An HR business partner cannot order a VP to adopt a new performance management process — they have to influence them into wanting to. HRM5075 treats this influence-based leadership challenge as its own distinct skill set, separate from formal managerial authority.
Influence tactics and leading without authority
HRM5075 covers Cialdini's principles of influence (reciprocity, commitment/consistency, social proof, authority, liking, scarcity) and applies them specifically to HR scenarios — persuading a skeptical executive team to invest in a new HR initiative, or getting frontline managers to consistently follow a new performance-review process they didn't ask for. The course distinguishes influence built on genuine credibility and data from manipulation, emphasizing that sustainable influence requires trust built over time.
Change leadership specific to HR-driven initiatives
The course applies change management models (particularly Kotter's 8-step process and the ADKAR model — Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement) to HR-led organizational changes like new compensation systems, performance management overhauls, or DEI initiatives, which frequently generate resistance because they touch pay, evaluation, and perceived fairness directly. Students practice diagnosing sources of resistance and designing a change plan that addresses them proactively rather than only after resistance surfaces.
Key topics in HRM5075
- Cialdini's six principles of influence applied to HR change initiatives
- Building credibility and trust as the foundation for sustainable influence
- Leading without formal authority: influencing peers and senior leaders
- Kotter's 8-step change model and the ADKAR model for individual change readiness
- Diagnosing and addressing resistance to HR-led organizational changes
- Stakeholder mapping and coalition-building for HR initiatives
Working on an influence-strategy paper or a change-management plan for an HR initiative?
Our business experts build HRM5075-level coursework with genuine leadership and influence frameworks.
Worked example: using ADKAR to plan a new performance-review rollout
- Awareness: Communicate why the old annual review process is being replaced (survey data showing manager and employee dissatisfaction)
- Desire: Involve manager focus groups early so they have input, not just a mandate
- Knowledge: Provide manager training on the new continuous-feedback process
- Ability: Provide job aids and a practice period before full rollout
- Reinforcement: Recognize and highlight managers who adopt the new process well, building social proof for holdouts
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Influence-strategy papers and HR change-management plan assignments.
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Frequently asked questions
A traditional manager has formal, positional authority — the ability to assign work, evaluate performance, and directly reward or discipline the people they lead, which gives their requests inherent organizational weight. An HR professional influencing a VP of Sales to adopt a new hiring process, or a frontline manager to change how they conduct performance reviews, typically has none of that formal authority over the person they need to change — their influence has to come from expertise, credibility, relationship trust, and the persuasive strength of their argument and data, not from the ability to compel compliance. HRM5075 teaches that this is a fundamentally different leadership skill set requiring different tactics: building coalitions of respected internal champions, using data and business-case framing rather than directive language, and investing in relationship credibility well before a specific ask is needed, since influence without authority is largely a function of accumulated trust rather than a single persuasive conversation.
Kotter's 8-step model operates primarily at the organizational level, describing the sequence of actions leadership should take to drive change across an organization — creating urgency, building a coalition, forming a vision, and so on. ADKAR (Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement), developed by Prosci, operates at the individual level, describing the sequence of psychological and skill-based milestones a single person must pass through to successfully adopt a change — first becoming aware the change is happening and why, then developing personal desire to support it, then gaining the knowledge of how to change, then developing the ability to actually perform the new behavior, and finally having that new behavior reinforced so it sticks. HRM5075 often uses both together: Kotter's model to plan the overall organizational change campaign, and ADKAR to diagnose why a specific individual or team is stuck — for example, realizing that a manager has the awareness and desire to adopt a new process but lacks the practical ability (skill gap) to execute it, which calls for training rather than more communication about why the change matters.