Conger’s Four Steps of Effective Influencing
Dr. Jay A. Conger’s framework for influencing others — particularly useful for PMs who must drive action without direct authority. Influence alters thinking or behavior; unlike persuasion, it tends to last.
The four steps
1. Establish credibility
Make the case for why your audience should listen to you. Credibility has two sources:
- Expertise — professional experience, extensive research
- Relationships — honest, trustworthy, someone they want to work with
Example: “I’m Elita, a lead project manager at Office Green. Your colleague, Alex, passed on your contact information. Alex and I worked together to launch new services at Office Green before she joined your organization.”
2. Frame for common ground
Make the case for how your idea benefits the audience (not you). Requires:
- Strong understanding of their values
- What about your idea will appeal to them
- How they benefit from agreeing
Example: “We’re launching a service to provide top clients with desk plants and we’d like to explore a bundle offering to pair high-quality chocolate with each plant order. I’ve admired your organization’s push in recent years to work with other lifestyle and wellness brands — there may be a great opportunity for us to collaborate.”
3. Provide evidence
Make your case through hard data and persuasive storytelling.
Example: “We recently surveyed clients to gauge interest in this kind of offering, and your brand came up again and again.”
4. Connect emotionally
Demonstrate that you’re emotionally committed to the idea. People decide emotionally and justify rationally.
Example: “We’ve been following your profile on Instagram and love your posts on chocolate’s connection to living a well and balanced lifestyle. Perhaps we can discuss combining forces to bring this message to an even wider audience. If you’re interested, I’d love to connect and share what our partner program is all about.”
Common influencing mistakes
- Approaching the audience aggressively
- Resisting compromise
- Failing to establish credibility, frame for common ground, or connect emotionally
- Assuming agreements can be worked out in a single conversation
Bacon’s sources of power (companion framework)
From Terry Bacon’s The Elements of Power. Most power sources fall into two buckets:
Organizational power:
- Role — your position in the org
- Information — your access and control over information
- Network — who you’re connected with
- Reputation — how others perceive you
Personal power:
- Knowledge — expertise, unique abilities, ability to learn
- Expressiveness — ability to communicate
- History — personal history with the other person
- Character — others’ view of your personal qualities
Use the right source in the right context. A new PM with low Role power can still influence through Knowledge and Expressiveness.
Application
Use these four steps when proposing anything you need stakeholder buy-in for — a scope change, a budget request, a new process, a vendor choice. Draft an “influencing statement” ahead of important meetings that explicitly hits all four.
Connections
- stakeholder-analysis — Conger requires understanding who you’re influencing
- change-management — the influencer change framework extends this to organizational change
- course-4-project-execution
Source References
- google-project-management-course — both Conger’s steps and Bacon’s power sources