Lalas, Lucienne Lunn, and Taylere Markewich have been my recent associates at Berman Leadership, and have made sure that everything I do is on time and of the highest quality, while keeping me focused on what is most important. I also want to express my appreciation to the psychotherapy patients I had the honor to work with before becoming a coach. You taught me about honesty, empathy, insight, forgiveness, and the value of self-awareness.
My wife, Ellen, has been a rock of consistency for me and for the family, providing love and caring, endlessly tolerant of my long work hours and my never-ending stream of projects. My children have been great in spite of what they call my slight case of ADHD: Daniel, Mandy, Jon, and Shane have supported and encouraged me, from reading drafts, to critiquing, to helping me keep my sense of humor and humility. My family of origin has had influence and impact for many decades—Jill, Richard, Kate, Brad and Ruth, and my late father Bill and mother Jean, who passed too soon. And of course, “The New Year's Eve Gang”—I would not be here without you.
George Bradt:
To Meg, who seems to greet every one of my new initiatives—from businesses to books to musical plays and everything in between—with a bemused look of “Oh no. Not again,” and ends up supporting everything I do in a way to which no one else on the planet could begin to come close, and has turned my focus from what I can do myself to how I can influence and impact others—abounding gratitude.
Introduction*: Enhance Your Influence and Impact by Focusing on the Mission-Critical Parts of Your Role and Adapting to the Culture of the Organization
Over the past 30 years, we have seen hundreds of people in our roles as coaches, consultants, line managers, entrepreneurs, and psychologists (Bill) and marketers (George). Many of these competent, capable leaders and professionals do most of their work very well, but still feel they are struggling to get the rewards, recognition, and growth that they are expecting.
Some have been in roles where they feel they are flying, but then things slow down. Others are in jobs where they are overwhelmed, overburdened, under-resourced, time-pressured, and feeling stressed, lonely, and exhausted. Still others feel a general sense of malaise, as though they are stuck in place, and do not look forward to going to work every day. Millions of workers, managers, and executives find themselves in this situation at some point in their career.
In most jobs, you find meaning and value by being able to influence others and have an impact on the organization and its mission. In all of the scenarios above, you likely feel you have lost your ability to influence the people around you. When your capacity to bring others along is diminished, or you are not contributing to your organization's overall success, your job satisfaction and engagement drop, your frustration increases, and your stress level rises.
Why does this happen so often? Sometimes, the reason truly is not under your control. In some cases, your manager is difficult or unsupportive, and is not likely to change. Sometimes, there are structural problems with the job, and there is no way to have influence or impact under the current framework. But this book is not for those situations. For a large majority of people, the struggle to have influence or impact and satisfaction in their work comes, not from external factors, but rather from something that they are able to manage and change.
What has become clear to us, through our work with people from CEOs to first-line managers, and even individual contributors, is that many people are unintentionally misunderstanding critical aspects of their job. When organizations send clients to us for executive coaching or onboarding, we look carefully at how they spend their time, how they think about their job, and how they do that job.
Many times, we find that they are not focused on the essential elements of their job. They may be doing someone else's job unintentionally. They may be trying to do their colleagues’ jobs, either implicitly or by making a premature power grab to take on greater scope or responsibility. Sometimes, they are only doing one part of their job—the part they like, or the part that is most familiar.
Sometimes, when working with leaders, we find they are doing the right things, but in a way that is inconsistent with the style, attitudes, and mores of their organization. In some cases, they are decisive when they need to be collaborative. They are direct and blunt when they need to be tactful and patient.
One client, Ian, worked in a formal banking setting. Everyone wore Zegna suits or St. James knits, but he persisted in wearing casual clothes. This leader was doing the right work, but his style and approach undermined his ability to influence other bankers. He was fortunate to have a senior manager watching out for him. As he gave him a promotion to lead a business unit, he told him, “You are to throw out all your shirts and sweaters, and I'm taking you shopping. You have to look the part I know you can play.”
Some people do this because they believe that their approach has worked in the past, or was appropriate for the last organization they were in. They may feel that their style is core to their identity, and to change it would be to change who they are. Or they may not have thought about their approach at all, doing what comes naturally rather than making a conscious and deliberate effort to act in a way that works within the current context.
To repeat the most important point of this introduction, and this book, people lose their ability to influence others and impact the organization because they are not focused on the most essential, mission-critical business and cultural priorities. They usually do not even know what those are! Often, organizations and managers are not as explicit as they should be about the focus of their employees’ work, the culture of the organization, or their own needs and expectations.
The really great news is that despite these common challenges, you can enhance your influence and impact by focusing on the mission-critical parts of your role (the business) without anyone explicitly telling you what they are. You can be more effective by learning about and adapting to the behaviors, relationships and mores of the organization (the culture)—or you may realize, after reading the first parts of this book, that it's just not a fit and you would flourish more in a different organization.
What is influence? What is impact? How are they different? Influence is the indirect or intangible effect you have on others, based on what you do, how you do it, how you communicate it, and who you are. Impact is the direct and observable effect you have on the entities you deal with—your manager, your team, your organization. We are particularly focused on helping you improve the effect you have on others—your influence—in ways that result in a significant or major effect on your manager, your team, and your organization—your impact.
This is the key to professional success in organizations: Doing the job that is needed, in the way that is needed, consistently and effectively. Managers, leaders, and executives can do this by understanding the essential, but often unwritten or implicit, parts of their job, and the unwritten or implicit aspects of the organizational culture. Developing an enhanced focus, delivered in a manner that is aligned with what their job is invariably results in more influence with other people, and a larger impact on the organization and its mission.
Why You Need This Book
People work for different reasons. For some, it is simply to have enough money to live their life the way they want. For others, it is a passion, something they do to feel fulfilled. But whatever the reason, having influence on others, and an impact on the organization you work for, is going to make you feel good about what you are doing. One of the major sources of job satisfaction is feeling that you make a difference, that you have an effect on the people you work with and the organization you work for. Whether you are looking to climb the corporate ladder, or find gratification
