Influence Across Hierarchies

In detailing the importance of mentoring for influence rather than control, I used the term hierarchy a few times. Although I barely graduated high school, I’ve read a ton of books written by people far smarter than me. Comprehending and digesting many of those required me to research the meaning of a bunch of big words I had never heard. And don’t even get me started about how tough it was to understand, then learn how to pronounce, “consanguinity” when quoting Thomas Jefferson in a lesson I shared about the character of George Washington in our Leading At The Next Level program several years ago. That’s probably why I’ve been so drawn to John Maxwell’s work over the years, his intentionality in keeping the cookies on the bottom shelf.

With that in mind, hierarchy is defined as “a system or organization in which people or groups are ranked one above the other according to status or authority.” In complete transparency, I’ve never been very good at accepting explicit direction based solely on status, title, or authority. There’s a line in one of my favorite songs by a band named Jackyl that captures my sentiment to a tee, but the tamed down version ties to the idea that we all put our pants on one leg at a time. I always cringe when someone new to a supervisory role refers to their employees as “the people under me.” All that said, influence transcends hierarchy - regardless of institutional complexity - when built on relationships.

Before I share how I’ve experienced this, think about how this has shown up in your life. I have no doubt that you can think of someone, at some point in your career, who earned the kind of influence with you that you’d still run through walls for them today - whether you’re still working with them daily or you haven’t spoken with them in years. I’d also bet that you can name a few that were very willing to crack their whip within the hierarchy but didn’t earn enough influence to get you to cross the street to help them if they were on fire - especially if you were off the clock.

Each of the mentors I’ve detailed to this point have indeed earned tremendous influence with me. Some have had positional authority over me and some have not. The job requirements and reporting structures came with certain expectations, but earned influence yielded discretionary effort whether their requests fell within those job requirements or not. The inverse holds just as true. In detailing the power of paying forward the lessons I’ve learned, I mentioned a guy who held tremendous positional authority who openly violated his own definition of torture by assigning the volunteer group I was a part of responsibility for results but no say in how we took action. As we looked at the limits of a title, I mentioned the construction crew supervisor who was as vile as anyone I had ever been around. In both cases, I did everything in my power to follow through on what I had committed to. That’s called character. But when that time was up - one through accepting a new job and working out a two-week notice, and the other at the end of a specified term - I was completely done with each of them.

Make no mistake, the rigid chain-of-command approach within a hierarchy can certainly drive results. It will, however, also drive turnover and a host of other issues that kill an organization’s profitability. Authentic influence, be that through peer-to-peer relationships or establishing an intentional mentoring relationship, carries well beyond any reporting structure and often lasts long after changes of employment. My challenge for you now is to reach out to someone above you to collaborate, building influence through mutual respect. As a quick side note, the best organizational charts I’ve ever seen are the ones where an owner or CEO places themselves at the bottom, showing that their responsibility is to serve everyone else in the organization. Even the fanciest titles have limitations but influence across hierarchies have an amazing ripple effect so we’ll pick up there soon.