Every leader has others they need to influence. Whether a leader needs to achieve certain goals, embed organisational values and culture or pivot to meet challenges from the outside world, no leader can do these things on their own.
Being able to influence others is at the heart of inclusion work. Often, we are unpicking beliefs and behaviour patterns that colleagues do not recognise as exclusionary.
Many leaders spend ages thinking about structures and processes of change. All very necessary. However, few leaders spend time thinking about the people whom they are asking to implement those structures and processes.
Many change programmes fail because of this.
So, what practical steps will increase your influence?
1. Identify the key players
A mistake leaders can make is to treat the whole organisation as one amorphous mass, which leads to generalised and uninspiring messaging and poorly planned forums for communicating and hearing from people.
Each key player will need to be engaged with differently. If you don’t identify them, you can’t plan.
Think beyond the obvious. A key player could be a certain person on your middle management team who is vocal. It could be a team that is perceived to have more power than others. It could be someone external.
Don’t forget: key players aren’t necessarily those with positional or hierarchical power.
Those with “soft” or informal power can sometimes have more impact.
2. In what ways do you need key players to support your change plans?
Be specific.
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What do you need them to do and say?
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When do you need them to do and say those things and with/to whom?
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What actions do you need them to take and when?
Don’t go to them and ask for these things before you have considered the steps below!
3. Identify how key players could impact your change plans
Again, be precise.
What ways could they help?
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Can they use their influence to get others behind your plan?
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Can they role model the change you are seeking and if so, how?
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Can they help you communicate your plans and intentions to others in ways that will be heard differently/better than if you communicated them yourself?
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Can they be a source of intelligence about what would scupper your plans?
What ways can they hinder?
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Can they encourage others to passively resist?
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Can they garner the support of others to openly block your change plans?
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Can they slow you down?
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Can they cause reputational damage or injure trust – internally or externally?
4. How much do key players know about the “what” and the “why”?
Be wary of assumptions. If you don’t know how much your key players know and understand, find out.
Do they know:
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Why the change matters?
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Where you are in your thinking and what further thinking is needed?
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What pressures and influences you are grappling with?
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What specifically you are (and are not)) asking of the organisation?
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What the journey of change will look and feel like?
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What will be different once the change is in place?
The degree of detail you can and can’t share will of course depend on the change. If you are making redundancies, clearly you will be constrained by legalities and moral considerations of who can know what in which order. However, even in these circumstances, leaders often underestimate how much they can safely, appropriately and legally share.
5. What’s in it for them?
This question is one that leaders rarely consider, but understanding the answer is an important component in framing messaging and the means of communication.
In values driven organisations, leaders often assume that serving the mission is enough of a motivator for people to lean into change. What they fail to recognise is:
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People’s personal interpretation of the mission may be different from yours
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People’s identity can be wedded to how they work and what they do – sometimes more than to the mission itself
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Because people can perceive change as being hard, they may not believe the effort required is worth the benefit to the mission
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Current ways of working may give people formal or informal power and status, and any actual or perceived change to this can feel threatening (sometimes at a conscious, sometimes at an unconscious level)
6. Identify specific actions
Considering the first five steps should lead you to specific, well-defined actions, messaging and communications.
Word of advice: don’t skip the first five steps. If you do, your actions risk being the wrong ones.
Leaders can get caught in the trap of focusing on what they want to say or do to implement change. Going through the steps above will give you greater clarity on what those around you need to make change happen.
Some will choose to leave. That’s OK. It gives you the chance to bring in new people who are bought into your plans, which will give you the organisational energy to make change a reality.
Can we help?
Want help with any aspect of your leadership and inclusion journey? Reach out and to set up an informal, no obligation chat. Contact [email protected]