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The Influential Leader

Written by: Lee Colan

Article Overview: Leadership has traditionally been defined as getting people to follow your vision. However, in today’s mega-matrixed world, leaders often do not have directly authority over those they need to realize their vision. Today’s leader must frequently lead through influence – a more subtle yet powerful approach to getting things done. One of the most important aspects of influencing others is spreading and soliciting new ideas.

The Influential Leader

Leadership has traditionally been defined as getting people to follow your vision. However, in today’s mega-matrixed world, leaders often do not have directly authority over those they need to realize their vision. Today’s leader must frequently lead through influence – a more subtle yet powerful approach to getting things done.

One of the most important aspects of influencing others is spreading and soliciting new ideas. That’s right, influence is a two-way street. The influential leader is a conduit of ideas – some are his while others are from his team. Some are well-baked concepts and validated theories while others are raw musings and trial balloons. Sometimes it’s about listening while other times it’s about speaking. Your focus might be on brainstorming today and on refining tomorrow. The influential leader, one way or another, forwards ideas and ultimately helps convert them into action.

This is typically a pretty organic process. It is woven into lots of informal interactions vs. formal meetings (think midnight discussions in the hallway of your college dorm). As a result, the key is to carve out time for lots of brief interactions where you can to ignite such discussions at work. Some interactions might be more in-depth, but most of them are simply about connecting with people for no immediate business reason. Most discussions can be about 10 minutes and can be stimulated by questions/comments like:

1. What do you think about this idea I have?
2. How would you deal with X challenge or initiative?
3. What’s the first thing you would do if you had my job?
4. What’s on your dream list of things to work on?
5. I would like you to participant in X meeting (one they would not normally participate in) and share your thoughts.
6. I would like you to share my idea with your teammates, see what they think, then give me completely unfiltered feedback.

Rather than schedule these interactions (it can feel too formal and potentially stifling), budget five or 10 minutes before one meeting a day to zigzag your way to the meeting (or even to the restroom or lunch). Pop in on your team and strike up a conversation using some of the suggestions above (or your own version of them).

You can even add in a lunch once in a while with someone you would not typically have lunch with someone a couple levels below you or in another department.

Start small- try zigzagging once a week for a month. Set a goal of doing a daily zigzag by next year. Slow and steady as you build a habit….watch your leadership influence grow!

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Article Tags: budget, business reason, college dorm, formal meetings, forwards, hallway, influencing others, informal interactions, initiative, job, leadership, minu, musings, organic process, participant, teammates, trial balloons, world leaders



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