I’ve met people who often mix influencing and managing others with manipulations, which, although they look similar approaches, have some significant differences. I think the problem is a lack of sufficient understanding of these behaviours.

Influence

Set of techniques and approaches in which individuals adjust their behaviour to the demand of the environment and get someone else to act, react or get to ideas and conclusions which we want them to. When you influence someone, you help them to see why taking action will be in their best interest. Of course, you want the person to get to the final conclusions and action themselves and not tell them what to do. Also, it depends on the influencer’s intent, the influence itself could be good or bad, as it is a powerful tool used not only in leadership but also in socialisation, sales, marketing and other aspects of our social life. 

Managing others

Managing people is often referred to as giving commands and controlling their opinion. In modern leadership and people management, we are not doing that. When I’m saying people management, I don’t mean managing direct reports, but managing everyone around us – peers, our managers, the boss of our manager, stakeholders and all kinds of people we work with. In this context, I am focusing on managing up and sideways, so excluding direct reports of a line manager. So, managing it is NOT about supervising or controlling your colleagues, nor judging and evaluating managing, communication styles and skills. It is about managing relationships with your boss and peers, developing a productive working rapport, getting to know better others’ management, leadership and communication styles,  preferences and priorities, and most importantly, adapting and aligning the work styles of both parties to form a productive working relationship. Getting to know your counterparties and knowing them better helps you with communication, and this is not a manipulation.

Manipulation

If we look for a formal definition(in this case, Wikipedia), we will see a short and clear definition: “Manipulation in psychology is a behaviour designed to exploit, control, or otherwise influence others to one’s advantage” to an extent it could be achieved by influence and managing others. The big difference is the intent. In the manipulation, there is no empathy, no room for “we” in manipulation; it is all about self-importance and dominance over the other person. One fundamental difference between manipulation and influence is the intent. Influence creates an environment that makes it easy for a person to act or think in the way you want them to. In contrast, manipulation is forcing or coercing a person to take an action you want which helps only the manipulator. 

Watch my first quick video, where I try to explain better and visualise my point.

Used sources:

• https://hr.ucmerced.edu/content/managing-what-it-and-why-do-it
• https://securityboulevard.com/2022/04/influence-vs-manipulation-what-is-the-difference/