The ability to influence others is a critical skill at any career stage.
Managers and business leaders use influence to inspire employees to pursue shared goals. Entrepreneurs leverage it to attract investors and early hires. Individual contributors exercise it to boost team performance and earn promotions. Across the career ladder, interpersonal influence is one of the most powerful assets you can develop.
As Harvard Business School Professor Jill Avery, who teaches the online course Personal Branding, says, “Influence is a commodity, and those who wield it have power.”
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What Is Interpersonal Influence?
Interpersonal influence is the ability to affect another person’s actions, thoughts, or feelings through communication—ideally, encouraging them to take the desired action.
“Influence is a force that affects how decisions are made, and often does so without explicit command and control,” Avery says in Personal Branding. “So much of effective leadership revolves around persuading others, obtaining their buy-in and support, and strengthening trust. These solid bonds will help leaders move toward successful achievement of their goals with the support of others.”
Interpersonal influence takes many forms, using verbal and nonverbal methods, such as:
- Persuasion
- Incentives
- Reciprocity
- Negotiation
- Competition
- Inspiration
Consider a manager aiming to increase their team’s sales for a specific product. They might use several strategies to influence them, such as:
- Persuading team members to cross-sell to existing clients
- Offering bonuses or commissions as incentives
- Sparking competition between team members to boost performance
- Leading by example and selling the product themselves
- Inspiring the team by aligning with company values
Interpersonal influence also plays a role in personal relationships—with friends, family members, and romantic partners—making it a valuable life skill beyond the workplace.
Influence Styles
Interpersonal influence can be expressed through various styles; each suited to different audiences or goals.
One well-known framework, proposed by Chris Musselwhite and Tammie Plouffe in a Harvard Business Review article, identifies five primary influence styles:
- Rationalizing: Using logic, data, and expertise
- Asserting: Applying confidence, rules, or authority
- Negotiating: Offering concessions to find common ground
- Inspiring: Appealing to shared emotions or mission
- Bridging: Building consensus through relationships
Another framework, conceptualized by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba in their book Citizen Marketers and presented in Personal Branding, outlines four content-based influence styles for digital influencers:
- Filters: Curators who collect and organize valuable information
- Fanatics: Experts who deeply engage with a niche topic
- Facilitators: Community builders and moderators
- Firecrackers: Viral content creators with short-lived bursts of attention
Most people blend multiple styles depending on their context and goals.
Benefits of Improving Your Interpersonal Influence Skills
Like many soft skills, it can sometimes be challenging to spot interpersonal influence in a professional setting. Improving your ability to influence others offers wide-ranging professional benefits, including:
1. Better Conflict Resolution
Conflict is inevitable in any workplace. Your ability to resolve conflict effectively builds trust, strengthens relationships, and prevents minor issues from escalating, whether you’re directly involved or mediating between others.
Influence skills like negotiation, persuasion, and logical reasoning can help you find common ground and guide conversations toward productive outcomes.
2. Improved Communication
Most professional conversations are purpose-driven. Whether you’re selling to a client, assisting a customer, or collaborating with a co-worker, understanding your intended audience, their goals, and your desired outcomes can help you communicate more clearly and effectively.
3. Leadership Skill Improvement
At its core, being an effective leader is about influencing others to take meaningful action. While the approach may vary by role, influence shows up when you:
- Inspire employees around a shared mission
- Motivate performance through incentives
- Negotiate deals with external partners
- Communicate value to clients and stakeholders
Influence, even when unspoken, is a hallmark of strong leadership.
4. Career and Professional Growth
Influence supports career development directly and indirectly. Indirectly, strong influence can help you hit goals, impress decision-makers, and earn promotions. Directly, it also strengthens performance in interviews, presentations, and other high-stakes moments.
Exerting Interpersonal Influence Through Your Personal Brand
To influence others, you must communicate your value clearly. This is where personal branding plays a key role. A strong brand shows why others should trust you, follow your lead, and see your influence as a benefit.
In Personal Branding, Avery explains that several components of your personal brand can enhance your ability to influence others.
“Influence is the product of your expertise,” Avery shares. “Specialized expertise, experience, skills, competencies, and connoisseurship in a particular domain increase your influence. That’s why personal branding is about communicating those things in a compelling way. Demonstrating expertise grants you legitimacy to be an authority on the subject and encourages others to listen to and follow you. It allows you to set yourself apart from others and use your superior knowledge, skills, or experiences to persuade. Your expertise grants you credibility.”
Beyond expertise, Avery emphasizes other brand components that contribute to influence, including trustworthiness, likeability, familiarity, and social capital. Critical are the rhetorical skills you use to communicate your brand.
“Your rhetorical skill helps you establish authority,” Avery says in Personal Branding. “How well you can communicate your value and tell the stories that help you embody your personal brand determines your level of persuasiveness. Rhetorical skill comes not only from speaking or presenting well, but also requires emotional intelligence: being able to understand your audience, empathize with them, and provide them with informational value, emotional value, entertainment value, or social value. Remember that your personal brand is not all about you; it’s about the promise of value you make to others.”
Influence is Your Personal Brand in Action
While your ability to influence others professionally depends on several factors, a clear, compelling, and differentiated personal brand is essential.
Your brand comes to life through influence. The more you communicate your value, the more effectively you can shape outcomes. Invest in and audit your brand and define your personal value proposition to ensure it’s as effective as possible.
Ready to grow your influence? Explore the online course Personal Branding—one of HBS Online’s marketing courses—designed to help you define what sets you apart and clearly articulate your value. Or, consider our yearlong Credential of Leadership, Impact, and Management in Business (CLIMB) program, which includes Personal Branding in the required curriculum.
