AMA: Coda Head of Product & Design, Lane Shackleton on Influencing without Authority

There are two things I think about in cases like this: fears and steel-manning. I’ve found that one of the fastest ways to help get alignment amongst executives is to start by establishing their fears about a given strategy, plan, write-up, etc. Often disagreements in strategy come down to one person or team worrying about downstream consequences that can often be mitigated once they are out in the open. The other useful tool in these situations is steel-manning. The idea is that often during disagreement and debate, you see people ‘straw-manning’ each others opinions. They construct a flimsy version of the other person’s opinion (the straw-man) and easily refute it. Steel-manning does the opposite. It forces both parties to clearly re-articulate the best version of the other person’s strategy proposal. I find that when two executives are disagreeing, forcing the group to steel-man both proposals enables them to be properly compared. After using these two tools, I’d say the last piece is getting to the point where one person is able to mitigate their fears in the opposing strategy and effectively disagree and commit. Clearly stating both of these parts at the end of the process is essential. One effective way at achieving this is to frame problems and strategy decisions clearly in a writeup and have the team be transparent with their feedback and questions, through what I call two-way writeups.

Lots of ways! Here are two that I find myself talking about a lot. First, get really good at spotting ambiguity and make it your job to remove it. Ambguity comes in lots of forms. It can be engineers not knowing what to do next, ambiguous next steps coming out of a meeting, or teams being unsure what commitments they are making to each other. In all of these instances (and many more), ambiguity slows down teams. So whether it’s big or small, make it your job to take any ambiguity you see and make it clear for the team. One great way to do this is to become a great note taker. It’s almost a secret weapon at removing ambiguity. You’re forced to clarify statements for the notes, you’re responsible for summarizing what happened in a meeting, and you have to write clear next steps with people assigned to them. The second way is to practice the skills and craft you want to master. Professional athletes practice their craft for hours per day, and you should too. That means finding things you need to improve on and find ways to get repetitions. It sounds silly but very few people do it. Have a tough conversation with a peer? Practice until you’re happy with the way you’re phrasing your feedback. Have a big presentation? Practice it 50 times. Working on being a more influential writer? Go through 10 drafts of an important memo and get a great writer to coach you. You get the idea. One nice side effect is that you start to meet other like-minded (and growth mindset) people along your journey to get better at your craft.

I think it’s important to let team members resolve conflict between themselves whenever possible. If you’re seen as the ‘fixer’ for all conflicts on a team, it puts you in a tough position and disempowers the team. So my first reaction when conflict arises is to attempt to coach the two team members individually on how they can resolve the conflict directly with the other person, without me or someone else having to be formally involved. One of the best tools I know in terms of conflict resolution is called non-violent communication. It’s helpful in all types of situations and is easy to modify for a given conflict. You can read more about it but there are four parts: (1) observations — here’s what I’m seeing, what are you seeing?, (2) feelings — here’s how I feel, how do you feel? (3) needs — here’s what I need in this situation, what do you need in this situation? (4) requests — here’s my request of you, what do you need from me? In coaching people through conflict, I often help them see their situation through this framework. Sometimes, for smaller conflicts, I use it implicitly through asking these types of questions. And for larger conflicts, it may involve more formally sketching out answers and the conversations that need to happen to get things resolved. The point is, you can tailor your usage of the framework to the size of the conflict. I find this frame is very helpful in letting each person detach slightly from their immediate emotions and start to more objectively assess the situation through their own lens and the lens of the other person. At the end of the day, the most important thing is to just get the two parties communicating and not let this conflict fester.

The simple answer is to do what you say you’re going to to do. It sounds simple, but it’s not always easy to achieve. When you make good on your commitments over a long period of time, you gain a deep trust from those around you. On the contrary, when you say you’re going to do something and don’t do it, you begin to erode the trust of those around you. Again, it sounds simple but it’s not easy to do this over a long time with lots of diverse stakeholders. I find that when I don’t do this well, it’s usually because I’ve over-committed myself, so be mindful of the commitments your making!

Few tips here. First, build trust before you need it. It’s so important to build these relationships before you need to test them. Grab coffee, lunch, ask about people’s family life, etc. If you’re able to build a foundation of trust before you need to influence a different team, you’ll find it’s much easier than starting that relationship cold. Second, understand their priorities. It sounds obvious but you’ve got to start by putting yourself in their shoes. There are some easy ways to do this. As an example, you can start your conversations by asking what the other person or team’s upcoming goals or priorities are. That’s a good signal to them that you’re not going to come in and push your priorities without understanding theirs first. The other good way to do this is to be great at steel-manning (mentioned in another answer). When you can articulate another team or function’s perspective as good as or better than that team can, you’ll gain their trust. Third, be helpful in unexpected ways. Once you understand the priorities of other teams, you can be proactive in helping with what they need. If you understand their priorities in advance, then you can find small ways to help them, which builds the relationship and engenders trust. I find that even small gestures like connecting to experts in their area, or giving thoughtful feedback goes a long way in building trust that helps with influencing a team later.