Terry R. Bacon, PhD, is the author of The Elements of Power and Elements of Influence, as well as other books on leadership, management, interpersonal skills, coaching, marketing, and proposal writing. His books include Winning Behavior, The Behavioral Advantage, What People Want, Adaptive Coaching (now in its 2nd edition), Selling to Major Accounts, Powerful Proposals, and Effective People Skills (now in its 4th edition).
For more than thirty years, he has conducted research on how people gain power and how they use their power to influence others. Powerandinfluence.online supersedes his previous website, theelementsofpower.com. He continues to conduct research on power and influence and write extensively on the topic. He is formerly the CEO of Lore International Institute, a global executive development firm, and Scholar-in-Residence for Korn/Ferry International. For five years, Executive Excellence magazine named him one of the Top 100 Thinkers on Leadership in the World.
Reviews of The Elements of Power and Elements of Influence
“Influence is part of nearly every communication and occurs in virtually every human interaction. Influence is crucial to business, too. It is so fundamental to leadership that there could be no leadership without it”, writes thought leader, coach, and consultant to global companies, Terry R. Bacon, Ph.D., in his brilliant and insightful book Elements of Influence: The Art of Getting Others to Follow Your Lead. The author describes the important features that make influence, both ethical and unethical, so critical to understand for both organizational leaders and followers.
I highly recommend the essential and research based book Elements of Influence: The Art of Getting Others to Follow Your Lead by Terry R. Bacon, Ph.D., to anyone seeking a comprehensive study of the principles of influence combined with a step by step process for learning the techniques of becoming an effective and ethical influencer. This book provides the methodology for utilizing influence in the right way to build strong and ethical leadership, while offering information about how to counter and avoid using the manipulative methods of influence’s darker side.
Read the groundbreaking and information filled book Elements of Influence: The Art of Getting Others to Follow Your Lead by Terry R. Bacon, Ph.D., and discover the importance of influence in people’s business and personal lives. This book contains the techniques for learning and developing the skills necessary to become an ethical influencer of others, and a better and more effective leader in all areas of your life. —Wayne Hurlbert, Blog Business World
The Elements of Power was named one of the “11 Best Business Books for CIOs in 2011” by CIO Insight
Enlightening, engaging, and truly empowering, THE ELEMENTS OF POWER is a source book for executives, managers, and everyone called to influence and lead others in the best ways possible. Throughout, “Portraits in Power”—celebrating PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi, journalist Fareed Zakaria, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, Chinese movie star and World Wide Web sensation Xu Jinglei, homeless activist Sister Mary Scullion, award-winning post-operative specialist Dr. Peter Pronovost, Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi, acclaimed poet Maya Angelou, Bill Gates, and President Barack Obama among other notable leaders—offer abundant inspiration. The book culminates with a Power Sources Self-Assessment to help readers measure the relative strength of their own power sources, complemented by strategies for building up their weaknesses and alerts to common pitfalls and practices that can diminish their strengths. —Matt Krumrie, Minneapolis Workplace Examiner
Power and influence are complex concepts. In The Elements of Power, Terry R. Bacon does an exceptional job of explaining the critical sources of power in any type of organization, how to build power, and how easy it is to diminish power once it is established. Through tangible examples, this book provides ways to better identify and understand how to fundamentally strengthen one’s organizational impact at all levels and highlights the importance of understanding how power is expressed differently in different cultures. —Vicki Rawlinson, Global Head HR Oncology, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation
If you’ve ever wished that someone would pull back the curtain so you could learn from the use (or abuse) of power by Bill Gates, Barrack Obama, Elliot Spitzer, Indra Nooyi, Rahm Emanuel, Warren Buffet, and Jeff Bezos, your wish has been granted. The Elements of Power neatly dissects the art and science of influence and leadership as practiced by leaders from every part of the globe. —Tom Connellan, New York Times Bestselling Author
Terry Bacon, who’s been dissecting what makes business leaders tick for decades, now cuts into the core muscles of success: power. He brings his deep knowledge to bear, naturally, but also a wonderful, wide-ranging sense of curiosity. His insights emerge from politics, sociology, psychology and the arts — or from the lives of luminaries such as Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, Bill Gates, Eleanor Roosevelt, even Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. It’s all in the service of breaking down this abstract concept — power — into easily understood parts. All readers, but especially business executives, will come away with an invaluable understanding of what power cells are inside their personal battery packs and how to keep them fully charged. —Gary Burnison, CEO, Korn/Ferry International