Positive Influence

How can you move people and systems without coercion, manipulation, or power plays? In +Influence, Tsun-yan Hsieh and Marie Cheong argue that the highest form of influence is not persuasion or authority—it’s the intentional ability to mobilize yourself and others toward outcomes that serve all stakeholders. They call this +influence: the skill of shaping interactions, tasks, and relationships for mutual benefit.

You practice +influence when you create shared productivity, satisfaction, and growth—three enduring outcomes that lift both people and performance. The book teaches you how to influence deliberately through awareness, process, and presence. It integrates psychology, emotional intelligence, and leadership craft into a coherent method for shaping results without domination. Throughout, stories of leaders—from CEOs to project managers—reveal how +influence works in moments of uncertainty, cultural tension, and personal risk.

Defining +Influence

+Influence is defined as mobilizing yourself and others to positively affect an interaction, task, or group without using coercion or manipulation. Unlike persuasion, it’s anchored in mutual orientation: asking, “How will everyone be better off?” rather than “How do I win?” You read context, understand pressures, and act from curiosity—not assertion. Motive is central: people can sense whether you act from genuine care or self-interest.

Case examples like Bill, Vik, and Sue-Ann’s service launch illustrate the point. Bill could simply insist on his pricing ideas, but if he considers Vik’s need to appear competent and Sue-Ann’s family distractions, he can shape a conversation that benefits all—project success and personal growth. That’s +influence in practice: empathy fused with effectiveness.

The Core Outcomes: Productivity, Satisfaction, Growth

Every act of +influence aims at three outcomes: better performance (productivity), stronger relationships (satisfaction), and expansion for all (growth). Neglecting any one destabilizes the others. Tsun-yan’s story of managing cost-cutting without morale loss shows the balance: he saved costs while creating training for displaced employees, sustaining both performance and dignity. Marie Cheong’s career choice—to trade salary for purpose—underscores how growth and satisfaction interplay.

This triad of outcomes reframes influence as stewardship, not advantage seeking. You start by treating people as subjects, not objects—asking “How good is John?” rather than just “How many apples did John pick?”

The Deliberate Process of +Influencing

Instead of winging it, you plan, do, and adjust in rapid cycles (PDA). The eight principles—being deliberate, reading context, setting task and relationship objectives, surfacing inquiry, timing, pacing, seizing moments, and engaging your being—serve as a toolkit. Case work and roleplay transform theory into repeatable habits. You learn to define what you want others to think, feel, and do, and then to adapt until those outcomes appear.

Context analysis and judgment become your compass. Organizational pressure points often hide in emotion or identity—family stress, ambition, pride. You uncover these through inquiry (“What might I be missing?”) and empathy, calibrating tactics accordingly.

Timing, Pace, and Presence

Influence doesn’t happen at random—it happens in moments. Recognizing when minds are open and calibrating pace transforms outcomes. Quick moves work under urgency and trust; slower tempo builds ownership. Roberto’s failed presentation was redeemed not by new slides but by pivoting midstream—asking a story-driven question at the silent moment of disengagement. Such micro-adjustments define mastery.

Aligning Your Being

You are the instrument of influence. Authentic impact demands coherence between thoughts, emotions, body, and intention. Cultivate seven qualities—care, courage, curiosity, humility, compassion, persistence, and drive. They ground you when stakes are high. Before hard meetings, Tsun-yan centers himself through breath and visualizes one person’s strength to practice unconditional positive regard—a spiritual discipline that shifts energy and opens dialogue.

Emotion and Mentalizing

Emotional intelligence is not softness—it’s strategic. Emotions reveal bottlenecks in identity and motivation. “Mentalizing” means analyzing feelings as data: why does someone feel anxious, proud, or angry? Huijin channels emotions productively by noticing physical cues and naming the feeling to diffuse tension. Addressing identity wounds and acknowledging fear often precede any rational agreement.

