Business-Focused Change Strategies

Many executives are overwhelmed—by emails, by meetings, by initiatives, or other tactical burdens. They describe not having control over their schedule or feeling like the demands of the business are running them. Others feel as if they are stuck in the movie, Groundhog Day, addressing the same problems over and over. In the majority of cases, this is not a problem of time management, but rather priority management: How they manage their business.

Leaders who feel time-constrained often suffer from one of three types of priority management challenges:

• They have not clearly established business and personal priorities, so that the urgency of an issue overwhelms its importance.ⁱⁱ
• They have not properly structured their team or their business, and have not hired the right people that would allow them to allocate their time to Main Team (direct reports) versus First Team (manager's team members) priorities, and internal and external needs.
• They have not established their operational cadence so that delegation, empowerment, and decision rights are difficult to implement successfully.

Whether you are starting a new role or trying to enhance your influence and impact in an established role, it is essential to get these three domains right, many times before working on any interpersonal or political changes. The reason is simple: Effective leaders and managers have to create the context for others to succeed. You have to ensure that you have the right people, in the right roles, focused on the right things, in the most effective manner. If these elements are not properly set up, how you lead and who you align with will not make up for doing the wrong things with the wrong people or in the wrong roles. You may have known a leader who tried to use their evenings and weekends to make up for lack of clarity or resources. This rarely works in the long run.

Eleanor was the chief development officer of a large not-for-profit organization. She was successful in meeting her financial goals, but her manager felt she was too deep into the weeds of her people's work. She needed to consider longer-term fundraising as well as ensuring that her team was handling the details right. When we first met, she had 16 people on her team, 12 of whom reported directly to her. It became clear that the number of people and development challenges was overwhelming, making it impossible for her to focus on anything but day-to-day work.

We helped her restructure her organization so that she had three major teams, plus two individual contributors who focused on specific donor groups. All of the remaining team members reported to the three team leaders, two focused on high-priority development segments and one on operational processes. Within weeks, Eleanor was able to begin work on longer-term strategic issues, including novel fundraising vehicles and contingency plans.

We often hear from bosses that one of their high-potential team members needs to “be more strategic,” “think big-picture,” or “get out of the weeds.” Often, this means that the person needs to focus on more important and unresolved business issues. There are a variety of ways to develop these strategic skills, but they all require the scarcest resource in business: Time. People cannot think strategically, or look for unintended consequences in 15-minute increments. They always require the time to read, listen, observe, and think. Again, this becomes a problem of priority management, not thinking per se.

Interpersonal Change Strategies

Once you are confident that you have the right strategy, the right people, and the right operational cadence, the next domain is interpersonal change. How you interact with, relate to, and communicate with others is essential to effective influencing. Understanding the interpersonal dynamics and cultural norms of the various groups in your organization is essential to enhancing your influence. Having effective social skills, and relating to others in an authentic, engaging way are equally valuable. Terms like charm, authenticity, respect, listening, and the like are common areas to work on. Many of the skills needed to build your interpersonal influence fall into the broad category of Emotional Intelligence (EQ), in the way that Daniel Goleman and colleagues have defined it.ⁱⁱⁱ

The four principal themes of EQ are self-understanding, other-understanding, self-management, and other-management. The first two address how you experience, share, and control your own emotional states. The latter two focus on how you perceive, understand, manage, and prioritize others’ emotional states (your ability to use empathy). Although emotions are different from culture, the organizational culture elicits different emotions in different people, and people's emotions are handled differently in each organization's culture.

Empathy is essential to effective interpersonal influence. Empathy enables you to understand another person's perspective without having personally experienced it. Paradoxically, empathy cannot occur without understanding one's own emotional state. That is why some of the work needed to build influence and impact involves learning about your own and others’ emotional experiences. Many of our clients do not focus on their own emotions, thinking that one should suppress emotions in the workplace. Understanding your emotions does not mean expressing them, however. Successful executives and managers need to use their own emotional experience, so that they can influence how others feel and act.

Many of the interpersonal areas for growth are not large-scale actions or big personal shifts. Rather, they are small, day-to-day behaviors that convey a lot of information because they occur so frequently. A common example is the manager who walks down the hall, focused on their next meeting or their smartphone. They often do not notice the people they pass, because they are absorbed in their own thoughts. Many people experience this manager as haughty or dismissive, and conclude (often wrongly) that the person does not care about them.

