Case Study 2 — Chapter 25: Leadership and Influence

Amara: Influence Without Authority

Background

April. Amara's second semester is winding toward its end. The clinical hours are accumulating. Her friendship with Sasha is the primary thread of sustained social support in the city. Her calls with Yusuf are regular.

She has not set out to become a leader in the MSW program. But the cohort dynamics — eighteen people in an intensive, emotionally demanding training — have created informal leadership opportunities that she has not entirely avoided.

Two situations over the past month have made her think about influence explicitly.

Situation One: The Cohort Conflict

Week twelve of the second semester. A peer named Daniel has been, in Amara's assessment, consistently difficult in seminar settings — dominating discussions, talking over quieter peers, responding to complexity with certainty, and occasionally redirecting the professor's questions in ways that close down exploration rather than open it.

Two peers have mentioned it to Amara separately — Sasha in one conversation, Diana in another. Neither has said anything to Daniel. Neither has said anything to the professor, Dr. Chen.

Amara is aware that her instinct — the old instinct — would be to smooth it over. To manage the discomfort in the group without naming it. To be the person who makes it okay.

She notices the instinct. She does not act on it.

Instead, she asks herself the chapter's question: what kind of influence situation is this?

It is not a technical challenge with a known solution. Telling Daniel to be quiet does not change the dynamic; it creates a new one. It is an adaptive challenge: Daniel is doing something that serves a need (certainty in a setting that is full of uncertainty; visibility in a competitive training environment), and naming the behavior without addressing the need will produce defensiveness, not change.

She also does not have formal authority. She is a peer. Her influence is purely personal.

The Conversation with Daniel

Amara asks Daniel if he wants to get coffee after the Thursday seminar. He says yes. He is not sure why she's asking; his default is to assume it's a collegial gesture.

She waits until they are settled. Then: "I want to ask you something directly, and I want you to know I'm asking because I think you're one of the more capable people in the cohort, and I think what I'm going to say matters for that."

Daniel looks at her carefully. "Okay."

"In seminar, you often come in with the final answer before the question has finished developing. I've noticed it closes down some of the discussion. I think some people don't speak because they know you'll answer before they find their formulation."

Daniel is quiet for a moment. "I didn't know I was doing that."

Amara: "I believe you. I'm not saying you're trying to shut people down. I'm saying the effect is that. And I think you'd care about the effect if you knew."

Another pause. "What am I supposed to do differently?"

"Wait longer before speaking. Not every time — you have things worth saying. But let the silence sit for an extra ten seconds. See what comes out of the room before you fill it."

Daniel: "That's going to feel uncomfortable."

Amara: "I know. It's also what they're trying to teach us to do with clients."

He thinks about this. Then: "Is this coming from anyone else?"

She considers. "I'm talking to you directly because I wanted to. Others have noticed. I'm not here as a representative of the cohort."

Daniel: "Fair."

He's quiet. Then: "Okay. I'll try."

What Amara Used

She reflects afterward on the influence structure:

Liking and relationship: she had initiated the conversation from a position of genuine positive regard — "I think you're capable, and I think this matters for you" — which is different from "you're doing something wrong." She had used liking in the right direction: leading with investment in Daniel, not with criticism.

Authority: she had invoked no formal authority, because she had none. But she had invoked something adjacent — clinical authority. "This is also what they're training us to do with clients." This was expert framing: not "I'm telling you" but "this connects to the competence we're both trying to develop."

Commitment and consistency: she had given Daniel a specific small commitment — wait ten extra seconds — which was behaviorally concrete enough to track. The commitment was explicit, not implicit. He had said "I'll try," which is not the same as full commitment but is something.

What she didn't use: she had not used social proof (not "everyone thinks this"), not coercive pressure (not "people are complaining"), not reciprocity explicitly. The influence was primarily relational and values-aligned.

Two weeks later in seminar: Daniel waits. Not every time. But perceptibly more often. Three voices come into the space he leaves. Dr. Chen, without knowing anything about the conversation, comments at the end of the session: "This was one of the richer discussions we've had."

