Step Up: How to build your influence at work

If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.

—Thomas Edison, Inventor

Mid-way through my career I moved into risk and compliance. This was a deliberate move that surprised many people. Before I moved into risk and compliance I had been working in an advisory role for the CEO. Risk and compliance certainly wasn’t seen as the sexy part of the organisation, nor an area that had much influence. I remember people asking me why I had gone to work with the ‘cardigan brigade’, and questioned why I wanted to work in an area that was the ‘handbrake on happi ness’. The cardigan was a reference to a biased perception that risk and compliance professionals weren’t ‘cool’, but highly analytical and so perhaps a little boring. While the handbrake comment reflected a view that the risk and compliance team was just there to say no, and therefore interaction with them was a hindrance not a help.

The comments may have been light-hearted but the perception that lay behind those sentiments was all too real. To many people, risk and compliance was seen as an afterthought. It was not regarded as a central part of the business. It wasn’t seen as a place to go to grow your career. This is funny when you think that I was working in a financial institution, which is all about risk – how much you take, where you take it, and how you manage it.

The challenge was that risk and compliance often attracted people who were highly technically competent, but they weren’t good at negotiating outcomes or influencing stakeholders. Some of them knew this was a gap, while others were blissfully unaware.

And so this is how it would play out…

There was often tension between the revenue-generating areas of the business (that just wanted to get on, hit targets and make money) and risk and compliance folk (who were trying to rein in those activities). But, it’s hard to rein something in when you don’t know how to influence. Of course, there were legal and compliance requirements that needed to be met, but relying on that argument to secure influence only got you so far.

Motivating someone to do something through fear (or a reward) is not a long-term strategy. Playing the role with a big stick in your hand isn’t the way to build a long-term, healthy relationship either. At the same time, you worry that if you push issues too hard with the business you’ll ‘burn’ relationships.

When I worked as the Head of Compliance I would often have business leaders complaining to me that the compliance person they were dealing with didn’t understand the business and wasn’t helping them. The person did understand the business, but they struggled to communicate effectively and didn’t know how to position arguments in a way that they could be heard. This made getting things done and working with the business harder than it needed to be.

While I’ve used a risk and compliance example here, this challenge translates across many technical roles. People in technically driven and functionally focused roles often struggle to get heard in organisations.

It may be the financial controller who knows that the sales projections don’t look right but has difficulty convincing the executive team to take notice and action. It may be the procurement head who can see that the organisation would be more effective with its suppliers if it changed how it interacted with them. It may be the data specialist who can see issues with the organisation’s strategy but doesn’t know how to position their concerns. It may be a junior marketing manager who wants to suggest changes to the organisation’s advertising strategy but doesn’t feel confident in pitching the message. The examples are numerous.

In all cases, these people are struggling to get heard – ultimately hampering their ability to make progress and to be seen as a successful leader.

When you find yourself in this situation, you can feel exiled from the people who hold the power in the organisation. You feel left behind. Out of the loop. Unimportant. You feel as if you have no power. It’s not a good place to be.

If you think about it, you’re not in the driver’s seat. You’re the passenger, and sometimes perhaps you’re not even the passenger in the front seat who is helping to navigate. You’re in the back seat with no ability to influence the direction and speed of the journey, or the route taken.

✓CHECKPOINT ACTIVITY

Do you sometimes struggle to: 

Get your point across in meetings?

Build long-term, constructive relationships with senior executives and colleagues?

Develop a coalition of support for a concept from idea through to implementation?

Understand what motivates you and others to action?

Construct engaged and effective teams that can successfully navigate complexity and change?

Negotiate clear and balanced outcomes?

Know when to hold your ground, give up ground or walk away from a debate?

Get things done in your organisation?

If you answered yes to any of these questions don’t be discouraged. There is another way. A better way.

From my experience, getting traction and getting your stakeholders and colleagues to listen is about gaining influence, understanding how power works in an organisation and using both of these elements wisely.

INFLUENCE AS COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

Most people when they hear the term ‘competitive advantage’ think about Michael Porter’s definition as it relates to organisations. That is, for an organisation to succeed it needs to know what it’s good at vis-à-vis other players in the market. It’s this point of difference and how it is leveraged that makes an organisation stand out and succeed.

Every individual has a unique set of skills. You can hone your skills in a way to create your distinct competitive advantage. To secure this competitive advantage, your professional toolkit needs to go beyond the traditional – to include an ability to motivate and encourage behavioural change and secure outcomes. In short, you need to be able to influence.

If you look at successful leaders – in business, society and politics – they all know how to influence. They know how to get things done through other people and are aware of the environment in which they are operating. They know how to use their personal power to secure outcomes.

On a daily basis, business executives are bombarded with information and requests. When I was a senior executive I’d regularly receive over 300 emails a day. I’d also often spend eight hours in back-to-back meetings. My husband who’s an IT specialist could never understand it. He used to say to me: How can you possibly spend all day in meetings? What are you actually achieving? The sad thing was often we weren’t achieving as much as we could have been.

I was often overwhelmed with information. It’s what noted economist and Nobel Prize winner, Herbert Simon sees as a wealth of information creating a poverty of attention.¹ There’s so much information that it’s hard to get through it and know what to focus on.

The only way I could survive the information onslaught was to be ruthless about what I spent my time on. Processes and activities which couldn’t be explicitly connected with delivering value and business outcomes were pushed down the priority list.

There was immense value in working with people who were able to help me sift through the rubble to find the gems I needed to focus on. People who just gave me more information and no insights were less helpful. Similarly, in dealing with my business stakeholders I knew that for the relationship to be of value to them, I needed to offer insights so I could play a critical role in helping them grow their business and achieve their outcomes. The relationship needed to be more about them and their needs, and less about my needs. By shifting the focus to them, I would ultimately get what I needed.

The people who influenced me were often the people who helped make my working life easier. This didn’t mean they were sycophants who never expressed a different view. Their opinions were valuable. They were influential because they were constantly adding value – and often more than they were expected to. They understood what it took to craft personal influence.

THE LADDER OF INFLUENCE

Everyone in an organisation has a label. This label is often your role title. Unfortunately, role titles can box people in. If you’re a communications manager, you’re the comms person. If you’re the financial controller, you’re the finance person. If you’re the systems engineer, you’re the technical person. This is despite the fact that your experience may extend well beyond those titles.

While you have a designated role in your organisation – that comes with your title – it’s up to you to choose what level of influence you want to hold.

At this point you may be thinking – Yeah right, I can’t determine my own level of influence. I’d argue that you can. But, it’s about how much you are willing to do things differently.

Ask yourself: how much effort am I willing to put into learning and changing my mindset and adopting a behavioural approach to leadership? How much am I willing to do things differently so I step into my personal power?

I’d argue you have choice, but I’d also argue that today’s disruptive environmental context dictates that you need to take a different approach.

Assessing your position 

Looking at Figure 1, consider where you are placed with regard to your position of influence and where you want to be. Do you want to be at the bottom of the scale and be a ‘plodder’ who is pedestrian and not having much impact? Or at the top and be a catalyst for progress in your organisation? Catalysts know how to influence and know how to get things done – adding ten times the amount of value for the organisation and their own