Crafting Durable Influence

Influence becomes durable when grounded in conduct (visible habits), character (moral compass), and craft (personal mastery integrating both). Over time, you grow through High Challenge, High Support environments (HCHS)—stretching and being backed simultaneously—and through mentors who combine risk-taking with care. This process shapes your +craft: a way of influencing that’s distinctively yours, as Ron Oberlander’s balance of truth-seeking and empathy demonstrates.

Against All Odds: The Power of Courage and Truth

Extraordinary influence appears under pressure. Zelensky and Churchill showed that matching words with personal risk amplifies credibility. Ron Oberlander and Tsun-yan revealed how truth-seeking and compassion rebuild reputations (“carpet stain” case) and trust in boardrooms. You learn that persistence, courage, and ethical clarity turn influence from tactic into legacy.

The Journey of Mastery

Mastery grows through habits: care, stretching, presence, feedback, reflection. Consistent practice transforms conscious effort into unconscious skill. You train yourself to sense, perceive, judge lightly, and act at the right moment. Over years, conduct blossoms into character and your +craft emerges—a signature style of influencing that is authentic, ethical, and generative.

Why It Matters

In the end, +influence isn’t about clever talk or perfect meetings. It’s a disciplined way of being that makes others freer, more productive, and more whole. You lead not by authority but by orientation—choosing the intersection where doing well meets doing good. That shift, once made, will transform not only how you lead others but how you live your life.

At the heart of +influence lies mutual orientation—the mindset that asks how everyone can benefit rather than how one side can win. When you influence from mutuality, your objectives stretch beyond personal victory to collective uplift. You investigate how productivity, satisfaction, and growth connect for each stakeholder, and you design outcomes that include each dimension.

Balancing the Triad

The book’s triad of outcomes operates like a dynamic triangle: productivity energizes systems, satisfaction sustains relationships, and growth propels human and business renewal. Ignore one edge and you weaken the structure. In Tsun-yan’s cost-transformation story, the company saved millions while creating retraining for impacted employees—a visible testament to balancing efficiency and empathy.

Marie Cheong’s career shift echoes this principle at a personal level. By choosing purpose over pay, she optimized long-term growth and satisfaction, eventually creating more organizational productivity. (Note: this mirrors Adam Grant’s work on “giver culture” in Give and Take—how altruistic intention drives durable success.)

Subject Orientation: See People as Persons

Most organizations focus only on “apples”—the task—neglecting “John,” the person who picks them. You invert that by focusing on people first. Ask how respected, competent, and hopeful they feel. When subjects thrive, productivity follows naturally. The MBA transformation cohorts show this practically: high-performing groups emerged only when design embedded care, challenge, and collective purpose.

Practical Principles

• Name all three outcomes explicitly in any plan.
• Map who benefits, who risks, and design trade-offs consciously.
• Use care as a strategic asset—it unlocks voluntary commitment.

Guiding Thought

If you deliberately serve shared productivity, satisfaction, and growth, your influence becomes self-sustaining because people invest energy willingly—not under compulsion.

Mutual orientation changes the purpose of every conversation. It turns negotiation into co-creation and converts leadership from position to partnership. That’s the moral and strategic foundation of +influence.

Influence isn’t luck—it’s designed. The authors lay out a deliberate, repeatable process to move others constructively. You plan with intent, act with presence, and adjust through reflection. This disciplined loop—plan, do, adjust (PDA)—replaces guesswork with learning cycles.

Planning and Objectives

Define both task and relationship goals. Ask what you want others to think, feel, and do. Ensure objectives advance shared productivity, satisfaction, and growth. Practice mentalizing—represent others’ perspectives and emotional states—to bridge gaps between what you see and what they experience. This develops empathy that’s analytical rather than sentimental.

Understanding Context and Judgment

Context means mapping the system: organizations, stakeholders, and personal forces. Pressure points may be obvious (budget) or hidden (illness, ego, burnout). Judgment is choosing which levers matter now. Antonietta’s engagement with Hilario—an embittered veteran—showed that discerning whether to challenge or comfort required contextual reading, not formula.

