I constantly remind people that a critical element of leadership is INFLUENCE. Sure, bosses can direct or order subordinates to do things. That is not really leadership nor is it influence. It is a use of power. Yes, sometimes in management roles that is necessary, but it should never be confused with influence.
One of the most important attributes that I consider when promoting people to management positions or to higher management positions is their ability to influence people. In fact, that is a performance attribute that I insist be evaluated during employee reviews. For a person to be considered for a promotion, their ability to influence people is critical. And I don’t mean just influencing their subordinates. Influence within an organization should be multi-dimentional. A person’s ability to positively influence their direct reports, their peers, AND people above them in an organization is a critical trait for great leaders. The best and most successful people I’ve worked with are those who influence through words, actions, decisions, work ethic, decision making ability, decisiveness, reasonableness, open-mindedness, logic, and numerous other characteristics.
A great example of how leaders influence can be summed up in a quote from Brian Tracy – “Leaders think and talk about solutions. Followers think and talk about the problems.” That is a great quote. It relates to my operating principle of Turn Complaints into Actions. Leaders – true leaders – are always in ACTION! They don’t spend time whining and complaining. There is just no point. It sucks the energy out of the room, causes anxiety and can frankly be depressing. When a leader influences others, then can also INSPIRE others.
I read a book called Never Stop on a Hill by Chris Lewis, retired commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police. He grew up with a friend and colleague of mine, Brent. Chris referenced a quote from Chief Jennifer Evans, paraphrased as “Leaders inspire others to accomplish things they would not necessarily believe they could.” The example I gave in an earlier blog where we shortened a new product development timeline from 24 months to an unheard of 10 months is an example of this. At first, I could tell nobody believed me when I said to our team we were going to do it. I didn’t have all the answers, but when I gave some examples where we could save a lot of time (by increasing cost and some product reliability risk) all of a sudden you could sense almost an “aha” moment. You could see it in the team members eyes that all of a sudden a new world of possibilities were running through everyone’s head.
What was probably even more impactful was when our Director of R&D, Michael, put together a presentation of the NASA moon project from the 60’s. He mapped out from when Kennedy declared the U.S. would go to the moon in less than 10 years through all the major milestones and challenges. He then used a tool he called the Project Probability Curve. I can’t recall if he created it himself of adapted it from somewhere else, but it was a great example and was very inspiring. He then applied the same tool to a probability curve of our project and the shortening of the timeline. It showed that it was POSSIBLE and what we had to do to make it PROBABLE. It wasn’t a precision tool, but it did work well and helped the team stay focused and highlight risk vs. return. That was some great leadership and influence from Michael. Without him and the rest of the team’s trust in him and his inspiration, there is no way we would have succeeded in this never been done before endeavor. Then Michael lead a team that did it again, this time in seven months. Those are stellar examples of influence in a leader.