Influence Without Authority

Who it's for

Project and program leads, product managers, specialists and advisers, chiefs of staff, and anyone in a matrix who delivers through people they don't manage.

Output

• A scored report after every room, with the moment that earned each score and one recommended focus
• Every room calibrated to the real person you're influencing, from the sponsor to the meeting that has to decide
• A trajectory across every attempt
• Scored against published frameworks: Cohen and Bradford's Influence Without Authority, Stakeholder Salience, Interest-Based Negotiation, Principled Negotiation, Participatory Facilitation and Disciplined Prioritisation

Program contents

1. Upward influence · Peer influence — Managing Up · Stakeholder Influence
2. Trading position — Negotiation
3. Decision facilitation · Setting a boundary — Meeting Facilitation · Saying No Simulation

How the program works

A self-serve program for project leads, specialists and anyone who gets things done through people they don't manage, built on Renatus. Five simulation rooms · Three weeks, one or two rooms a week · Unlimited attempts · Ongoing thereafter.

The rooms

Why this program exists

You get things done through people who don't report to you: a sponsor with six other priorities, a peer team with its own targets, a colleague you need for something and can't order to help, a meeting that has to land a decision and won't unless you make it. They decide whether to back you, and none of them takes instruction. This program prepares you for that through simulation. Ren builds each scene from your real role, your sector and the person you name, and plays every person in it, so every scenario is new, adjusting according to your decisions.

What you'll achieve

1. Rehearsal of the conversations that decide whether people back you: the ask upward, the peer with other priorities, the trade, the meeting that must land a decision, and the request you need to decline
2. A scored report after every room: each dimension with the moment that earned its score, strengths, development areas, blind spots where the evidence shows them, and one recommended focus with a first step
3. Every scene calibrated to the real person you name, so the rehearsal maps onto the relationship you are navigating
4. Unlimited attempts at every room, each a new scene at the calibration you set, scored on the same dimensions and charted against every attempt before it

At a glance

Who it's for

Project and program leads, product managers, specialists and advisers, chiefs of staff, and anyone in a matrix who delivers through people they don't manage. Every room calibrates to your role and the person you name, so it serves someone managing a single peer relationship and someone running a program with a dozen of them. It assumes you have a live piece of work that depends on someone who doesn't report to you, and at least one of the five conversations still ahead of you.

Cadence

3 weeks

1

Upward influence · Peer influence · Managing Up · Stakeholder Influence · Read Grounding and Outcome; read Reading the Room and Durability; write the opening line for each real conversation

2

Trading position · Negotiation · Read Concession Pattern and Pressure Response; negotiate the real trade

3

Decision facilitation · Setting a boundary · Meeting Facilitation · Saying No Simulation · Read Closure and Clarity; read the Ren summary; set the ongoing plan

Session by session