Two Tools To Grow Your Influence As A Leader

By Rob Wright, Chief Editor, Life Science Leader
Follow Me On Twitter @RfwrightLSL

In my previous blog, Are You Seeking To Grow Your Influence, I wrote about one of the three tools every executive can use to grow their influence — credibility. Inspired by Joel Trammell, author of The CEO Tightrope, the former CEO and past Life Science Leader magazine Leadership Lessons contributor had sent me a copy of his book to review. While reading it during my travels, I found myself taking a lot of notes, highlighting, and scribbling in the margins. According to Trammell, CEOs have a unique tension between being totally responsible for a company, yet in actuality, having very limited control. Three of the tools he says should be in every CEO’s toolbox are credibility, competence, and caring. Trammell refers to these as the 3Cs. Having previously covered the first C, credibility, this blog will explore the importance of competence and caring in growing your influence as an executive.

Competence Doesn’t Mean Being A Know It All

People respect knowledgeable leaders. Thus, competence is a necessary part of a leader being able to influence. According to Trammell, without competence it is impossible to be credible. “If people don’t trust your judgment, you will have little influence over their behavior,” he writes. To be seen as competent requires an executive not to just have a deep understanding of the company’s business model, but to show they have a deep understanding of how the product is bought, sold, made, serviced, and delivered. Competence, especially if you are in a new position at a new company, requires an executive to be willing to learn, adapt, and prove they understand the responsibilities of the job they have taken on. Trammell suggests that if you are new to an organization, don’t try to be a know it all. Instead, he recommends picking one area where your experience, expertise, or even just your title can be used to build trust in your competence with a new team. When you are in charge, people inherently understand that YOU are responsible for owning and communicating the vision, providing proper resources, building the culture, making decisions, and delivering performance by executing the plan. While all of these are important, this does not mean getting bogged down in the tactical roles of the business. Trammell says to use the following four questions to help find your competence balance.

1. Have you communicated a realistic plan for how the company will achieve success in the market?
2. How do you build your expertise in your company’s industry and market week by week?
3. How do you learn about the operations of and people in different divisions and departments?
4. Do you consistently make projections that the company is unable to achieve?

Do You Care For The Company You Keep?

American businessman and humorist, Arnold Glasgow, once said, “A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit.” In other words, leaders reveal how highly they prioritize the success of the company, their teams, and individuals through their everyday actions. “When we violate the trust of those we lead by placing our own interests above others, by showing a lack of commitment to the organization’s goals and vision, we lose the ability to ask anyone on the team to commit to or sacrifice for the greater good,” Trammell writes. One of the most common trust killers is when a leader believes they don’t have to follow the same rules or be held to the same standards of performance as the rest of the employees of the company. A great example of this involves the former CEO of Tyco, Dennis Kozlowski, who threw a $2 million birthday party for his wife, on the company’s tab. Decisions such as these destroy trust and leave leaders with little real influence or power to direct and organization. According to Trammell, to have influence requires demonstrating that you care about the company. Here are a few simple rules that can go a long way toward convincing people you care first about the company and then about yourself.

1. The troops eat first. This commonsense logic, and still a good axiom for anyone in leadership today, goes back to the days of the cavalry — feed the horses first, then the foot soldiers, and only then the officers.
2. If you want the upside that comes from being a leader of a company, you should be willing to accept more of the downside if things go badly. For example, if cash is tight and salaries need to be cut, the leader should be willing to take a bigger pay cut than anyone else.
3. At every opportunity, look for ways to give your team the credit for the successes while owning the failures as your own. As Harry Truman famously remarked, “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.”

To be an effective leader requires being able to influence others and necessitates having credibility, competence, and caring. While some managers may think they are effective by using fear as a tactic, Trammell says top talent will not perform for someone only out of fear. I agree. People are inspired by a great speech only if they believe in the message and the messenger.