Influencing Without Authority Starts With Expertise
In recognition of Women’s History Month, I’m kicking off a series focused on a topic near and dear to many women in leadership: Influence.
This is about having a voice.
Championing an idea.
Influencing organizational direction and vision.
Let’s kick off our exploration of Influence with this:
Change is the result of influence.
Change is the tip of the iceberg, it’s what we see.
And when it’s done well, agents of change are deliberately, and masterfully, managing many components under the surface.
Effective influence has a strong foundation of:
Subject matter Expertise
Keenly knowing & addressing the Audience
And creating Advocates for the vision
Today we’re focusing on Expertise. In the next two weeks, we’ll follow up with deeper dives into Audience & Advocates.
(FYI - April’s leadership retreat for women features a workshop: Strengthening Your Organizational Influence. Limited space is still available to join the retreat.)
Let’s get this party started with 3 ways to strengthen Expertise.
Assess Your Starting Place
Imagine you have a vision to evolve how you’re supporting your customers, and it would require restructuring and resources (engineering, software licensing, and training).
To make this happen, you’re going to need (at the very least):
Front line buy in
Executive sponsorship
Cross functional prioritization
Before you can approach senior leadership, or even think of asking for engineering resources, you need to:
Know your sh*t
Know what you don’t know
To help you identify where to start, assess yourself using these 3 questions:
It’s possible you’re a 10/10 for Expertise. You’re THE go-to person. Fantastic.
It’s feasible you’re not super deep in the weeds, AND you know you’ve strategically got to get ahead. Maybe that lands you at a 4/10.
You can either be the SME (Subject Matter Expert) or you can partner with a SME to tag team this challenge.
Point here is to identify where and what gaps you might have.
If you’re a 10 on Expertise, but your confidence in proposing to your leader is a 7, then that’s where you put effort.
If you could speak all day long about your idea, and you have question marks about what’s really important to your stakeholders, that's where you start your effort.
Punchline: find & fill your gaps before they do.
Stay Sharp
You have expertise for today, have you set up systems to ensure ongoing expertise?
What ways are you staying knowledgeable of trends and forecasts that would impact where you hope to influence?
This also requires a learner mindset. Staying open to new information that could alter your trajectory.
Upstream & Downstream Awareness
When you make a change to the way your customers are supported…
What needs to change in the sales pitch?
What’s impacted in fulfillment?
What salesforce fields become redundant?
This is the upstream and downstream thinking change agents are able to master.
Pause here.
Shift from my example to an idea on your mind. For an area within your team that you want to influence, what upstream and downstream impacts can you identify? Do you know what you don’t know?
Identify what the challenges will be in order to begin drafting solutions (or identify who you’ll need help from).
Take Action
What’s 1 thing I can do to strengthen my expertise?
And…What's 1 idea for how I can help others feel better connected to my expertise?
(We will build upon that next week as we look at Audience.)
If it's helpful, here's a pdf you can leverage for these exercises.
Cautionary Message For Women
Assessing, and then strengthening, Expertise is not a call for getting another degree, certificate, or an invitation for perfectionism.
There are two tendencies many women can fall into:
This before that
Overcomplicating & overpolishing
“This before that” is a mental game we tell ourselves…
“I couldn’t possibly propose X until I’ve finished Y.”
“After I get certified in Z, then I’ll explore A.”
And overcomplicating and overpolishing are characteristics of perfectionism. If this is a tendency you can have (I do!), I invite you to become best friends with this powerful question:
What strong evidence do I have that my polishing is making the work better in the eyes of my audience?
Until next time…
Comment below or send an email to katie@enduranceboss.com and let me know what’s on your mind!
