We are going through uncertain times. Engineering leaders routinely need to drive decisions across teams they don’t directly manage, under circumstances they don’t control. The result: high-stakes technical choices that depend entirely on influence, not authority. Most advice on this topic is vague: “build relationships," "communicate clearly." But influence during this time of uncertainty requires more than soft skills. It requires deliberate frameworks: how you position tradeoffs, when you escalate versus absorb friction, and how you make the cost of inaction visible without creating defensiveness.

This talk introduces a set of influence frameworks drawn from years of working across enterprise engineering teams, regional stakeholders, and startup environments where formal authority was never an option. We'll cover how to accelerate trust-building with new teams, structure proposals so the right decision feels obvious, and recognize when consensus-seeking is helping versus when it's stalling progress. These patterns don't replace good engineering judgment or strong relationships. They build on them, giving practitioners actionable tactics for environments that are simply chaotic.