Influencing Without Authority

Lessons from a product management coach

Intro

As a product manager, how do you get your peers and stakeholders to agree with your point of view? Often this skill is called influencing without authority. This is a challenging skill for most product managers to master.

This week, we have a guest with us, Jori Bell, a seasoned product leader turned coach. Jori brings a wealth of experience, having navigated the often murky waters of influencing without authority in her career.

In this post, Jori unpacks what it means to influence without authority:

• Why it’s crucial for PMs,

• How to sharpen this superpower through storytelling, delivery, and mindset shifts.

Whether you’re just starting your PM journey or you’ve been doing it for years, Jori’s practical advice will help expand your influence.

Let’s get straight to Jori and her insights on influencing without authority.

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Jori’s Post

Jori here👋. As a seasoned product leader turned coach, I’ve been influencing without authority for many years.

Technically, we’re all influencing without authority, right?

Who really has the power to command someone to do anything? Very philosophical, I know. But that power is typically reserved for managers and CEOs in a business setting.

For product managers, influencing without authority is baked into the role. Product management's ambiguity and amorphous nature means you’re constantly navigating spaces where formal authority doesn’t exist.

To me, the essence of product management = influencing without authority.

Months ago, I planted my flag in the sand, declaring that soft skills are far more important than hard skills in product management.

Why? As a Product Coach, I’ve observed that while many people seek my support with hard skills—like asking for a framework —my coaching is often spent on relational skills. Hard skills provide the foundation. But, I believe that the soft skills truly set apart a good PM from a great one.

Here, I will double-click into influencing without authority, share a transformative experience I had and offer tactical tips for getting better at practicing it.

What Does Influencing Without Authority Mean?

Influencing without authority means rallying people, aligning their efforts, and persuading them to take action—all without relying on direct reporting relationships or formal mandates.

It’s a skill that blends masterful storytelling with the strategy of salesmanship.

I also call it herding cats.

But, truly, it’s campaigning for a cause and building momentum for collective success.

Why Is It Crucial for PMs?

While this skill is important for anyone, it’s particularly critical for PMs. PMs are often the spokes of the team wheel, representing the team externally and negotiating priorities to ensure the right work gets done.

Good PMs get teams and stakeholders to follow their lead.

Great PMs? They turn teams and stakeholders into evangelists for their customers, their metrics and most of all, their cause.

Learning How to Influence Without Authority

Back in 2019, I attended a course called “Influencing Without Authority” when I was working at Spotify. I traveled to Westchester with a handful of fellow Spotifiers—not just PMs—to dive deep into this skill.

I went in with low expectations but in truth, it was a transformative experience.

Why?

I walked in thinking influencing was all about what I said. And as you may have guessed, I walked out realizing that was only part of the puzzle.

Here’s a core memory:

During an exercise, the trainers filmed us having simple 1:1 conversations.

Watching the playback, I was shocked.

My body language was leaning away and I was hunched over while delivering my message. I looked sullen, trepidatious and untrustworthy. Who was I going to influence as a hunchback in a chair?!

It was a humbling reminder that demeanor, body language and tone are just as important as my message.

Think about a presentation you sat through at work with a handful of different presenters. Where do you find yourself drawn in most? Is it with the presenters with the best content? Or is it the presenters who gesture, speak off script and draw you in with lively intonation? I think you know where I’m going with this.

The best presenters don’t always have the most groundbreaking content. The best presenters are the ones who are charismatic and motivating in their message.

Even when you have great ideas, the what is just half the battle.

So, how do you master the how?

Getting Better at Influencing Without Authority

Reflecting back on what Influencing Without Authority means in practice, there are 3 components that I’ve seen drive success for PMs:

1. The Message

2. The Delivery

3. The Mindset

Let’s dive deeper into what each of these means…

1. The Message

Getting someone to take action is about heavy context-setting, which boils down to fantastic storytelling.

Have you ever been captivated at an All Hands by a Leader who draws you into the vision so intensely that you find yourself oozing with inspiration?

There’s no better feeling and, it turns out there’s no better skill.

Practically, leaders who have a masterful storytelling practice lean into building a shared story.

Here's a simple framework I call Conscious Communication that I use with my clients:

1. Outline your message - Spell out your solution and give ample context - why you chose the solution over countless others

2. Plan for who needs your message - Map out each internal stakeholder who needs to get your message and decide how to reach them best (not all communication channels are equal!)

3. Sequence your message - think about who needs to know and when especially as it relates to unblocking your team and approval processes within the hierarchy of your organization

I call this Conscious Communication because it is a means of conveying your message thoroughly with an emphasis on human touch. Of course, there are the logistics of communication but we all know there are real politics around the method. So, the more conscious you can be with your approach, the better your message will likely land.

