Influence Over Authority: The Limits of a Title

Twice to this point, I’ve alluded to the significant difference in the results we can achieve by earning genuine influence rather than relying solely on the authority of our position or title. If a mentor has been effective in helping us close our leadership gaps, that’s been through the influence they’ve built with us; I’ve seen very few people achieve significance from unwanted mentorship. And even when we have some level of positional authority, countering that with humility yields results we’ll never see from cracking the proverbial whip. The whip can certainly get things done but only if we’re present, and marching to that drum exclusively is a direct cause for the cost of high turnover that I outlined in detail in What’s KILLING Your Profitability?...

With those two references serving as our starting point, let’s begin digging into how intentionally choosing influence over authority - even when that authority may often produce the results we need in the moment - leads to long term success far beyond the limits of a title. In each of my previous books, I supplied quotes and data from recognized sources. Since so much of this look at Leveraging Leadership Growth: Strength Through Great Professional Relationships is based on the impact so many amazing leaders and mentors have had in my life (lessons I’ve learned along the way, if you will), I’m going to stick with a few stories that I’ve watched unfold - at least for now as we get this ball rolling.

Cindy and I share a lesson in our IMPACT Leadership Academy detailing how tough it can be for anyone with leadership responsibility to hold their team members accountable, especially when they were close friends with those team members long before accepting supervisory responsibility for them. In that lesson, I detail something I observed in my early twenties where a guy I worked with transitioned from operating a press to supervising that same department immediately after completing some courses at our local community college. This coursework prepared him for some of the scheduling and reporting in his new role, but it was clear from day one that his title didn’t automatically make him the person in that department wielding the most influence. We all liked him for the most part, but there was one “old timer” in the group who had earned significant influence with all of us (albeit not necessarily positive influence) and he was very willing to push every possible boundary with our new supervisor - who just happened to work side by side with this “old timer” just weeks prior. While most everyone liked our new supervisor, he had done little to earn influence with most of us and only had the authority of his position backing the directives he dished out; and his passive demeanor resulted in him avoiding the tough conversations until his boss forced his hand. As you can imagine, the “old timer” had more impact on the direction our department went on any given day than our really nice supervisor. In that case, it was truly an example of one person being in charge but another one leading.

With that in mind, though, we can’t lose sight of the difference earned influence can make even when we have a title that carries authority. Throughout What’s KILLING Your Profitability? and Leading With A Clear Purpose, I referenced an article I found from Harvard Business Review called “The Things They Do for Love” that quantified the impact employee engagement has like this:

“Company leaders won’t be surprised that employee engagement—the extent to which workers commit to something or someone in their organizations—influences performance and retention. But they may be surprised by how much engagement matters. Increased commitment can lead to a 57% improvement in discretionary effort—that is, employees’ willingness to exceed duty’s call. That greater effort produces, on average, a 20% individual performance improvement and an 87% reduction in the desire to pull up stakes.”

I’ve shared the statistics from this article with thousands of supervisors, managers, and executives over the last several years and it’s almost always received with wrinkled foreheads or scowls. Many of them struggle to comprehend how something perceived to be so intangible - that touchy-feely idea of employee engagement - could possibly yield such an increase in discretionary effort and so much of a measurable improvement in productivity. Since seeing those scowls the very first time, I’ve immediately challenged each of them to consider the best and the worst boss they’ve worked for, and how that impacted their performance. We can almost see the light bulbs over their heads as it sinks in!

For our purposes here, I’ll take it a step further and share my own examples. In 1995, I worked on a construction crew led (and I use that term VERY loosely here) by one of the most miserable humans I’ve ever known. During the year I was on that crew, I only remember him being on a job site a couple of dozen times. Most of those were for just a few minutes; I’d bet there were no more than half a dozen instances where he was there for as much as two hours in a single day and only two or three where I actually saw him pick up a tool. He was incredibly efficient with his time on the job though; he was able to piss off nearly everyone each time he showed up. Although it was a small crew, turnover was high. The quality standards were a world apart from anything I had seen leading up to the point or since, and productivity still wasn’t anything to write home about. The direct contrast I’ll share is the decade-plus that I worked for Kevin Arnold. I’ve detailed that at length already so I won’t rehash any of that here, but I’ll stress that the discretionary effort I was willing to put out every single day was significantly higher than anything I would have even considered on that particular construction crew. 

Both had titles that carried authority. Both could have fired me any time they chose. I was willing to run through walls for Kevin the entire time I worked for him, and I feel the same way about him nearly fifteen years later. I was far more likely to have thrown the other one through a wall than to ever run through one on his behalf, I was only willing to tolerate him for about twelve months until I found a completely new line of work, and I’ve never cared to see him since. Titles certainly have a place, but there are indeed limits to what can be accomplished through a title alone. Influence can do so much more than authority, but influence has to be earned - so we’ll pick up there next time.