Influence Tactics

As we talked about earlier, power is the potential to influence others and influence tactics are the actual behaviors used by an individual to change the attitudes, opinions, or behaviors of a target person. There are a number of different influence tactics.

Types of Influence Tactics

We will discuss nine influence tactics. These are assessed by the Influence Behavior Questionnaire (IBQ; Yukl et al., 1992), which was developed to study influence tactics.

• Rational Persuasion: agents use logical arguments or factual evidence to influence others. An example of this would be when a politician explains that taxes need to be raised in order for school children to have new books and supplies.
• Inspirational Appeals: agents make a request or proposal designed to arouse enthusiasm or emotions in targets. An example is when a church minister pleas with members to donate money for a new church.
• Consultation: agents ask targets to participate in planning an activity. An example is when a town leader asks for the help of residents to help plan a new playground for the children.
• Ingratiation: agents attempt to get the target in a good mood before making a request. An example is a salesperson flatters you in order to convince you to buy a product.
• Personal Appeals: agents ask another to do a favor out of friendship. If you ask your friend to help you with a project because you’ve been friends for a long time, you are making a personal appeal.
• Exchange: influencing a target through the exchange of favors. If you ask a friend to watch your child because you watched his child last week, you are using an exchange tactic.
• Coalition Tactics: agents seek the aid or support of others to influence the target. An example is when several students band together in order to ask a teacher for a deadline to be moved up.
• Pressure Tactics: threats or persistent reminders used to influence targets. If a boss threatened the loss of salary or reward, he would be using pressure tactics.
• Legitimizing Tactics: agents make requests based on their position or authority. An example is when a principal asks a teacher to be on a committee and the teacher agrees because of the principal’s role, even though she doesn’t want to be on the committee.

Influence Tactics and Power

One’s influence tactic of choice depends on many factors such as intended outcomes and one’s power relative to the target person.

There is a strong relationship between the relative power of agents and targets and the types of influence targets used. Leaders with high amounts of referent power have built up close relationships with followers and may be able to use a wide variety of influence tactics. Leaders with high referent power generally do not use legitimizing or pressure tactics. Leaders who have only coercive or legitimate power may be able to use only coalition, legitimizing, or pressure tactics to influence followers.

People usually use legitimizing or pressure tactics when an influencer has the upper hand, when resistance is anticipated, or when the other person’s behavior violates important norms. People use ingratiation when they are at a disadvantage, when they expect resistance, or when they will personally benefit if the attempt is successful. People typically use the exchange and rational appeal when parties are relatively equal in power, when resistance is not anticipated, and when the benefits are organizational as well as personal.

Leaders should pay attention to how they are influencing others and to why they believe such methods are called for. Influence efforts intended to build others up more frequently lead to positive results than those efforts intended to put others down. One’s influence tactic of choice depends on many factors such as intended outcomes and one’s power relative to the target person.