Listening is another common tool for interpersonal influence. Many times, we are so focused on our own concerns that we barely hear what the other person says. Or we disagree, and immediately start thinking about our response instead of listening to the other person. This also unintentionally conveys disrespect, and limits our ability to have a positive influence and impact on others.

People often think of being inspirational as a key element to interpersonal influence. It is important, but there are many ways to be inspirational, ranging from powerful public speaking to simply living by your values every day. When you are developing interpersonal change strategies, be sure to involve both large-scale behaviors and small actions and responses.

Organizational Change Strategies

“I hate playing politics. People who play political games usually do it because they are ‘empty suits’ who don't know what to do.”

A countless number of people have said some version of this to us over our careers. Most people equate organizational politics with backbiting, zero-sum competitions, and Machiavellian tactics. Some people definitely play these types of games, and we find those manipulations as distasteful as our clients do.

To accomplish work efficiently in an organization, you have to have political intelligence (PQ). PQ, a cousin to IQ and EQ, refers to the intersection of interpersonal relationships and organizational needs that enables work to move faster and smoother in a complex system. When done well, organizational politics involves the development and maintenance of a network of colleagues at all levels of the organization. Colleagues will work with you because it is expected, but they will happily help and support you in achieving your objectives if you have a strong, mutual relationship with them. As one executive explained to his very challenging business development lead, “You have to earn the right to tell people what to do who don't report to you. You do that by building a relationship with them.”

PQ also involves knowing how decisions are made in an organization, and who has influence with whom. We have found that most executives build close, trusted relationships with a few others, and rely on them for information and insights. Ensuring you have a good relationship with some of those influencers can make it easier to communicate your ideas and acquire the scarce resources you need to deliver what is expected.

Finally, PQ helps you stand up for, and advocate on behalf of, your team members. Many people do not like promoting their work, and in some cultures self-advocacy is perceived as arrogant or “unseemly.” At the same time, it is the job of a leader to recognize their team members and help them stand out as valued contributors in their own right. Knowing where to do this, and how to do it is an essential part of having influence in organizations large and small.

Once you have established what you want to change to enhance your influence and impact, you need to shift to execution mode. This means taking the steps you need on a regular basis to make the changes you have identified. In the next chapter we will describe how to translate these objectives into specific actions.

Didi's team of account managers consistently exceeded their goals, but she was frustrated by both her manager and the company she worked for. She felt she had been passed over for a promotion and was shown neither the respect nor the recognition for several significant accomplishments over the past two years. She was considering looking for another job but agreed to work with an executive coach.

Based on a 360˚ assessment and several personality tests, Bill and Didi agreed that her success at driving results and her ability to keep her team focused and motivated were significant strengths. These were coming, however, at the cost of her effectiveness with peers and internal customers. Although she was seen as a driver, the unintended effect of her drive was that others felt she was focused on her own agenda rather than reaching shared solutions with her stakeholders. In addition, she prioritized the work itself, without taking the time to build relationships that would make others want to collaborate with her. Efforts to manage the team's workflow were seen by some of her internal customers as resistant or unresponsive to them.

Based on these observations, Didi and Bill agreed that she would work with her new manager and her key stakeholders to revisit their business objectives, and make sure they were all aligned with what was needed. Her objectives for the coaching work drew directly from this:

1. Develop a clear understanding of what all of her stakeholders wanted and needed from her team, including her manager and her top internal customers. (A business focused change)
2. Look for win-win solutions rather than "setting limits" on what seemed at first to be unreasonable requests. (A political change)
3. Shift her approach to communication—both formal and informal—to demonstrate the benefits to her customers and stakeholders rather than the quality of the work they did. (An interpersonal change)

Didi focused on these three change priorities and continued to produce the results she had always delivered. By the end of the year, she received both the promotion she was looking for and a significant increase in pay. More importantly, her manager and her manager's manager both told her that she was much more effective, and she received excellent feedback from her stakeholders.

Personal Strategic Plan™

Download an editable worksheet at www.BermanLeadership.com/InfluenceandImpact

---------------------