Situation Two: The Peer Support Group

In the second week of April, Sasha mentions to Amara that three or four cohort members seem to be struggling — not with academics, but with the emotional load of the clinical work. Field placement is activating things. The academic container of trauma-informed practice is doing what it says on the label: informing practice by working with trauma, including their own.

Sasha: "Someone should do something."

Amara: "What would doing something look like?"

Sasha: "I don't know. You probably do."

Amara thinks about this. She is aware that she is being handed a leadership role — not formally, but through the social dynamics of the cohort's informal structure. She is aware that she could deflect it. She is also aware that she actually has something useful to offer.

She emails Dr. Chen. Not asking permission — offering an observation and a proposal: "Several cohort members seem to be finding the clinical load emotionally demanding in ways that aren't fully addressed by the academic container. I'm wondering if there's interest in a peer processing group — not a therapy group, not a formal supervision supplement, but a structured space for cohort members to reflect on what's coming up in their field work. I'd be willing to help facilitate if that's useful."

Dr. Chen responds within a day: yes, she thinks this is a good idea, she'll mention it in class and Amara can take it from there.

The Peer Processing Group

Seven of the eighteen cohort members attend the first session. Amara has thought carefully about what the group is not: it is not a therapy group (she is a student, not a therapist), not a supervision replacement (Marcus does supervision), not a complaint session. It is a space for reflective practice about the emotional texture of clinical training.

She opens the first session: "I want to be clear about what I'm not doing here. I'm not your therapist. I'm not your supervisor. I'm someone who is also doing this training and also finding things come up in the field that I didn't expect. The purpose of this is to make those things speakable in a peer context, not to solve them."

Sasha says: "I think that's what I needed to hear for me to be comfortable here."

The group meets three times before the end of the semester. By the third session, Amara is facilitating more than participating — asking questions, noticing patterns across what different people are sharing, naming the common threads. She is doing, with the group, what Marcus does with her in supervision: creating enough structure that the conversation can be honest, and enough safety that it can go somewhere useful.

At the end of the third session, Diana says: "I didn't know how much I needed this until we started."

Reflection

Amara writes:

Two different influence situations. Different scales, different stakes, different mechanisms.

With Daniel: I used personal power — relationship, values, the framing of shared professional development. I had no authority. I had to rely on the quality of the relationship and the quality of the rationale.

With the peer group: I used something more like the servant leadership orientation. I didn't start with "I should lead this." I started with "what does the cohort need?" The email to Dr. Chen wasn't "can I do this?" — it was "here's what I'm observing and what I think might help." That felt different from performing leadership. It felt like responding to something real.

The thing that connects them: I didn't lead from authority or from a desire to be seen leading. I led from noticing something that needed attending to and having some capacity to attend to it.

That's probably what it's supposed to feel like.

Analysis Questions

Amara's conversation with Daniel applies several of Cialdini's influence principles deliberately. She explicitly identifies liking, authority (clinically framed), and commitment/consistency in her reflection. Why does she choose not to use social proof ("others have noticed") as an influence lever? What would be the likely effect of invoking the cohort's collective opinion?
Amara diagnoses the Daniel situation as an adaptive challenge rather than a technical one. The chapter defines adaptive challenges as requiring changes in values, beliefs, or behaviors. What is the adaptive element in Daniel's pattern? Why would telling him to be quiet (a technical intervention) fail to address the adaptive dimension?
Amara's facilitation of the peer support group represents servant leadership: she starts from "what does the cohort need?" rather than "what leadership role can I fill?" The chapter distinguishes leading from wanting to be seen leading. How does Amara's reflection ("I led from noticing something that needed attending to") illustrate this distinction? What would leading from the desire to be seen leading have looked like in this situation?
Amara explicitly clarifies to the group what it is not ("I'm not your therapist; I'm not your supervisor") before establishing what it is. This is a form of structuring the holding environment — a concept from Heifetz's adaptive leadership framework. Why does naming what the space is not matter as much as naming what it is? What function does this serve psychologically?
Amara's influence in both situations is purely through personal power (referent and expert) with no positional authority. The chapter identifies referent power as the most durable form of influence. What specifically has Amara done over the course of Part 3 and Part 4 that has built her referent power in the cohort — and in her supervision relationship with Marcus?