This text is taken from the original draft manuscript of Influential Leadership: A Leader’s Guide to Getting Things Done and is provided here to enrich your learning on the Strategic Influencer Programme.
In order to develop your Influential Leadership, as you move through these areas I will be addressing a range of specific capabilities. These form my vision of a role model leader. This will help to provide structure and also to focus you on the actions that you will be taking as you develop your competence.
| The capabilities that best describe an Influential Leader is someone who: | Covered in: |
| · Knows that they are a leader and has decided where they will apply their leadership.
· Develops a clear sense of purpose and is able to communicate a compelling vision. · Injects passion into their purpose and is able to maintain momentum. · Is able to create space for their long term purpose while delivering short term results. |
Chapter 1: Building Your Purpose and Passion |
| · Has a clear understanding of what influences people.
· Is able to recognise why different people are able to influence successfully. |
Chapter 2: Power – What Makes People Influential |
| · Can analyse what will work and what will not work for different people in different situations.
· Knows what makes them powerful and how to grow and utilise their power. |
Chapter 3: Why Power Works in the Real World |
| · Has an intimate understanding of the individuals they are engaged with.
· Is able to appreciate the pressures and influences affecting their stakeholders. |
Chapter 4: Deeper Understanding of People |
| · Continually develops their understanding of the political aspects of their domain.
· Can quickly assess the dynamics operating within any group of individuals. · Develops a clear picture of the complete arena or organisation where they are active. · Is able to predict future scenarios and how they will affect their purpose. |
Chapter 5: Understanding Your Leadership Arena |
| · Operates with high levels of personal integrity.
· Understands and makes clear decisions about ethical positioning. |
Chapter 6: The Ethics of Influence |
| · Develops coherent and robust strategies and plans to achieve their purpose and goals.
· Economises their activities to focus on the most important stakeholders. |
Chapter 7: Creating Your Leadership Strategy and Plan |
| · Focused on enhancing skills which are critical to more successful influence.
· Builds skills through practise, reflection and regular review. |
Chapter 8: Increasing Your Skills as an Influential Leader |
| · Develops strong networks, alliances and collaborations around their domain. | Chapter 9: Developing Powerful and Influential Networks |
| · Is able to create and build robust high-trust relationships.
· Understands and mitigates the threats to trust. |
Chapter 10: Establishing and Building Greater Trust |
| · Has learnt how personality affects engagement and is tolerant of diversity. | Chapter 11: Understanding Influencing Styles |
| · Can instantly adapt their behaviour to suit the individual they are seeking to influence. | Chapter 12: Understanding and Adapting Your Style |
| · Thinks carefully about the influence they want to create in any situation and respond appropriately to meet the needs of any individual. | Chapter 13: Tailoring Your Approach for Maximum Influence |
| · Is meticulous in preparation, swift to action and tenacious in the pursuit of their purpose. | Chapter 14: Persistence of Purpose |
Although the main chapters are indicated above, most chapters in the book will contribute in some way to all of these capabilities.
Maximising your development
People vary in their learning styles and what works for one may not be good for another. Writing a book on this topic is challenging since it seeks to cater for as many preferences and levels of experience as possible and I have done my best to enable all readers to gain significant value from it. I do however have some recommendations for you in terms of making the most of this book and developing your capability as an Influential Leader as quickly as possible.
This book is intended to be read from cover to cover. Until you are familiar with the whole it is not suitable for jumping around the content. This is because of the interconnected nature of the different topics and also the logical building of understanding necessary before the action starts. At the very least, I suggest a rapid read through the entire contents (not a skim) so that you can gauge your familiarity with the concepts and make decisions about what you personally need to focus your time on.
Most of the chapters also have exercises to help build understanding and also help you to make immediate progress on your goals and purpose. If you are doing a quick read you will probably skip over these until you have decided where you need to focus. Once you do get into the exercises, don’t skimp on the time. Many of them require additional research and collation of information which can take days to weeks to assemble. All of the exercises require careful thought and lead towards refining or changing the action you take as a leader.
This may seem at odds with my earlier sentiment that as an Influential Leader you need to move quickly to the action. Quick but not so quick that you are exposed to the risk of being unprepared, ill-considered and naïve. It is the careful analysis of the situation you are facing as a leader that will mark you out as being adept, and different from most of the leaders languishing at middle management levels. Doing these exercises carefully is a good illustration or “pausing to go faster”. I promise you, as you become more familiar with the approaches it will get much faster as you swing up the learning curve. You will also be accumulating a much deeper level of knowledge about your environment and stakeholders which can bring value and speed for years. Make sure and invest the time to do this properly.
Another strong recommendation is that you apply the thinking this book provokes directly to something which is very important to you. In Chapter 1 I will help you to develop your thinking about your longer term vision; however that can take quite a while to refine and finalise. Because the framework of Influential Leadership can work on short as well as long term goals, don’t allow any lack of clarity on your purpose to stop you applying these ideas in the short term.
The whole idea of the Progress, Purpose and Passion approach is that you need to focus on making some progress initially to free up time to do further work on your purpose. Lack of purpose offers no excuse to ratcheting up the amount of progress you are making in your work. The more progress you are capable of delivering, the more time you will be able to allocate to the longer term development. Just make sure you do capture some of that time otherwise you will fail to become an Influential Leader. Instead you will become a very accomplished completer finisher.
At times you may find the text easy or tough to follow. One of the major challenges I have had writing this book is matching the explanation of the concepts to wide variations in reader experience. The way I have handled that is to keep the text as succinct as possible. That way, those with more experience have few pages to skim over while less experienced people have the opportunity to stretch their thinking and get glimpses of deeper ideas. In order to meet these varied needs, I have included at the end of each chapter a resources section of further reading on the topic and also an online area which will continue to build and provide case studies, examples and more depth.
As a final point, I wholeheartedly recommend that you do not make your study of this subject a private affair. As you are developing your capability by studying the ideas, analysing your environment and engaging with your stakeholders, involve others in your learning. Friends, colleagues, team members and even line managers can all benefit your learning and in turn learn more themselves. They will thank you and your learning will be dramatically enriched. Many of the exercises lend themselves very well to team based activities which you can organise.
The Role of Integrity
The field of influence is peppered with approaches which seek to coerce, manipulate or trick people into doing things which they either don’t want to do or shouldn’t do. The overriding purpose of all of my work is to help people with high levels of integrity to lead and succeed without the need to resort to dubious practices. Although the challenges to integrity are high, with a fair degree of caution and careful handling, it is possible to find ways of leading with fairness and honest dealing. At times you may have to work a little harder, bring forward more competition than you need and sometimes offer your opposition an advantage. But in the fullness of time, with diligent hard work the relationship benefits you gain will far outweigh any disadvantages you may encounter along the way.
So, fuelled with good intent and honest endeavour, let’s begin.