Is "Influence" a Bad Word?
Every Monday, I'll bring you one mentor, a thinker, a teacher, a voice that has shaped how I lead, coach, and live. Not as a lecture, but as an invitation. A few minutes at the start of your week to think a little differently about who you are and how you show up.
Last week we began with peace. This week, we turn to a word that makes a surprising number of good people uncomfortable.
Influence.
“I don’t want to manipulate anyone”
“I don’t want to become an influencer. And I really don’t want to manipulate people.”
A brilliant leader said this in a group session recently, with real conviction. Many nodded, recognising that in themselves.
In fact, she was influencing all of us as she spoke. Her sincerity moved us. Her values drew us in. Her way of holding the room made us lean forward. She was doing the very thing she was disowning.
And she is far from alone. I hear a version of this almost every week, from thoughtful, senior, deeply capable people. I don’t like office politics. I don’t want to push. I don’t want to be that person. The instinct is beautiful — it comes from integrity. But it rests on a misunderstanding that quietly costs them.
Because the truth is this: we are, at all times, either influencing or being influenced.
Every time we nod, stay silent, dress a certain way, cite an expert, or say something with certitude, we’re pulling on levers of influence — usually without our conscious will, and without the other person’s full awareness.
The mentor: Robert Cialdini
Robert Cialdini is the most cited researcher on the psychology of persuasion. For his research, captured in the classicInfluence: The Psychology of Persuasion, he spent three years going undercover — training as a car salesman, a fundraiser, a telemarketer — to understand from the inside how "compliance professionals" get people to say "yes."
What he found is both fascinating and slightly unnerving. In a world drowning in information, our brains can’t deliberate on everything. So we rely on mental shortcuts (automatic rules of thumb that usually serve us well), and can just as easily be used on us. Cialdini mapped seven of these universal levers: reciprocity, commitment and consistency, social proof, liking, authority, scarcity, and unity.
Every one of them is at work around you today. Someone did you a small favour, and you feel the pull to return it. A product is labelled “most popular,” and suddenly it feels safer. An expert’s title lowers your guard before they’ve said a word. Let's take a closer look:
Reciprocity. People feel a deep, almost physical obligation to return what they've been given. As leaders, we trigger this constantly. The manager who invests generously in their people, who gives credit freely and support without keeping score, builds a reservoir of goodwill.
Commitment and Consistency. Once we've said something out loud, especially in front of others, we feel a strong pull to act in line with it. It's why a small public "yes" so often leads to a bigger one, and why the team that helped shape a decision defends it far more fiercely than the team that was simply handed it.
Social Proof. When we're unsure, we look to others, especially people like us, to decide what's right. One person naming the elephant in the room gives everyone else permission to speak. One visible defection can turn a whole meeting. We rarely notice how much our "own" view was really the room's.
Authority. We defer to credentials, titles, expertise, often without noticing. A white coat, a stage, a "Dr." in front of a name, a senior leader at the table, and our critical thinking quietly steps back.
Liking. We say yes far more readily to people we like, and we like those who feel similar to us, who pay us genuine attention, who are on our side. It's not manipulation to build real rapport before a hard conversation. It's often what makes the conversation possible at all.
Scarcity. We want what we might lose. The opportunity that's closing, the offer that won't last, the expertise that's rare: all pull harder precisely because they're scarce. Leaders wield this without noticing. The quietest person in the room often gets more attention and deep listening than others who speak more.
Unity. The deepest lever isn't persuasion at all. It's shared identity. We say yes most readily to those we feel are one of us: same “tribe”, same team, same mission, same story. This is why some who are powerful at influence don't just make the case; they build the "we" the case belongs to.
That’s the uncomfortable heart of Cialdini’s work: these forces don’t switch off because you disapprove of them. They operate with or without your consent. The only real choice is whether you become conscious of them.
Next time, watch the table
Here’s something I’ve seen in many boardrooms, and I’m sure you’ve seen it too. Watch closely the next time someone speaks in a meeting, and you’ll notice we rarely just listen.
We triangulate.
