Extract from Influential Leadership: A Leader’s Guide to Getting Things Done
The network of relationships you have around you and your work.
Without doubt, connections can make you more powerful. By connections I mean the network of friends, associates and contacts. These people can be useful for:
- Helping you meet specific challenges.
- Providing you with information and insights you would not otherwise have.
- Introducing you to other people you need to connect with.
- Supporting and advocating your work around the organisations (and outside too).
- Helping you to find new opportunities.
- Alerting you to problems moving in your direction.
- Counselling and supporting you in times of need.
All of these provide you with the capacity to influence people to support the achievement of your goals. In turn this enhances your credibility because of your strong track-record and results. Thus a virtuous circle is created.
On top of this, having a strong network of connections can also help increase your influence in a number of other ways.
- Association: When people see you associating with other powerful and influential people, they will ascribe greater power and influence to you. If you are moving in those circles, you must be worth getting close to.
- Visibility: The more extensive your network, the more powerful people will notice you. Providing you have a positive profile and fit, they may wish to draw you into their circle, especially if you are supportive of their agendas and can add value.
- Access: If others have problems or difficulties and they know you have an extensive network, they are likely to approach you for help. When you do help, they usually reward you with goodwill, thanks and greater support for your goals. You don’t have to wait for others to come to you, you can proactively connect people who need to talk to each other.
- Advocating: Similarly, when you are recognised as having a good network, others may be more cooperative and helpful to you because they hope that you can put in a good word for them with other powerful people. The opposite might also be true, they may be more cooperative for fear of you giving negative feedback.
Whenever you connect two people you are losing an element of control. If others have to come through you to get what they need that provides you with a source of power and influence. Once you’ve connected them directly, they don’t need you anymore. Another way of looking at this is that that while you are giving up some control, in return you are building a stronger relationship with either or both of the other parties. People who are secure in their power don’t need to become paranoid about controlling access to their networks. Influential Leaders are secure and confident. They are much more concerned with the long term benefit of strong relationships.
Another feature of the Connections source of power is that of uncertainty. In many instances, those who are being influenced by the extent and quality of your network are making guesses about what you may or may not be able to do. Because they are rarely able to judge the exact nature of your relationships, it is only through experience that they can see what you are able to achieve with your network. Less confident leaders frequently exploit this by dropping names into their conversations and attempt to exaggerate the nature of their relationships to create greater influence. This can work when directed at less experienced people, but long term it is not the best way to become more powerful.
“It’s not what you know, but who you know” get truer with each passing year. Being able to talk to the right people, in the right way about the right things can dramatically accelerate progress towards your purpose. Although less experienced people may criticise you for doing this, other successful people will recognise the good intent and strategic way you are making things happen and getting things done as an Influential Leader.
Strengthening your connections
There are an awful lot of resources out there to help you to build a stronger network – networking is a large and important subject, so study it well. Chapter 9: Developing Powerful and Influential Networks will explore this is much more detail. Meantime, here are a few important ideas to start you thinking:
- Remember that this source of power is about building high quality relevant relationships.
- Analyse your current network in terms of: Quantity (how many), Quality (how good), Reach (where), Relevance (to your purpose) and Influence (can you influence them).
- Look for development areas to strengthen the overall quality of your network following your analysis, perhaps by filling in some gaps or deepening core relationships.
- Make sure to add value first. Rewards will come later. Nobody like being connected to someone who is only interested in taking.
Colin Gautrey
Provocative Coach/Mentor | Specialism: Impact and Influence
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