One of my clients, Mary, is a product manager for an internal tool team. She faced a common challenge: convincing another product team to add troubleshooting aids to their already packed roadmap. Mary’s customers were internal (the support team), while the product team’s focus was external (end-users)—a classic uphill battle in large organizations with competing priorities.

Mary reframed her message with clear and compelling storytelling. Here is what she did:

• Outline the message: Mary outlined a faster support case resolution solution that translates to happier end-users—something both teams ultimately care about. She also outlined alternative solutions so other teams could see the breadth of her research.

• Plan for the message: Mary contacted the affected teams, who went beyond product, like operations, trust, and safety, so there were no surprises. She did this early and didn't just align teams, but got them excited about the roadmap addition.

• Sequence the message: Mary intentionally sequenced who she told. She took extra care to hold 1-on-1 meetings with the other lead product manager following her presentation to the team, building trust and credibility in the relationship.

Mary crafted a unified "why" and anchored it to a measurable goal. She was able to get another team - with end customers - to not only prioritize but champion internal tools without relying on top-down pressure. It was a win-win!

2. The Delivery

My training experience in 2019 taught me that how you deliver the message matters just as much as the message itself.

I recently listened to a podcast with body language expert Vanessa Van Edwards, and her insights hit home.

She highlights the challenging balance of warmth and competence—the secret sauce for charisma.

source: https://www.scienceofpeople.com/charisma/

Lean too much into warmth, and you risk being dismissed.

Lean too much into competence, and you might come across as off-putting.

Vanessa offers practical cues for balancing warmth and competence: how you hold your hands, your facial expressions, eye contact, tone, etc. While tips can feel prescriptive, I can personally vouch for being ignorant of cues. And, with some small tweaks, I’ve improved how I communicate, relate and influence others. Tweaks like…

• Open Stance - This one might seem basic but ensuring my body posture and eye contact are square to the screen with the camera is key. Our remote setups have many of us using multiple screens. Intention in my physical setup for remote calls has gone a long way in driving authentic connection through zoom.

• Looping Back- One of the best tools I learned this year was looping. Often in conversation, people are eager to build on a point. But, the most powerful thing you can start with is empathy. To make others feel heard, I practice looping—repeating back what I’ve understood. For example, saying, “I think I’m hearing X, Y, Z—did I get that right?” demonstrates empathy. Offering empathy right out of the gate builds trust.

• Deeper Presence - Remote meetings are ripe for distraction. To stay present during remote meetings, I record sessions (with permission) to focus without frantic note-taking. I also keep a notebook handy, as writing helps me absorb information. These tools help me avoid low-hanging digital distractions during a remote call.

It also can’t be overstated how these cues are even more critical in a remote-first work environment, where cues are obfuscated.

Not sure what your baseline is? Try recording meetings to observe your “before” and record again “after” to see how implementing some of her techniques impacts your influence.

And whether it goes without saying, for the love of god, please turn your camera on.

If you’re camera-off, you’ve already lost the battle.

3. The Mindset…

Improv has been a game-changer for me.

I wish more than anything I started sooner, not just for fun but to upskill my product practice.

The core principle of Improv is “yes, and” which is the idea that you can never negate your partner. If you say no, the scene is dead in the water. A good improv partner works to build off of whatever your scene partner says and elevate the moment. It’s why improv is wildly entertaining to watch. Because improv partners work collaboratively to build scenes that often hit peak ridiculousness.

Lately, I’ve brought the “yes, and” mindset into my work.

When faced with ideas I vehemently disagree with, I try a “yes, and” approach.

Example: “Yes, and let’s consider this other idea in addition to your idea. From there, we can map out which makes more sense for our team.”

It’s a challenging exercise, but it fosters collaboration and opens doors to better solutions.

And it’s honestly, a lot more fun.

Success Looks Like…

So what does success look like when you’re trying to influence without authority?

Success isn’t just convincing another team to do something.

It’s your team becoming evangelists for your cause.

Returning to the earlier example: Influencing isn’t just about convincing the external customer team to take on your work. It’s about seeing your engineers, designers, etc. championing the shared mission.

• It’s in standups where engineers echo the shared customer story.

• It’s in status updates where designers visually connect the cause.

• It’s in business meetings where data scientists advocate for the shared metric.

Influence works when your team champions your cause—even when you’re not in the room.

Mastering the art of influencing without authority takes time, but it’s a superpower worth cultivating. I believe it’s one of the most, if not most important, soft skills in your toolkit.

When done well, it transforms teams and elevates outcomes.

So, start practicing, refine your approach, and watch as your influence grows.

🙏Thank you to Jori

Thank you to Jori for sharing her insights on influencing without authority as a product manager.

Jori is a Product Coach based in NYC. She writes Product Therapy, hosts Product Leadership Breakfasts and coaches Product Leads and their teams. You can get in touch with her here.

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