One of my leadership heroes is Ken Blanchard, who is on record of saying, "The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.”

I wholeheartedly agree with Ken, that developing your influence skills is critical to success in today’s business environment, especially when a growing number of project managers and other leaders have an increasing amount of responsibility but not necessarily a corresponding amount of authority to go with it.

{loadposition content_amazonInfluenceWithoutAuthority}Many listening to this cast are in positions where they have to influence without authority and to help us improve our skills in that area I got in touch with the author of one my favorite books on the topic, Dr Allan Cohen, who wrote Influence Without Authority.

In this cast we walk through the influence model that Allan developed with Stanford professor Dr. David Bradford. In the follow-up cast I have Allan walk through a couple specific scenarios relevant to our audience, to apply the model in practical ways.

You'll notice part way through the cast that our recording system introduced some background interference due to a technical issue that occurred during my discussion with Dr. Cohen. I apologize for the annoyance, trusting you'll glean many lessons from the interview despite the distraction.

I recommend you check out the accompanying website for Dr. Cohen's book, which you can find at www.influencewithoutauthority.com. Please join me in the next episode when Dr. Cohen applies his influence model to two specific scenarios that I’m confident you’ll find relevant to your role.

And, one last thing! Would you take a moment to let a friend or colleague know about The People and Projects Podcast? I’d love to pour into them as well, to help them lead people and deliver projects.

Thanks for joining us for this episode! Have a great week!

Duration 29:53

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How to Influence Without Authority, an interview with author Dr. Allan Cohen