Earning Influence for Lasting Impact

While each topic we work through in this look at leveraging leadership growth can stand alone, you’ll notice a lot of interconnection. Everything we do to invest in relationships for lasting impact should be earning influence, whether we’re developing others or someone is developing us. Having frequently referenced the lasting impact both Kevin and Terry have made in my life through the influence they earned, reporting to Kevin for over a decade but never reporting to Terry, and contrasting that with miserable construction crew supervisor I worked for in the mid-90s, you should have a clear picture of how making a long term positive difference relies far more on influence than authority. With this as our foundation, let’s consider how we can earn that influence rather than expecting it to fall in our laps simply because we fill a certain position. I’ve recently heard two amazing examples of this, one where a supervisory relationship was in place and one where everyone involved was volunteers.

Cindy and I met with a young man a few weeks ago who had already developed a tremendous level of talent in his field and had recently accepted significant leadership responsibility. The owner of the company brought us into the mix to ensure he had all the tools he’d need to be successful in the aspects of this new role that he would soon be dealing with: the people. Our goal in the initial conversation was to learn all we could about him and the foundation he had to that point. As he loosened up, we saw so much heart for the field he was in, the team he accepted responsibility for leading, the company he was with, and the manager he reported to. Make no mistake, though, his feelings toward the company and his manager had nothing to do with compensation; it was all about the investments made in him and the influence that had earned. While there was positional authority in place, the lasting impact being made there was definitely a result of earned influence.

Since then, I had a conversation with someone who has frequent interaction with one of the folks who provided me with amazing support as we worked together in behavior-based safety. As we talked, this fellow (who I was just getting to know) shared how our mutual friend volunteers countless hours to the organization they’re a part of - but I already knew that. I wasn’t aware of what he shared next, but I also wasn’t surprised. He explained how our mutual friend had taken a very active role in mentoring several teenagers who had gotten involved with that organization; teaching them what he had learned, playing basketball with them rather than everyone sitting around on their phones, and just showing interest in who they were. Hearing that had me in tears because I know the influence he’s earning with them will absolutely have a lasting impact - in that organization and in everything else those teenagers do moving forward. My friend continues to foster a mentorship culture everywhere he goes.

In both cases, regardless of title, the love and admiration I heard - one talking about his manager and the company he works for and the other sharing what he had seen from someone still relatively new to that volunteer organization - was solely based on earned influence. Investing in relationships is the quickest way I’ve ever seen to earn influence. We’ll circle back to how that earned influence carries across hierarchies (even in volunteer organizations) soon. First, though, let’s look at how mentoring through influence is so much more effective than through control. But before we do, I’ll challenge you to identify one person you could be mentoring. Once you have, think about how you can invest into earning influence with them that goes well beyond your title.

Mentor to Influence, Never Control

As we looked at how pursuing mentorship could help maximize the return on investment in relationships and how paying that forward by developing others serves as our own path to leadership, I stressed how powerful being mentored is and the true difference we can make by identifying those around us that we can mentor. While I’ve listed a handful to this point, I’ve been blessed with a bunch of great mentors in my life who have taught me more than I’ve deserved and so much more than I could have ever learned on my own. I’ve had some sort of reporting relationship with a few of them and none whatsoever with others. I have worked directly with many of the people I’ve attempted to pass some of those lessons onto, but I’ve never had an employee who reported directly to me so I can’t speak from that perspective personally. Regardless of where I’ve been in the mix, mentee or mentor, the power mentoring has had in the relationship came solely from influence; never the title.

The one thing I’ve never seen in effective mentorship, whether a reporting relationship existed or not, has been a desire to control or maintain strict authority. Humility not only counters any awkwardness that can come with positional authority, it also earns tremendous influence in any mentoring relationship. Control through authority stifles initiative and kills even the slightest perception of empowerment. Attempting to exert control, even when masking it as mentorship, is a fast track to disaster. 

Several years before starting Dove Development & Consulting, Cindy and I were involved in a side project. There was no formal reporting chain but there was a significant hierarchy. There were a few folks we dealt with who were solid people and earned influence through the time and compassion they invested in others. (One was the veterinarian I referenced previously who taught me how much communication matters…) Far too many, though, did all they could to establish control over everyone around within that perceived hierarchy while calling it mentorship. I had a hot and cold relationship with one of them for several years. It was hot when he needed me for something and cooled off really fast each time I called him on the various bull shit he would attempt to pull. Through it all, he had established himself effectively within that hierarchy and loved every bit of the authority he thought it gave him. Around 2010, I brought a very tumultuous issue to his attention. Since dealing with it would have forced him to address one of the folks who had drunk his Kool-Aid, he chose to ostracize me and Cindy instead. So be it… There are plenty of ways to make money; my character has never been for sale.

Over time, his constant need to control everyone around him - all while calling it mentorship - led that train completely off the tracks. Of the many issues that came to light over time, one included his mugshot making the papers in the town he moved to after alienating everyone who dealt with him in his hometown. Interestingly enough, his newfound fame was very similar in nature to the issues I took to him years prior and he refused to address. Oops…

Whether there’s a direct reporting relationship (like the one I had with Kevin for so many years) or none at all (with each of the behavior-based safety committee members), effective mentorship earns influence when there’s an empowerment to lead, surpassing any actual or perceived authority. Kevin had positional authority over me but chose to mentor me through the influence he had earned by investing time into me. Since I never had positional authority, my only choice was to do all I could to earn influence. That influence has allowed me to serve as a mentor to dozens directly and even more indirectly. When approached with authenticity, influence can overcome even the most ingrained hierarchies, and we’ll look at that next. Before that though, I’ll challenge you to find one person you can offer guidance to within the next week without enforcing your position, fostering their growth and building your influence.

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 opened this look 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. There’s that character thing again. But when that time was up - one through accepting a new job and working out a formal notice, and the other at the end of a specified term - I was completely done with each of them.