influence and impact on others will boost your happiness and gratitude.
We provide a set of steps that will help you understand yourself and your role, and use that understanding to influence your organization: How to know what is needed, deliver that consistently, communicate about all of this effectively. The method is straightforward and draws on our decades of experience as coaches, consultants to executives, and executives ourselves.
Part I explains what you are doing that interferes with your influence and impact, why that is hurting your job satisfaction, and how to resolve it. We help you identify what distracts you, and why. Once you understand the disconnect between what you are doing and what the organization needs, you can commit to making the changes that will allow you to succeed, flourish and be recognized for doing important work—maybe even get a promotion!
This is a significant mindset shift, as well as a behavior change. To be successful, you must acknowledge that your job may not be what you were told it was. It may not be what you thought it would be, or what you want it to be. At the same time, you have to figure out what matters to you about your job. This knowledge will help you focus on what is really critical to success in your job. In addition, you have to learn how to interact, communicate, and work with others in ways that work in your current context.
Part II is designed to help you sort out what your boss, your team, and your organization really need from you, both from a business and a cultural perspective. This is not a solo exercise. You will need to enlist a range of stakeholders, including your manager, your colleagues, and your team, to help you solve this. The methods we recommend are derived from common parts of our executive coaching work, but are focused as much on the broader context than they are on the individual.
We recognize that not all cultures should be adapted to. The history of bias, discrimination, and exclusion in work settings is inescapable. Sometimes the term “cultural fit” can be a cover for conscious or unconscious exclusion practices. This is a special case and requires a thoughtful approach to what's really going on, how you adapt, and how you change things. Dr. Greg Pennington has written the chapter on how to think about and deal with bias and discrimination in the workplace with a calibration, information, demonstration, negotiation, and transformation framework.
When you study your role more deeply, you may realize the problem is easy to fix; or, that your manager is impossible, the job is impossible, or the organization is wrong (at least for you). Once you discover what the underlying expectations are for you (and they are probably unspoken), you then have to ask yourself a very difficult question—do I still want my job? Is this what will make me happy? For some, this will be obvious; for others, this may come as a shock. A number of you will discover, “Wow! That's why I'm struggling. I'm in the wrong job!”
Our experience is that most clients, when they discover how they can have much more impact and influence in their jobs, get really energized. They stop doing stuff they've done for years, try out new skills, make some mistakes, but after a few months realize they are much happier with the new perspective they have on their job.
Part III describes the path you take if you want the job you are in. This section takes you through the nuts and bolts of creating a Personal Strategic Plan to implement critical changes to your priorities, tone, and behavior that you discovered to be misaligned in Part II. This includes not only what you need to do differently, but how to work on it, practice it, and make it a part of how you operate.
Part IV is the path you take if you realize that the real job your organization wants you to do is not what you want or can do. For some people, they really like the organization they work for, but the specific job is a bad fit, or they just can't find a way to work happily with their manager. For others, this process helps them to realize that both the job they are doing and the context in which they work are not acceptable to them. Part IV has guidelines and recommendations for how to work your way out, if you realize you would be happier and more engaged with your work somewhere else.
This book is primarily for you to help yourself; but, if you're a manager, it's also your job to help your people go through this same process, to maximize their influence and impact in the organization. From first-line supervisors to CEOs and Board Chairs, helping direct reports focus on the essential priorities and methods is crucial. We wrote Part V as a primer for managers who want guidance on how to coach others to great influence and impact.
Most people will benefit from Parts I and II. These two sections lay the groundwork for rest of the book. At the end of Part II you are faced with a decision: Are you in the right job, the wrong job at the right company, or the wrong job at the wrong company? Based on your answer from Part II, you can then jump to Part III, if you know you want to make the changes you need to make. If you realize you do not want the job as it really is, or cannot operate the way the organization wants you to, some of Part III and Part IV will be the most helpful. For managers and executives, you may choose to jump all the way to Part V first, which is designed to help you guide your people toward what you and your organization need from them the most.
All of the worksheets and additional materials can be downloaded from www.BermanLeadership.com/InfluenceAndImpact
Note
1 * We will use the 3rd person plural throughout the book, they/their/theirs, to avoid suggesting any of this applies to any gender status. All of the cases in the book are real, or a synthesis of multiple cases, but have been modified so that we can maintain the confidentiality of our clients.
CHAPTER 1 Get What You Want by Doing What Your Organization Needs: The One Change You Need to Make
“Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. Sometimes you must do what is required.”
—Winston S. Churchill
You know the feeling when you are on a roll at work. You get good reviews, and you are recognized and rewarded by your manager. You look forward to going to work, and feel challenged, stimulated, and “on your front foot.” You are doing things you like and doing them well. You are proud of your work.
What makes this so special? It's a great feeling when people at work are interested in you, and appreciate what you do. That is, in a nutshell, influence. Influence means that other people take the time to listen to you, consider what you have to say, and want to work with you. Having impact is all about having a substantive effect on the organization, by leading without formal authority. Your colleagues know you are adding value to the organization, and to them. Influence and impact are the keys to job engagement and job satisfaction. Whether you are a technician using specialized skills or a business leader driving strategy and inspiring and enabling the organization, having influence and impact turns an average job
