Leadership Caffeine-The Importance of Cultivating Your Influence
Filed under: "To Do" List, Career, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Marketing Yourself, Performance, Professional Growth
How much influence do you have as a leader in your organization?
Are you master of your own domain, running a tight ship in your functional area and controlling the flow of people and ideas in and out of your four walls?
Or, are you a leader whose reach and reputation extend across boundaries and up and down the organizational ladder?
While your own level of influence might not be something that crosses your mind on a daily basis, your relative level of influence in your organization is at least one reasonable proxy for measuring your effectiveness as a leader.
Much like trust, the precious commodity of influence is earned over time based on a great number of exposures. True influence…the kind where people seek you out and value your input and involve you and look to you to lead, isn’t bestowed by a title, it’s born of hard work.
Influence is developed early in a career by working in the trenches, doing your part to master your craft, doing what you say you’ll do and treating others with respect. Add in a dash of helping others…newcomers and those that can use a boost, and suddenly the view on you begins to change.
She’s someone we respect.
Respect begets trust and trust is the foundation of influence.
Leaders have the added challenge of growing influence on a larger field, and that involves dealing with the Double P: Power & Politics. Ignore these at your own peril. Learn to understand where power lies and cultivate your skills in legitimately pursuing power, and you will grow your influence. Be aware of politics, and instead of denying it, use ethical finesse in coping with and managing it. Eyes wide open, please.
3 Keys to Cultivating Power and Growing Influence:
Power is usually waiting for someone to pick it up and run with it.
1. Find problems.
2. Involve others and start fixing the problems with energy and enthusiasm that opens eyes.
3. Create heroes.
10 Questions to Help Assess Your Level of Influence:
1. Are you often selected to participate (or better yet, lead) high visibility projects?
2. Are your former team members well established in positions of authority around the organization?
3. Is your function or team a destination of choice for high quality people from across your business?
4. Are you asked to mentor others, or, do you serve as an informal mentor for people from around the organization?
5. Are you visible to senior managers and executives as someone who makes things happen?
6. Do other managers ask about and recruit the talent on your team?
7. Are you known as a leader who helps people push through job level and compensation limits?
8. Are you known for helping people create careers?
9. Are you well networked (beyond the superficial level) in your organization, from top to bottom?
10. Can you get senior-level face time when you ask for it?
The Bottom-Line for Now:
If you can answer a good number of the 10 questions above in the affirmative, you are on your way to cultivating influence in an ethical manner. If the answers are genuinely, “no,” it’s time for some leadership soul searching. Find some people you trust and ask for input. You might want to be sitting down when they hit you with it.
Those with influence define the rules, select the players and enjoy the outcomes. Perhaps it’s time to begin deliberately and ethically working on cultivating your workplace influence.
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Art Petty coaches and trains emerging leaders and consults with B2B firms on strategy and marketing. You can reach Art via e-mail to discuss your needs for coaching, speaking or consulting.
Management Week in Review for January 28, 2011
Note from Art: every Friday, I share three thought-provoking management posts for the week. Fair warning: I take a broad view of management, so my selections will range from leadership to innovation to finance and personal development and beyond.
This week’s selections feature content on dealing with difficult people, learning and avoiding the pitfalls of inexperienced management teams, and recognizing the need as leaders to appeal to the hearts of the people on our teams.
From Jennifer V. Miller at The People Equation, “Dealing with People Who Suck.”
Jennifer always leave me thinking, and her post this week fits in wonderfully with my own “dealing with difficult people” theme here at Management Excellence this week. You will quickly recognize the subject of this post…and perhaps you have one of these “Human Hoovers” sitting near you at work. What’s the right response to these individuals who missed out on the day when “reciprocity” was taught in grade-school? Read the post to find out!
From the post: “But there’s a shadow side too. There are those few people for whom reciprocity seems a foreign concept. They’re like the Human Hoovers of the workplace—sucking up all they can manage to get in the name of self-interest. Vacuums are a very effective appliance to use at home, but a real pain to have to deal with as a co-worker.”
From Steve Tobak at The Corner Office, “Top 10 Pitfalls of Inexperienced Management Teams.”
As I mentioned in an earlier Week in Review piece, Steve is on my “must read every post” list. In this one, he describes his view on some of the most common missteps of inexperienced management teams when it comes to scaling their businesses. He appropriately caps off the post with an indication that experienced managers might just have their own set of unique and equally dangerous pitfalls. Experienced or inexperienced, the “Top 10″ are real and important to avoid.
From the post: “Now, I wouldn’t begrudge anyone the unique growth experience of learning from his own mistakes, especially the wisdom and humility that only failure can impart on the executive ego. That said, savvy managers listen to the voice of experience. They may choose to ignore the advice, but they still listen. Information is power, forewarned is forearmed, and all that.”
