when people feel psychologically safe, they’re more open to new ideas and more willing to collaborate. Influence isn’t about winning arguments—it’s about creating an environment where people feel confident working with you.
Years ago, when I was just an up-and-coming executive, I worked for two entrepreneurs in Poland who understood how to seize power and influence better than anyone I’ve ever met before or since. They had a small local company, but were able to compete and collaborate with the largest multinational corporations in the world on a better than equal footing.
In one of my first experiences with them, I joined one of the partners for a breakfast meeting with a major media company. The executives were eager to form a partnership and, after laying out the general terms, handed us a draft contract—while casually mentioning, “We apologise that it’s in German.”
Without missing a beat, the partner deadpanned, “Oh really? Where do I sign?” and instantly shifted the power dynamic.
What I learned from those guys is that power has nothing to do with the usual trappings of authority. You don’t need a big title or to work for a big company. The truth is, the biggest organisations often produce the smallest people. Influence is not conferred on you by a hierarchy. In fact, mistaking formal authority for actual power can undermine your ability to influence those around you.
True influence is something you create yourself, by widening and deepening connections. Influence isn’t a monolithic force, but a continuum. Hard power, soft power, and network power work together—you can leverage one to build and enhance the others.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Greg Satell is Co-Founder of ChangeOS, a transformation & change advisory, a lecturer at Wharton, an international keynote speaker, host of the Changemaker Mindset podcast, bestselling author of Cascades: How to Create a Movement that Drives Transformational Change and Mapping Innovation, as well as over 50 articles in Harvard Business Review. You can learn more about Greg on his website, GregSatell.com, follow him on Twitter @DigitalTonto, watch his YouTube Channel and connect on LinkedIn.
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