Introduction to Coalitions

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From the course by University of Pennsylvania

Influence

52 ratings

University of Pennsylvania

Influence

52 ratings

Course 4 of 4 in the Specialization Achieving Personal and Professional Success

What does it mean to be influential? How does one persuade others to pursue a unified goal? How does one leverage power? In this course, you’ll learn how to develop influence and to become more effective in achieving your organizational goals. Professor Cade Massey of the Wharton School has designed this course to help you understand the framework of power and influence and the dynamics of effective networks, and shows you how to develop your skills of persuasion and leverage. By the end of this course, you’ll know your own strengths and how to use them to get what you need, how to gain power and influence, and how to leverage relationships and alliances to achieve your goals in both business and in life.

From the lesson

Module 2

In this module, you’ll examine social networks and relationships, and learn how they can help you accomplish your organizational goals. You’ll be able to differentiate between dense and disconnected networks, and weigh the benefits and costs of diversification within your networks. Then you’ll learn about both successful strategies and common pitfalls in cultivating a network, and see how authentic generosity will build reciprocity in your networks and vice versa. You’ll also explore coalitions and how alliances between parties with different perspectives can be very effective and efficient in achieving mutual goals. By the end of this module, you’ll learn effective strategies for networking, coalition-building, and leveraging, and will be able to form strong alliances and relationships both inside and outside your organization.

Module Introduction- Relationships1:10

Seating Chart Exercise3:56

Resource Dependence and Social Capital3:29

Network Structure15:06

Applications9:15

Cultivating Networks11:27

Organizational Perspective5:15

Common Mistakes3:07

Closing Thoughts on Social Networks2:52

Introduction to Coalitions4:08

Types of Coalitions11:58

Coalition Examples3:14

Prescriptions for Coalitions8:52

Case: Washington Square6:28

Meet the Instructors

Cade Massey
Practice Professor
The Wharton School

In this lecture we'll talk about coalitions,

and to start that I want to give an example from recent news.

There was an announcement a couple years ago of a big gas deal between Russia and China.

Here is the headline in the Financial Times and it

looks to all the world like a two-party deal,

but if you read the article you see how often third parties influence the deal.

In fact one of the motivations for this,

was that Russia wanted to beat the US to the Chinese market.

There is increasing interest in liquefied natural gas from the US in China.

Russia doesn't want that to happen so they want to land

this deal so they can preserve the market for themself.

That's the influence of the US.

Kazakhstan, they're...they have to locate this pipeline,

they have to build it across countries to get from Russia to China.

The shortest distance would be through Kazakhstan.

Kazakhstan didn't want to be in on the deal because of

their long-standing pseudo-dependence on Russia as a former member of the Soviet Union.

On the other hand, Mongolia,

next to China, wanted the pipeline;

they wanted perhaps a little less dependence also from their big neighbor China,

but China didn't want Mongolia,

they had the pipeline,

so they had to take it the way to the East.

So, we can see,

even in this relatively simple example it looks like a big two-party deal,

but in fact third parties influence the motivation and the location of this thing.

That's where we're coming from today.

Coalitions are an incredibly important topic.

They affect negotiations and organizations and individuals all the time every day.

And yet we don't really hear that much written about them.

We don't see them studied that much.

We want to share with you some of the things we have seen,

and studied, in the last few years.

So, to do that let's start with an example from a recent

MBA talking about her use of coalitions in her organization.

So let's just walk through this. She writes:

"In my last job,

I worked for an organization providing consultation and training to

mental health clinics to help improve their clinical services.

We were being asked to create a new offering that focused on their business operations.

There were a few members of my team who were very

experienced in providing clinical trainings to clinics,

and they felt strongly that we should use

the same program model to deliver these business services.

However as the sole client contact,

I heard from our clients that using this model wasn't working for their business needs.

The most junior member of the team by at least 15 years when I tried

to communicate this to the entire team and propose a new solution,

I was quickly shut down and dismissed by the lead clinical expert."

So let's stop here and ask: are you familiar with this kind of situation?

I suspect many of you are.

You don't have formal authority,

you might be in a relatively less influential position,

and yet you want to somehow impact the decision-making.

What is she going to do? So she gives us a nice illustration of

coalitions and what follows. She said:

"I identified that two of my main team members who came from

business and operations functions were more sympathetic to my opinions.

They just didn't want to actively disagree with the other executives,

preferring to pick their battles on other issues.

I began to meet with these team members individually,

sharing my ideas and refining them based on their feedback.

Once I had their buy in,

I set up meetings with the more conservative team members

who came from a range of business and clinical backgrounds,

telling them that the ideas had come from

their fellow executives and asking them for their feedback and input.

I also engaged different team members in helping me build out parts

of an idea that I knew aligned with their personal goals.

For example I ask our financial expert to help me think through the strategy for

revamping our financial modeling training and lead the training for the initial pilot.

When I finally presented a new proposed program model to the entire team,

only the clinical lead had never heard the proposal before,

and when everyone else backed the idea he acquiesced as well.

I used this strategy of individual check-ins, idea attribution,

and goal alignment to push through two new major programs throughout my three years.

In one of our last team meetings prior to leaving my job,

our clinical lead declared

our latest program had been our biggest and best program rollout yet,

and that he had known from the beginning that it was destined to be a success."

So here we have a fantastic example of using coalitions from

a relatively powerless position in order

to actually exert influence in their organization.

This is the kind of thing we want to study and learn how to do in today's lecture.

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