.
Becoming a Person
of Infl uence
Do your colleagues listen when you suggest a new idea? Do they seek out
your opinion? Does your boss respect your recommendations and take you
seriously when you argue for a new approach? Do people in other areas of
the business know you and respond well to your work with them? In other
words, are you a person of infl uence in your organization?
In chapter 2, “Building Trust and Credibility,” we discussed the impor-
tance of establishing your employees’ confi dence in you as their manager.
That foundation is essential to be seen as a strong leader, one that others
want to follow. The next step is to use that trust to execute your vision and
drive business success in the organization at large.
Infl uence, as we’ll use the term, represents your ability to persuade
others and have a positive impact on your organization’s decisions, plans,
and results. Success in your role as a leader means trying new approaches
and strategies. To do this, you need to convince others in your company to
follow—and to endorse—your ideas. You also need to be able to advocate
68Managing Yourself
effectively for your team, in order to both keep their trust and also enhance
the work that they can do for the good of the organization.
You might think that purposefully pursuing infl uence is distasteful,
and surely you don’t want to be seen as scheming and manipulating people
to always get your way. But infl uence really isn’t about getting “your” way.
It’s about helping to create positive and productive outcomes for your orga-
nization, with and through others.
To do this, fi rst you need to understand the basis of your power; then
you can wield it to better work with peers, collaborate across silos in your
organization, infl uence your boss, and promote your ideas.
Positional versus personal power
Infl uence is a combination of two kinds of power. Your role as a manager
automatically gives you positional power in your organization—power that
comes from your job description and title, like the ability to hire and fi re
people or approve a budget. In earlier generations, corporate cultures put
a greater emphasis on a manager’s positional power, and there was an ex-
pectation that if you told direct reports to do something, they’d do it with-
out question. But as hierarchies are giving way to fl atter organizations and
looser networks of collaboration, you can’t rely on just your job title to get
things done. As a manager, you need to work through other people—your
direct reports, who can execute your vision; your peers, who can support
it laterally; and your management team, who can make or break it from
above. Getting their buy-in requires a different approach.
To exercise infl uence up and down the chain of command, you need
to also draw effectively on your personal power by cultivating social capi-
tal. Relationships, reputation, reciprocity, institutional knowledge, and
informal know-how—social capital represents all of the trust, value, and
goodwill you’ve created in your organization. For example, when you
increase the organization’s profi ts or help your team secure good year-
end bonuses, you create economic value for your higher-ups and direct
reports alike. Down the line, when you want their buy-in for a new ini-
tiative, they’ll be more likely to accept your plan and throw their weight
Becoming a Person of Infl uence69
behind your leadership. Your past success has both generated goodwill
and earned respect.
If you maintain a strong network of connections in the organization
and you support initiatives that are important to others, you will be seen
as a valuable ally. You can gain social capital over time by cultivating a few
key habits, according to leadership coach Lisa Lai:
Take action and solve problems.
Find and solve real problems for the organization, and for your direct re-
ports, peers, and supervisors. Identify opportunities to become better,
smarter, and faster. Suggest specifi c changes that could be positive for em-
ployees, customers, or partners.
Signs that you need to work on this behavior include:
• You tend to ignore problems until they either go away or become
the norm.
• You think more about coping mechanisms than solutions.
• You struggle with turning complaints into to-do lists.
Be a team player.
Embrace change and try to deliver the best possible results, even if the de-
cision isn’t one you’d choose. Work hard when no one’s watching.
Signs that you need to work on this behavior include:
• When someone suggests a new way of doing things, your predomi-
nant reaction is fear or annoyance.
• You don’t feel ownership of an outcome when you’ve objected to the
process that produced it.
Have informed opinions.
Develop a deep, comprehensive understanding of your business and of
your company’s power structure. Listen as much as you talk. Provide
constructive input when you have an opinion.
70Managing Yourself
Warning signs that you’re struggling with this behavior include:
• You don’t contribute in the moment because you’re not sure what
you think.
• You beat yourself up afterward for being quiet, or you blame others
for talking over you.
• You change your mind frequently.
Help other people succeed.
Support your boss and acknowledge their authority. Support and respect
your peers, even when you disagree. Offer opportunities to other people.
Avoid bad-mouthing the company, leadership, and customers.
Warning signs that you’re struggling with this behavior include:
• You withhold information and opportunities from others in the
organization.
• You prioritize making yourself look good over promoting the suc-
cesses of your colleagues.
• You’re indifferent to other people’s career trajectories because you
don’t think they affect you very much.
Respect others.
Treat your coworkers with respect. Be direct and honest, and take direc-
tion easily. Learn to work well with others, including people you don’t re-
ally like. Manage confl ict productively, without undue negativity.
Warning signs that you’re struggling with this behavior include:
• You have a history of enemies and rivals in the offi ce.
• You tend to hold grudges.
• You disrespect or disregard people’s professional abilities if you
don’t like them.
Becoming a Person of Infl uence71
Demonstrate integrity.
Share what you can with others without breaking confi dences. Avoid bark-
ing or biting unless you have to, and use positional power only when it mat-
ters. Don’t let others bully you, and stand up for what you believe is right.
Warning signs that you have work to do in this area include:
• You share other people’s personal information even when you know
you shouldn’t.
• You lose your temper and make threats to people under your
authority.
• You let other people talk you into doing things you don’t want
to do.
These strategies help you strengthen your relationships and build your
social capital, all to the benefi t of your ability to infl uence others.
Managing up
Whether you’re asking for a raise, securing more resources for your team,
or developing a new strategy for your group, you need to garner infl uence
with your managers in particular. They are a key fi gure in your profes-
sional life, with the ability to open opportunities, connect you and your
team with useful resources and relationships, offer you advice, and advo-
cate for you and your team in higher levels of the organization. If you can’t
infl uence them, you’ll be frustrated at best and professionally sidelined at
worst.
When you exercise this infl uence, you’re reversing the traditional
power fl ow in the relationship. That’s “managing up”—that is, making a
conscious effort to affect the perceptions, opinions, and decisions of your
managers. To do this effectively, you need to understand your managers’
motivations and their hot buttons, set commonly understood expectations
for your performance, and adapt yourself to their way of working.
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