Although originally stimulated by the CIO Legacy Report, this guide will be of value to any CXO, or aspirant CXO in need of boosting their capability to influence stakeholders, especially internal stakeholders.
Right now, I don’t intend to address the critical need for high levels of influencing skills, except to say that the less you have by way of natural sources of power, the more you need to be able to influence. And by influence, I mean getting genuine buy-in from key powerful stakeholders who can help or hinder your progress.
Based on my work with many executives and directors over the last 10 years, there are five key areas you need to focus on. All successful CXOs will score highly on each of these.
Embrace Political Activity
The wording of this title is important. It is not sufficient to merely accept the inevitability of political activity within the organisation, you have to embrace it – positively.
This does not mean that you have to learn to delight in game playing and stabbing your executive colleagues in the back. Instead, you have to positively approach the dynamic with an open mind and with constructive intent.
At its most objective level, politics is simply the interplay of agendas as different parties seek to win through and achieve their goals. That the term has such a negative reputation has more to do with the deceit and harm surrounding the behaviours. In reality, all that is good within your organisation (and the world for that matter) is achieved through political activity.
Cultivating a positive attitude towards politics is vital if you are to be able to effectively develop your influencing capability. It simply won’t happen if you approach this with distaste or even reluctance.
To be honest, in the ideal state, you will actually quite enjoy this – in an ethical, authentic and collaborative way of course.
Engage in the Politics
You have to be in it to win it. Once you’ve reset your attitude, you need to take a deep breath and become proactive in the political dimension of your organisation. That doesn’t mean playing the politics, it means thinking and acting with influence at the forefront of your mind, or at least far higher than it is at the moment.
One participant on our online programmes recently likened this to turning 180°. She realised that when it came to influence she was always on the back foot. By the time she realised she needed to be more influential in a particular situation, the battle was already lost. Defence and recovery are extremely difficult when all the players have already moved on to the next campaign. Turning right around, she is now regularly reviewing what she needs to influence around her role to protect her interests and further her goals – and also heading off risks before they materialise.
Another COO I coached began to realise that in order to achieve the transformation she needed to deliver, perhaps it would be necessary to dismantle the power bases of various members of her team, stuck in their ways, resistant to change. In the end, that didn’t happen but what she learned was the benefit of thinking deeply about the political dynamic in play, and then planning her moves strategically.
Of course, you have to be careful as you step up your activity. Suddenly becoming recognised as an individual who matters can bring unwelcome attention. Becoming politically active waves a warning flag to others who didn’t recognise you as an opponent. So, move slowly and keep your coaches and mentors
Focus on Understanding Your Stakeholders
This is interesting because it is so obvious, but rarely done properly. Most of the time, I believe it is because of the mistaken belief that intelligent guesswork is all that is needed, or all that can be done.
At a senior level, it is relatively easy to speak about a peer’s priorities – their agendas. Since you presumably work quite closely with them, and they are regularly telling you what they want or expect from you, it would be natural to assume you know.
But, there are dangers lurking here:
- You may be wrong. If fact, you probably will be wrong to some degree.
- Dare I say it, they may be trying to distract or mislead you.
- Actually, they may not know themselves.
- They won’t know that you understand them.
When you start to seek deeper understanding you will be amazed by what can happen. One client recently applied himself to this and could not believe how much it opened up the relationship with his stakeholders. “Once I started to listen, really listen, trust soared and they started to tell me what was really going on.”
Another commented that engaging in some fairly simple techniques completely transformed her relationships with key stakeholders. “When I was able to relay back to them what their challenges were, their faces lit up and they started to actively help me to help them instead of fighting all the time.”
Once you know that someone understands you, you will award them a great deal more trust that they will look after your interests well. Your stakeholders are just the same.
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Adopt Your Stakeholder’s Position
This takes you even deeper into the world of your stakeholder. Based on a good, verified and demonstrated understanding of what they are up against, this area means immersing yourself in their world and seeing it through their eyes.
In the Influencing Internal Stakeholder Checklist, this is best summed up by the question:
“Knowing what they know, how would you respond to your influence attempt?”
What this question, and others in the checklist start to do, is prepare you for adapting your approach to meet their position, not just their needs or wants. Far too often people try to influence people to accept what they need without regard for the current challenges, limitations and circumstances of the target.
One CIO I worked with a few years back realised that one of his team was proposing perfect technical solutions. The trouble was that they wold only work in a perfect work, and their organisation was far from perfect. Quite rightly, senior stakeholders were resisting his team’s influence.
Another CIO we are currently working with went through a few exercises and become painfully aware that she had been driving ever harder to deliver the solution that would help the general managers of her organisation. However, she had totally overlooked the problems and challenges they were actually facing, and more importantly, the way they related to those problems.
Because she was able to adopt their position for a short while, she soon saw what she needed to do to overcome their resistance and get things moving fast. It was transformational to the situation, and her modus operandi.
Translate Your Solutions
Whatever your professional background, you will have your own language. The customary way of describing and labelling. Your professional jargon if you will. And I know you know this – it will not work anywhere like as well with your senior level colleagues because they have different professional provenance.
It’s not because they don’t know the language – at their level they should have learnt it by now. The problem is that they tend to use different words to describe the same thing, and they will have to work to translate it in their own mind. This is akin to having very basic ability in Italian (for example) and having to pause all the time to translate what someone has said to you so you then figure out the correct response.
So, the idea here is to remove the translation burden from your stakeholders and translate your influence attempt into their language, their problems and their world. Make it resonate with them, help them to easily latch on to your idea and enable them to buy-in quickly.
Another label for this is marketing. Marketers are accomplished sales people who are adept at moving hearts and minds and influencing money out of consumers’ pockets.
Many people quiz me about all the other skills of influence, of which there are many. Personally, I believe that most people who arrive at middle to senior levels, and/or middle to senior years, have sufficient skills of influence, all they need to do is learn how and where to apply them.
And that’s the purpose of focusing on the areas outlined above.
If you are already a CXO, look for ways to increase your capability in these areas and watch your success rise. And if you ambitious, talented and aspire to the C-Suite, get these skills under your belt now.
Colin Gautrey
Provocative Coach/Mentor | Specialism: Impact and Influence
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