# How Do You Influence Someone? Nine Moves That Actually Work Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/influence/how-do-you-influence-someone/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/influence/how-do-you-influence-someone.md Entity type: Article Last updated: 2026-07-07 Language: en Primary audience: professionals improving influence at work Owner: Headway Skills Contact: https://headwayskills.com/contact/ ## Short answer Influence isn't a verbal trick. Nine practical ways to influence someone at work, from mapping what they want to taking the small yes and following through. ## Key facts - Title: How Do You Influence Someone? Nine Moves That Actually Work - Category: Influence - Primary skill: Influence - Related skills: Communication, Networking - Primary keyword: how do you influence someone - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/influence/how-do-you-influence-someone/ ## What this page covers - Influence isn't a verbal trick. Nine practical ways to influence someone at work, from mapping what they want to taking the small yes and following through. - Practical guidance for how do you influence someone - How this topic connects to Influence ## Detailed explanation You had a good idea. You [said it in the meeting](/knowledge/professional-behaviors/how-to-speak-up/), someone nodded, and nothing happened. So how do you influence someone, really? You do it by working out what the other person needs before you ask for anything, building a track record they can already see, and then making one specific request that is cheap for them to say yes to. Influence is mostly preparation. Very little of it happens in the moment where you speak. That gap between what people search for and what actually works is worth understanding, because it explains why the advice you have probably already read felt useless. ## How do you influence someone when you have no authority? Most advice on this splits into two camps that never meet. One offers psychological triggers borrowed from consumer marketing. The other tells you to build trust and relationships, which is true but reads like advice for people who already have twenty years of them. The nine moves below sit between the two: things you can do this month, without a title, with the colleague you actually need to convince. ### Start with what they get out of it This is the single most repeated instruction across serious writing on influence, and the one most often skipped. Before you pitch anything, work out the other person's targets, their current pressures, and what they are being measured on. A request framed around your interest gives them no reason to spend effort. The same request framed against their own numbers becomes cheap to approve. This move costs nothing but preparation time and needs no seniority, which makes it the natural place to start when you have none. ### Find out how the decision actually gets made A surprising share of refusals are not disagreements at all. They are timing failures, budget-cycle failures, or the fact that one person you never spoke to would have objected. Before you spend your effort persuading someone, find out [who actually decides](/knowledge/influence/stakeholder-management/), who has to not object, and when the window closes. Advice on influence talks endlessly about convincing a person and almost never about locating the decision. Ask a colleague who has been there longer; the answer usually takes one conversation. ### Build the credibility before you need it People weigh a request partly on who is making it. Without a title, the substitute is being [reliably good at one identifiable thing](/knowledge/influence/professional-credibility/) and delivering what you said you would. Forbes reports that responsiveness, accessibility, and follow-through are strongly related to influence, which means the last three things you promised are part of this pitch whether anyone mentions them or not. That is uncomfortable, and also fixable, since it is built from ordinary habits rather than talent. If you are unsure how those habits currently read to other people, it can be worth getting [an outside read](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) on them rather than guessing. ### Give something before you need anything The relationship advice is right, just usually explained badly. It is not that favors create debts. It is that if the very first substantial interaction you have with someone is a request, there is nothing there for them to answer it from. Share information they lack, help with the thing they are visibly stuck on, make the introduction they need. Do it without keeping score, because keeping score is visible and it is what turns this from a relationship into a transaction. ### Ask instead of tell Inviting someone to improve your plan works better than asking them to approve it. This shows up independently in the psychology-driven writing and in the practical workplace advice, which agree on almost nothing else. The mechanism is simple: people defend what they helped build. Bring the idea in a state that is clearly unfinished, name the part you are unsure about, and ask what they would change. You give up sole ownership of the idea and get a supporter instead of an audience. ### Lead with the point, then show it Say what you want and why it helps in the first thirty seconds, then support it. The instinct, especially when you feel junior, runs the other way: build the justification first and arrive at the request once attention has already drifted. Resist it. One concrete example, a short demonstration, or a real case does more work than three more paragraphs of argument. Keep it simple enough that the person can repeat your point accurately to someone else, because at some stage they will have to. ### Say the drawbacks out loud yourself Name the cost, the risk, and the part that might not work, then explain why it is still worth doing. A case that includes its own weaknesses reads as an assessment; a case that is all upside reads as a sales attempt, which is exactly the doubt an enthusiastic junior proposal tends to trigger. Ciphr describes a related move as soft positioning: acknowledge the other person's view and place yourself on the same side of the issue before you raise your concern. You lose nothing by conceding what they were going to spot anyway. ### Let the objection finish Hear the whole objection before you answer, and answer the real one rather than the one you rehearsed. Interrupting to counter is the most common