From Jeffrey Pfeffer, writing at HBR Blogs: “Is Obama Gaining Power with Every Speech? (Are you?)
I interviewed Jeffrey last summer at the time of release of his latest book, Power-Why Some People Have it and Others Don’t, and have been a fan ever since. The topic is relevant for all of us not only for our success, but even our health, as Pfeffer highlights in his book. His take in this latest post on our need as leaders to move others by appealing to their hearts is an important one. While the focus is on the President’s latest speeches, he provides some interesting parallels t0 other successful business leaders.
From the post: “Business speech is surely not, on average, more stirring than political speech. It consists mostly of the language of rationality presented in forms that go on too long and benumb rather than inspire employees. But the business leaders who stand out show the power of breaking that mold.”
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OK, that’s it for the week. Enjoy your weekend! I’ll be back Monday with a fresh cup of Leadership Caffeine.
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About Art Petty: Art coaches high potential professionals and develops and delivers workshops and programs on leadership, professional development and building high performance teams. Contact Art to discuss your needs for a program or keynote.
And whether you are an experienced leader seeking to revitalize and develop as a professional, or, a new leader looking for guidance on starting up successfully, check out Art’s book with Rich Petro, Practical Lessons in Leadership at Amazon.com.
The Pursuit of Power and the Misguided Leadership Literature
Filed under: Career, Leadership, Performance, Professional Growth
Jeffrey Pfeffer’s article, Power Play, in the July-August Harvard Business Review (fee) is interesting and relevant for everyone working inside organizations as well as for those individuals actively engaged in the development of leadership literature and course-work.
Pfeffer tackles the important topic of power. How to gain it, how to wield it, and in his opinion, why those that actively cultivate power are more effective at driving change and implementing a new strategy. He also suggests that the leadership literature is soft-selling or ignoring this very real and important part of organizational life.
First, the organizational issues. Anyone that has been around the block for more than a few minutes recognizes that the flow of power (formal and informal) is what makes organizations move. Power manifests itself in many ways that don’t involve revolution or underhanded activities. Consider the ability of one manager to consistently secure plum projects and top performers for her teams. Or, another manager’s track record at pushing his new programs through the various approval channels and gaining investment support. Both individuals have cultivated and used power for practical, productive purposes.
I’m refreshed to see the term “Power” in a positive and pro-active light. It’s often not talked about except in the context of “abuses of.” Much like politics in the organization, power is a very real and palpable source of performance fuel. It is also something that is actively sought by some that see it as a way forward and upward, while it is eschewed by others that view at as noble to avoid the perceived games and grabs.
Good, relevant content for anyone laboring inside an organization or working on a team.
And while I like what Pfeffer has to see, he most definitely is knocking the chip off of the shoulders of those in the leadership community with his second of three barriers that preclude many people from assembling a power base.
From the article:
Barrier 2: The Leadership Literature: ”Most books by well-known executives and many lectures and courses about leadership should be stamped “Caution: This material can be hazardous to your organizational survival.” That’s because many leaders touting their careers as models to be emulated gloss over the power plays they used to get to the top. The teaching on leadership is filled with prescriptions about following your inner compass, being truthful, letting your feelings show, being modest and self-effacing, not behaving in bullying or abusive ways—in short, prescriptions that reflect how people wish those in positions of power behaved. There is no doubt that the world would be a much better place if people were always authentic, modest, truthful and concerned about others, instead of simply pursuing their own aims. But wishing that’s how people behaved won’t make it so.”
I take issue with this one just a bit. While I don’t claim to have read all of the contemporary literature on leading, I’ve rarely tripped across anything from a substantive leader or writer that spews just the overly sweet and syrupy content the Pfeffer describes in his quote. The issues of building accountability, earning respect and growing credibility as a means of influence (power), making tough calls that affect firms and people (uses of power), and driving results (to gain more credibility, influence and power) are standard fare. I’m not certain what books or articles that Mr. Pfeffer is reading, but perhaps he should broaden his reach just a bit.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
I like the open discussion on “Power” and its relevance to individuals and organizations. We’ll have more discussions here on that content. Mr. Pfeffer definitely gets my nod for drawing it out and even for his well intended (I suspect) but slightly off-target shot at the leadership community. If nothing else, he offers all of us pursuing the development of the next generation of effective leaders, a valuable reminder that we must know and deal with the facts of organizational life.
The Raw Marketing Power of Passionate People in the Workplace
For those of you drawn to this post in the hope of finding something juicy about workplace romance, keep on clicking. This is about romance of the professional type. It’s about the powerful impact that someone with passion for his or her job has on the working environment and ultimately on the success of the enterprise.
A passionate employee is like rocket fuel for your organization. These rare and valuable people build your brand, strengthen client loyalty, stimulate repeat business and energize your workplace just by their daily participation in your business.
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