Timing, Pace, and Seizing

Moments are fragile. Good influencers spot “windows” when minds open and act swiftly. Fast tempo suits urgent trust; slower tempo builds consensus. Giovanni’s plant shutdown conversations unfold in sequences—empathy, negotiation, renewal—each with its rhythm. Prepare for uncertainty by rehearsing short interventions. You don’t control outcomes, but you can control readiness.

Iteration and Reflection

After each influence attempt, debrief. What landed? What didn’t? Close gaps between intended and actual outcomes. Then roleplay alternatives and test again. This laboratory mindset accelerates mastery. (Note: similar loops appear in deliberate practice theory by Anders Ericsson—focused repetition under feedback builds non-routine expertise.)

Deliberate influence transforms instinct into craft. Instead of hoping charisma will work, you engineer learning and evolve into someone whose influence is dependable and ethical.

Influence starts with emotional intelligence—the discipline of sensing and steering feelings in yourself and others. The book insists that emotion is not noise; it’s information. Fear, anger, pride, or hope signal where identity and motivation meet. If you learn to mentalize—think analytically about emotion—you can unlock hidden resistance and guide change.

Mentalizing and Channeling Emotion

Huijin’s practice exemplifies this. She observes physical cues—eyes, tone, posture—and deduces emotional drivers logically. Instead of suppressing feelings, she gives them language and direction. By acknowledging emotion directly (“I sense this is difficult”), she reduces threat and opens dialogue. Channeling emotion means transforming reaction into constructive movement.

State and Conative Alignment

Your state—the energy you bring to a moment—has silent influence. People read your authenticity instantly. A hurried CEO preaching openness collapses credibility; calm presence amplifies power. Conative orientation—the “will” or bias toward creative action—anchors decisions. Move from reactive fear to creative mission. Tsun-yan declined multiple CEO offers because his conative north star was mentorship; clarity made his influence enduring.

Cultivating Presence

Use rituals to ground yourself: breathe deeply, choose three guiding words (e.g., calm, curious, courageous), notice the room’s energy. Presence is the art of showing up fully—body, mind, and spirit aligned. Joseph Mocanu’s discovery of purpose (“extend human health span”) unified his presence across thousands of investor meetings. When your internal coherence stabilizes, influence feels effortless.

Lesson

Emotion and presence are twin instruments of +influence: one reveals truth; the other conveys authenticity. When harmonized, they invite trust and action.

Mastery of state and emotion builds intuitive authority—the kind that moves hearts and systems simultaneously.

Skillful influence becomes mastery only through habit, practice, and mentorship. The authors outline five reinforcing habits—care, stretch, presence, feedback, reflection—and pair them with High Challenge High Support (HCHS) environments that accelerate growth. You evolve from consciously skilled to unconsciously skilled, where care and judgment become reflexes.

Five Core Habits

• Care about others’ productivity, satisfaction, and growth.
• Stretch yourself beyond comfort zones—try new styles and approaches.
• Be present—train your attention on subtle signals.
• Get feedback—invite specific, timely insights and use FeedForward to focus on future improvement.
• Reflect—convert daily experiences into deliberate experiments.

Stories make these vivid: Shaw Voon’s rise from timid MBA to regional VP came through repeated feedback loops; Naithy’s leap into leadership stemmed from reflection and coaching. LIFE2 program participants embody HCHS—challenged fiercely, supported deeply, and transformed sustainably.

Mentorship

True mentors combine high challenge with high support. Tsun-yan’s partnership with Aldo Bensadoun to create opportunity for Stephanie blended risk with care—mentorship that propelled lasting growth. A good mentor sees potential before you do, stretches your capability, and anchors your learning.

Action

Volunteer to create one stretch opportunity for someone, accompany them through it, and debrief. This single act builds both your and their influence.

Over time, deliberate habits and mentoring relationships forge the +craft—the blend of conduct, character, and skill that defines personal influence mastery.