way a nearly-won conversation gets lost. Forbes points to research finding that listening had a positive effect on influence beyond the impact of what people said, which is worth sitting with: what you take in during the conversation may matter more than the case you prepared for it. [Ask one clarifying question](/knowledge/communication/active-listening-in-communication/) before responding. It costs ten seconds and often changes your answer. ### Take the small yes, then follow it through When the full request is unlikely, ask for less: a pilot, one meeting, a single dataset, two weeks. Agreement to a small first step makes the larger commitment substantially more likely later, because people work to stay consistent with what they have already said. Then deliver on the small thing visibly and completely. Agreement is not implementation, and most influence quietly evaporates in the gap between the yes and the thing existing. Following through is not the epilogue to influencing someone. It is roughly half of it. ## Where influence stops and manipulation starts Much of what circulates under "persuasion techniques" comes straight from consumer marketing: artificial scarcity, social proof, borrowed authority. Those levers work on strangers you will never see again. They work poorly on a colleague you will still be sitting next to in six months, and when someone notices the technique, you lose the credibility you were trying to build. The honest test is simple. If the other person could see exactly what you are doing and why, and would still be fine with it, it is influence. If the move depends on them not noticing, it is manipulation, and it is borrowing against a reputation you will need later. ## The skills underneath all nine moves Read the nine back and a pattern shows up: almost none of them are things you say. They are things you prepare, deliver, and repeat, which is why they can be practiced rather than performed. Three underlying skills carry most of the weight. **Influence** is the one doing the obvious work here, and its usefulness is in the sequence rather than any single tactic. Prepare by understanding what is in it for them and how the decision is really made. Pitch by establishing rapport first, keeping it simple, presenting the drawbacks alongside the case, and taking the small win when the full yes is not available. Then persist: follow up on what was agreed, keep momentum, and see it through to implementation. Alongside that runs a reputation built on delivering consistently and being straight with people, which is what makes the same pitch land for one person and die for another. **Communication** decides whether the pitch survives contact. Stating the main point first, being brief, being clear and direct, and adapting to how the other person actually takes in information are the difference between a good idea and a heard one. Handling the objection well belongs here too: listening fully before answering, staying on the issue, and disagreeing without it becoming personal. **Networking** is what makes the request answerable at all. Building relationships before you need them and giving value without expecting a return means that when you finally do ask, you are not a stranger with a favor. In practice that is unglamorous: sharing what you know, connecting two people who should meet, being useful to colleagues in other teams months before you need anything from them. If you are wondering which of these to work on first, that is exactly what the free Job Skills Test is for. It measures these three alongside the other nine work skills the framework covers, so you get [a clear place to start](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) rather than a list of everything you could theoretically improve. ## Getting better at this without becoming someone else Some of the nine will already be things you do without particularly thinking about them. That is normal, and it is a more useful starting point than it feels, because it means the ground you have to make up is narrower than the list implies. None of this asks you to become louder, more forceful, or more political than you are. The moves that carry the most weight here are quiet ones: preparation, listening, and doing what you said you would do. What does change is how much this matters. As the requests you make get larger, so does the gap between the people who can get a yes and the people who cannot. You have already done the part most people skip, which is reading through nine moves instead of hunting for the one line that would fix it. The useful question now is simply which of these you already have and which are worth building. ## See where your skills stand The only thing left is to find out where you are starting from. The Job Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of your work skills. It shows you where you currently stand across all twelve of them, including the three above, and which ones would make the biggest difference for you right now. There is no preparation to do and nothing to commit to afterwards, so if you are curious, it is a low-cost place to begin. **[Take the skills test](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/)** Free, no sign-up, and about 7 minutes from start to your results. ## Who this is for - Professionals building practical workplace skills - Readers looking for specific, usable work advice - Managers, educators, and coaches supporting career readiness ## Common questions ### What is this guide about? Influence isn't a verbal trick. Nine practical ways to influence someone at work, from mapping what they want to taking the small yes and following through. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Influence. It also relates to Communication, Networking. ### What is the recommended next step? Use the free Work Skills Test to reflect on which work skill to improve next. ## Related pages - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/influence.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/communication.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/networking.md - https://headwayskills.com/work-skills-test.md ## Citation guidance Use the canonical page when citing this content: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/influence/how-do-you-influence-someone/ Preferred summary: "Influence isn't a verbal trick. Nine practical ways to influence someone at work, from mapping what they want to taking the small yes and following through." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.