Someone makes a point, and some of the faces turn toward the speaker, while others turn, almost imperceptibly, toward the most senior person in the room. They’re not evaluating the idea. They’re reading the boss’s face to see how they should feel about it. I’ve watched a good idea die because the CEO’s eyebrow twitched, and a weak one carry the room because the same eyebrow rose with interest.
We’re swayed by the authority figure whose reaction we scan before forming our own. By the person that holds some power over us, maybe the one it feels a little risky to disagree with. By whoever seems most aligned with our own interests, because their nod feels like safety. These are Cialdini’s levers — authority, social proof, liking — but running live, around a table, in the space of a glance.
Next time, you might want to ask yourself: "What do I actually think, before I checked who I was supposed to agree with?"
Know your style
Influence isn’t one thing. We each have a natural style, often more than one, and naming yours is the difference between pulling a lever by habit and choosing it on purpose.
Remember those three postures: holding back, pushing hard, seeking buy-in? They aren’t random. They map onto something researchers have studied for decades.
A model I find useful is MHS’s Influence Style Indicator, which maps five styles across two orientations —advocating(push) anduniting(pull). There’s a validated assessment behind it, which makes it practical: you can actually find out where you sit.
The two push styles advocate for your position. Rationalizing moves people through logic, data, and reasoned argument — power residing in the rigour of the case. Asserting moves through confidence, clarity, and standing your ground — power residing in conviction and position. Push styles are fast and clear, and can tip into overbearing if that’s all you reach for.
The two pull styles draw people toward you. Bridging influences through listening, reciprocity, and genuine partnership — inviting people in rather than pressing on them. Inspiring moves people through shared purpose, story, and a compelling sense of what’s possible. Pull styles build deep commitment, though they can be slower.
The fifth, Negotiating, sits between the two — trading, making mutual concessions, finding the outcome that satisfies the larger interest.
To these five, I’d add a sixth I keep seeing and rarely see named: Planting Seeds— the patient, quiet style. Not loud, not in the moment: dropping an idea in one conversation that flowers in another, growing interest slowly, building alliances long before they’re needed. In many organisations it’s the most powerful of all — the influence that has already done its work by the time the meeting begins.
And what about holding back? That, too, is a style — the one we least recognise as such. Withdrawing your voice from a room is not an absence of influence. It is influence, exercised by subtraction, and everyone, or at least the system, feels it.
None of these is superior. Mastery is knowing your defaults and being able toflexto the style the moment actually calls for, in balance with the one that feels most like you.
The other half: when it’s used on you
Learning the levers doesn’t only make you a cleaner influencer. It makes you harder to manipulate.
Once you can feel reciprocity being triggered — the unsolicited gift that suddenly makes it hard to say no, you can pause, and decide freely rather than reflexively.
Once you notice scarcity being manufactured, or authority being performed, or social proof being staged, the whole table turning to check the boss’s face, the shortcut loses its grip.
You get your choice back.
This is the quiet power Cialdini offers: not just to influence well, but to be influenced only whenyoudecide it’s warranted. To give your “yes” as a genuine choice, not an automatic response someone else engineered.
The dark side
Which brings us to the distinction that changes everything.
Influence and manipulation use the same levers.The mechanics are identical. Reciprocity, scarcity, authority — they work exactly the same way whether you’re serving someone or exploiting them. What separates the two is not technique. It’s three things, and the first governs the rest.
Intention. The question at the heart of it: am I seeking to gainto the detrimentof another — or to gain while bringing value to them, and to the greater good? Everything else follows from this.
Transparency. Not a binary but a level. How much of what I’m doing could the other person see without the whole thing collapsing?
Stakes. Does the other person have something to lose while I gain? Manipulation is asymmetric by design. Influence, done well, leaves both parties better than it found them.
Manipulation extracts. Influence, done with integrity, uses the same human wiring in service of something shared — and would survive being seen.
My invitation this week
Mastery here isn’t about becoming slicker or more strategic. It’s the opposite. It’s about knowing yourself so well — your style, your levers, your defaults, that every act of influence becomes achoice, made in the open, in line with who you are.
So the question is: are you aware enough, intentional enough, to choose how you influence and to what end?
Kindly,
Daniela
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