Influence is tested most under adversity. The authors showcase examples ranging from national leaders to boardroom mentors to demonstrate that courage, persistence, and truth are the ultimate forces of transformation. When odds are high, +influence demands risk-sharing and moral clarity.

Matching Words with Action

Zelensky’s choice to stay in Kyiv during war and Churchill’s appearances during bombing raids illustrate the truism: credibility arises when words align with sacrifice. You persuade most deeply when you put yourself in harm’s way for the shared cause. (In leadership literature, this parallels Jim Collins’ concept of “Level 5 Leadership”—humility anchored in fierce resolve.)

Persistence and Moral Repair

Persistence breaks barriers of status and access. Huijin’s refusal to accept Tsun-yan’s initial decline and finding a new path via Dominic Barton exemplify creative persistence; it built apprenticeship against odds. In reputational crises (“carpet stain” case), moral repair through careful truth-finding and appeals to fairness restores dignity and trust—an advanced form of influence.

Trust in Boardrooms

High-trust influence in elite circles is rare but transformative. Advisors like Ron Oberlander earned it by combining candor and care—addressing both the executive’s welfare and the firm’s interests. Nizam’s quiet rise from technical expert to advocate shows how humility plus conviction builds quiet power.

Principle

Influence against odds rests on courage to take personal risk, persistence to stay engaged, care to preserve dignity, and truth to rebuild trust.

When practiced under strain, these traits reveal the real depth of +influence: it is not about winning; it is about maintaining humanity when power, fear, or crisis tempt you to abandon it.

Influencing across cultures magnifies complexity. You must connect to human commonality beneath different codes of expression. Tsun-yan’s global examples—from Chinese boardrooms to Canadian factories—demonstrate that empathy, respect for pride, and offering credible value are the bridges to cross-cultural influence.

Human Connection First

Titles and hierarchies fade when you speak to lived experience. In St. Marguerite’s plant turnaround, Tsun-yan addressed workers’ fears about job loss through stories that touched shared humanity. The moment mutual care surfaced, performance improved dramatically. The moral: connect first as persons, then as roles.

Emotional Mapping Across Cultures

Across East and West, emotions hide differently. At Bharti Airtel’s conference, Tsun-yan sensed skepticism and hope, then named it openly—turning uncertainty into collaboration. Huijin’s coaching in China turned political sabotage into teamwork by appealing to pride and hope in corporate legacy.

Practical Moves

• Listen beyond language—attune to emotion and non-verbal hierarchy.
• Surface pride and hope as assets.
• Bring credible value-add—technical or strategic contribution—to validate engagement.

You can’t learn every culture, but you can learn universal respect. Cross-cultural +influence starts with curiosity, listening, and care—the rest follows naturally.

Influence that endures comes from integrity of being. The book’s final synthesis weaves three threads: conduct (visible, consistent behavior), character (moral orientation), and +craft (your integrated personal capability). Together, they form the moral and practical foundation for lifelong influence.

Conduct

Conduct is principle turned habit. When you behave consistently—even in small acts—you broadcast authenticity. Everyday gestures, from environmental consciousness to fairness in decisions, reveal your values without speech. Influence flows from conduct that others can rely on.

Character

Character evolves through experience and challenge. It’s the moral compass that directs you when success and ethics conflict. Marvin Bower’s insistence on confronting CEOs about deeper truths illustrated character-based influence: service outweighs convenience. You cultivate character through reflection and by holding fast to principles under pressure.

+Craft

+Craft unites who you are and what you do. It’s the distinctive style of influence born from apprenticeship and self-examination. Like Michelangelo releasing sculpture from marble, you uncover the art already within you through mentorship and long practice. Wu Pao Chun’s mastery of baking through diverse mentorships is analogy for this life-long evolution.

Practice

Find a mentor, accept a stretch assignment, reflect deliberately, and repeat. Over years, your conduct will crystallize your character, and both will shape a profound craft of +influence unique to you.

Through conduct, character, and craft, influence stops being technique and becomes vocation—a way of serving others and realizing your fullest self.