Influence Without Authority: Hidden Skills for Progression in HE

Here's a truth about HE Professional Services that nobody talks about: your ability to get things done often has little to do with your place on the org chart and everything to do with your ability to influence people who don't report to you.

From Grade 6 upwards, success increasingly depends on influencing colleagues, stakeholders, and senior leaders who have their own priorities, pressures, and perspectives. Yet this critical skill rarely appears explicitly in job descriptions or development programmes.

Understanding how to build and use influence without authority isn't just helpful for your current role. It's essential for demonstrating readiness for progression to senior grades where this capability becomes your primary tool for driving change and delivering outcomes.

Why Influence Without Authority Matters

In Higher Education's complex matrix structure, getting things done requires collaboration across departments, faculties, and functions. You need buy-in from IT for your system changes, cooperation from Finance for your budget proposals, and engagement from academic colleagues for your policy implementations.

At junior levels, you can often escalate issues up the hierarchy. But as you progress, you become the person others escalate to. Your ability to resolve conflicts, align different priorities, and create momentum around shared goals becomes a key indicator of leadership readiness.

This is particularly crucial in Professional Services, where you're often supporting academic activity without direct authority over academic staff. Your influence becomes the bridge between institutional strategy and ground-level implementation.

How Influence Shifts as You Progress

From Grade 6 to Grade 7: From Suggestion to Persuasion

Grade 6/individual contributor level: You influence how things are done by sharing suggestions, championing improvements, and persuading others to try new ways of working.

Grade 7/manager level: You influence peers, stakeholders, and decision-makers by presenting strong cases and using your credibility to drive ideas forward.

The key shift: Building systematic influence. Grade 7s move beyond ad hoc suggestions to strategic influence. They understand their stakeholders' priorities, build cases that align with those priorities, and follow through to ensure ideas are implemented.

From Grade 7 to Grade 8: Institutional Influence

Grade 7/manager: You influence peers, stakeholders, and decision-makers by presenting strong cases and using your credibility to drive ideas forward.

Grade 8/senior manager: You influence at senior levels by building trust, using data and narrative effectively, and advocating for your service with strategic insight.

The key shift: Operating at institutional level. Grade 8 senior managers don't just influence within their immediate network. They shape conversations at senior committees, contribute to institutional strategy discussions, and position their services as integral to institutional success.

From Grade 8 to Grade 9: Shaping Direction

Grade 8/senior manager: You influence at senior levels by building trust, using data and narrative effectively, and advocating for your service with strategic insight.

Grade 9/Head of Service/Deputy Director: You shape institutional direction through influence and expertise. You balance diplomacy and challenge to help the organisation make better decisions.

The key shift: Becoming an institutional influencer. Grade 9s influence the influencers. Their expertise and credibility mean their perspectives shape how other leaders think about issues, often setting the framework within which decisions are made.

Common Influence Challenges

The Expertise Trap

Many professionals assume that being right is enough. But influence requires understanding what motivates others and framing your expertise in ways that connect with their priorities and concerns.

The Niceness Cul-de-sac

Building good working relationships is important, but it's not the same as having influence. True influence comes from being seen as someone who can help others achieve their goals, not just someone who's nice to work with.

The Hierarchy Hesitation

Many capable professionals underestimate their ability to influence senior colleagues. They wait for explicit permission or formal authority when they could be building influence through expertise, insight, and strategic contribution.

The Single-Channel Approach

Relying too heavily on one influence approach (data, relationships, or expertise) rather than adapting your influence style to different situations and stakeholders.

How to Prepare Yourself

1. Map Your Influence Network

Identify the key people who need to say yes for your ideas to succeed. Understand their priorities, constraints, and decision-making styles. This mapping helps you tailor your influence approach to different stakeholders.

2. Build Your Expertise Platform

Develop deep knowledge in areas that matter to institutional strategy. Whether it's student experience, digital transformation, or regulatory compliance, become the person others turn to for insight and guidance.

3. Practice Strategic Storytelling

Learn to frame your ideas in terms of institutional benefit, not just operational improvement. Connect your proposals to university strategy, sector trends, or stakeholder needs that matter to decision-makers.

4. Seek Cross-Functional Projects

Volunteer for initiatives that require collaboration across departments. These experiences develop your influence skills whilst demonstrating your ability to work across boundaries.

The Uncomfortable Reality

Influence without authority requires political awareness. You need to understand institutional dynamics, competing priorities, and individual motivations. Some professionals find this uncomfortable, preferring to focus purely on technical or operational aspects of their role.

But political awareness isn't about manipulation. It's about understanding the complex environment in which universities operate and working skilfully within that reality to achieve positive outcomes.

The most effective senior leaders combine deep expertise with sophisticated understanding of how to navigate institutional complexity. This combination makes them trusted advisors who can shape direction and drive change.

Building Your Influence Platform

Start by identifying where you already have influence and recognising the strategies that work for you. Are you the person colleagues turn to for technical expertise? Do you excel at building consensus? Are you skilled at presenting compelling cases to senior leaders?

Build on these strengths whilst developing complementary influence approaches. The goal isn't to become a different person but to expand your toolkit for creating positive change in complex environments.

Remember that influence is earned through contribution and demonstrated over time. Focus on adding value, solving problems, and helping others succeed. Influence follows naturally from being genuinely useful to the people and priorities that matter.

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Influence without authority is one element of The Hidden Curriculum of Progression. Download your Guide to Career Progression in HE Professional Services.

Also in this series:

Decision-Making in Professional Services: What Panels Look for at Each Grade

Communication in Higher Education: How Expectations Shift from Grade 6 to 9