How do you get the results you want from employees, peers, and bosses when you have no formal authority over them? How do you make your voice heard when you’re not involved in every discussion? This is known as the indirect influence problem. It’s more common than many leaders realize—or are willing to admit—and most have no idea what to do about it.

Some push harder to exert what authority they do have, but this often triggers what the psychologist Jack Brehm dubbed reactance—the instinctive tendency to push back when you feel your autonomy is threatened. Decades of research across the fields of marketing, public health, and organizational psychology confirm the same finding: When someone tells people what to do, they often do precisely the opposite.

Meanwhile, the conditions that once made workplace authority effective are changing. Employee engagement in the U.S. has fallen to 31%, according to Gallup. A recent Edelman survey found that trust in employers declined for the first time in 26 years. Work has become more distributed, specialized, and dependent on informal networks, such as Slack channels and alumni networks. As McKinsey reported , “New data tell us that there is no situation in which leaders need to follow the old maxim ‘Do it because I said so.’”

Today’s leaders need to find different ways to motivate and drive change so that team members choose to act instead of being forced. Drawing on two decades of research into what builds or destroys trust, including thousands of interactions with C-suite executives and management teams, I’ve identified five paths that leaders can follow to wield indirect influence in high-stakes settings.

Path 1: Influence Spotter

A few years ago I was brought into a Fortune 100 consumer-goods company to work with a newly appointed chief innovation officer tasked with modernizing operations. She had a budget and the CEO’s backing, but every initiative she launched seemed to garner polite agreement in meetings, followed by inaction. During meetings with the division presidents, she noticed that many looked to David, a quiet EVP who ran one of the legacy business units, for a read on how to respond to her. When she spoke with David one-on-one, she discovered that he talked with the company’s recently retired COO weekly. This person no longer had a seat at any formal decision-making table, but his opinion still governed how the old guard thought about risk. So she tracked the COO down to ask what he’d learned from a transformation effort that had failed a decade earlier. When she brought up her conversation with the COO, and the concerns he’d raised, with the team, David’s posture changed, and within a week her plans began to progress.

As this story shows, power brokers aren’t always obvious. A C-suite or otherwise senior title is only one indicator. Consider Jeff Dean, the lead of Google AI: He is less widely known than Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai but nonetheless carries a lot of weight within the broader company. Ask yourself: Whom does everyone look to for an opinion before making decisions? What matters to those leaders, and who shapes their thinking?

To recognize hidden sway:

Track decision processes, not job titles.

Behind-the-scenes influencers often guide the group without formal authority.

Watch where people look. 

Pay close attention to gaze patterns. The way heads turn or a group’s eyeline converges can reveal whose opinions matter.

Notice who speaks first and most often.

Early contributors on crucial issues typically emerge as perceived leaders.

Spot calculated rule breaking.

Failure to adhere to a dress code or social norm in a high-status setting signals confidence if done deliberately.

This path is particularly useful when you suspect that what appears on the surface isn’t the full story. It is invaluable if you are new, lack clout, or face entrenched norms or informal coalitions and cliques. When visible doors won’t open, look for the confidantes, advisers, drinking buddies, golf partners, or other trusted voices.