7 Lessons in Influence Without Authority

👤 Authored by Lashmi Bai Ravindrapandian
📅 Published on Jul 19, 2025

One thing I learned while working in PMO and Change initiatives is this.

We don’t always have authority. We can’t mandate something, and we can’t force people to adopt a change. But we still need to get things moving, and the only real lever we have is influence.

And honestly, I learned that influence is not something your job title gives you. We earn it, slowly, through our actions, conversations and how we show up when people work with us.

These are lessons from my own project experience. Not theory. Things I got right sometimes, and things I got wrong more often than I’d like to admit.

1. Our actions have to match our message

This was probably my biggest learning.

We can write the best communication in the world. We can talk about transparency, collaboration and listening. But people watch what we actually do.

If we ask for feedback and then disappear, why would anyone bother giving it to us again? I’ve seen this happen. Sometimes people don’t even need every suggestion implemented. They just need us to come back and say, “We heard you, this is what we can do,” or even, “We heard you, we can’t do this right now, and here’s why.” That alone makes a difference.

Now I try to close the loop after every round of feedback, tell people what actually happened with their input, and show when it changed something. And if I already know we’re going to ignore certain feedback, I’ve learned not to ask for it in the first place. For me, trust starts there.

2. People remember the story, not the slide

People who are in PMO or Change Management – love dashboards, RAG status, milestones, numbers. But I’ve learned people don’t always remember the slide. They remember the story.

I once described a change as moving house while the renovation is still happening. It was uncomfortable and a bit messy, but the idea of where we were going made sense.

That one comparison landed better than some of the detailed timelines I’d prepared.

Now I try out a few different ways of explaining a change and see what actually lands with people, rather than reaching for a metaphor just because it sounds clever. A bad metaphor can confuse people just as easily as a good one can clarify things.

3. Start with the story, then bring the data

I was trained to think in reports and dashboards, and data matters, but data alone doesn’t always make people care.

If we can show one real example, a person or a team actually going through the change, people understand it differently. The data can then support that story instead of replacing it.

So now, before I open a slide deck, I try to ask myself what’s actually happening to people here. That question is often more useful than starting with a red, amber and green dashboard.

4. Understand where people are before you communicate

This is something I got wrong more than once.

I’d be ready to talk about the benefits of a change, while the stakeholders were still trying to understand what was actually changing.

That’s a big difference, and it’s easy to try selling a change before people have even processed it, then wonder why we get resistance.

Now I try to stop and ask where people actually are. Do they understand what’s changing yet? Are they ready to act on it, or do they just need information first?

Sometimes the right message today really is just “here’s what’s happening,” and the benefits and next steps can come later.

Check this blog post on three phases of Transition!

5. Think about how the message will feel

We usually ask ourselves if a message is clear. I’ve learned we also need to ask how it will make people feel.

Words carry more than we expect. A term like “efficiency drive” or “rationalisation” might mean one thing to the project team, but someone reading it can immediately think, “are layoffs coming?” I’ve seen how quickly people fill communication gaps with their own assumptions.

So before sending anything important now, I ask what people might feel after reading it, whether any word could be misread, and whether we’re accidentally creating more fear or confusion than clarity!!

6. Yes, we need to repeat ourselves

I used to feel awkward repeating the same message. Didn’t we already tell them?

Probably. But not everyone saw it, not everyone understood it the same way, and not everyone was ready to hear it the first time we said it.

So I’ve learned continuous communication is just part of the job, whether it’s through email, team meetings, town halls, FAQs, or one-to-one conversations with team members.

What feels repetitive to us may be the first time someone is really paying attention.

7. Keep it simple and make feedback easy

This one sounds obvious, but honestly, we still make things complicated. We write long communications, use project language, and build complicated feedback forms, then wonder why only a few people respond.

If we want feedback, we need to make giving it easy. When the process takes too much effort, we usually only hear from the loudest people, and that’s rarely the full picture. So I try to keep things simple and genuinely easy to access and respond to, because communication isn’t just about sending a message, it’s also about making sure people can respond to it.

What influence means to me

For me, influence was never about one brilliant email. It’s built over time, when we do what we said we would do, listen and come back with answers, communicate at the right moment, and don’t disappear after collecting feedback.

We may not have the authority to force change on anyone. But we can influence how people experience it.

And honestly, I’m still learning this. Still getting parts of it wrong. Still refining how I communicate. But these lessons have stayed with me across every project, because influence was never assigned to us, we earn it one interaction at a time.