Executive Podcast #224: How to Become a Person of Influence (Part 1)

Leadership is influence, not your position or title. How do you develop your influence and raise your leadership lid? The “Law of the Lid” says, your ability to lead (influence) will determine your effectiveness in everything you do.

In the INFLUENCE acrostic there are nine (9) lessons for developing your personal influence and today we want to look at the first four (4). Next week we will do the remaining five (5).

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Perry Holley:

Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast for our goal is to help you increase your reputation as a leader, increase your ability to influence others, and increase your ability to fully engage your team to deliver remarkable results. Hi, I’m Perry Holley, a Maxwell Leadership facilitator and coach.

Chris Goede:

And I’m Chris Goede, executive vice president with Maxwell Leadership. Welcome, and thank you for joining. As we get started, I want to just remind you, you can visit maxwellleadership.com/podcast, and there we have the show notes that Perry has put together for you to kind of follow along. You’ll want to do that today. It’s going to tie into next week’s lesson as well, but you want to be able to follow along. Also, if you are interested in having Maxwell Leadership come out and just help you with organizational culture, developing your leaders, a lot of what we talk about comes from Perry’s experience and some of our other facilitator and coaches being in the field with organizations, and we would love to be able to help you with that in regards to training or coaching. You could fill out a form and our team will be in touch with you there.

So, we’d love to hear from you. Well, today’s topic, we’re going to talk about something that is pretty relevant around this place and has been for a long time. It’s the word influence. And as I mentioned, it’s part one and part two. Perry put together a two-part lesson for us. It’s how to become a person of influence. And ever since I’ve known John, that has been the definition of leadership for him. It’s the centerpiece of everything that we do and we build off of that. Leadership is influence. And so it’s not about your title, it’s not about your tenure, it’s not about how long you’ve been there. I was having a conversation with a guy the other day, and he’s like, “Hey, man, I used to have so much influence in my organization. I’m three weeks into here. I feel like I’m lost.” And I was like, “It’s time to get to work.” That’s the key to all of it.

So, what we’re going to talk a little bit about today is how do you go about doing that? We talk about the power of influence. We’re going to give you some handles and some tools to be able to go about doing that. The reason that it’s important… You’ve heard us talk about… Maybe you’ve read John’s 21 laws and you understand the law of the lid. Or if not, those that are watching on YouTube, go search law of the lid, and then watch John teach and do this. And he talks about your lid is the lid not only on your capacity but your team’s and the organization. It’s the same thing with influence, and we got to grow that influence. So Perry, super excited for us to dive into this. It’s seems like a simple word. We talk about it a lot. Maybe it becomes very common to us, but it’s not.

Perry Holley:

Now, it’s something we talk about in the five levels of leadership. We talk about leadership as influence. Then I ask people, man, that’s a funny word and easy to throw around. What does it mean? What does it look like? And I was just doing some coaching work with someone. We were going through… John has a book called Becoming a Person of Influence. He wrote with Jim Dornan.

Chris Goede:

Yeah.

Perry Holley:

And I found in there, this little model that I thought we could today I wanted to make it really practical and action oriented for anyone listening, and for us. I mean, I use this all the time now, to say, just look at the word influence. What’s the acrostic there? What did each letter… And if you did each of these components, just put these into practice, you could become a person of influence. I thought before we start, maybe you could just talk about the five levels. And we reference that a lot. Maybe if someone is… I don’t know how you’d not know about the five levels.

Chris Goede:

Yeah. Well, I mean especially as often as you write about the number five around here. What’s interesting about this topic is, and you would agree with me, is that it’s not really about how you become a person of influence, but how do you increase your influence? Because I know that some of the executives that you facilitate team meetings for or coaching calls, this is something that’s got to stay relevant and in front of all of our leaders no matter what level. You may… Well, hopefully you’re not turning this off if you’re an executive and say, “This is too simple of a lesson,” because it’s not.

Perry Holley:

No, it’s not.

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Chris Goede:

And as you’re working your way up in your profession, this is something that I think is key. Perry mentioned the five levels. Just quickly for us, this is the foundation of everything that we do. It’s the foundation of this podcast. And simply, John developed a model, a methodology that we call the five levels of leadership. And at level one, you have influence because of your title. People follow you because they have to. At level two, you have influence because people want to follow you. They give you permission to lead them. We call it the five levels of leadership. It’s the five levels of influence, and it fits right in here. Level three, we talk about the production level. This is where people follow you because of not only what you’ve done for the organization, but I like to throw in there what you and your team together have done for the organization. Level four, you have level four influence with people when you have invested in them personally and professionally. You’ve developed them, which I think is the key to a lot of sustainable, successful organizations and cultures.

And then finally, level five influence is you have done levels two, three, and four so well for so long. We call this the pinnacle level, where people just have the ultimate respect for you, and you have made a tremendous impact or influence in their life. So, that’s kind of the five levels of leadership. And as we talked about it, it is really about influence. And now, we’re going to talk about the practical ways. Okay, well, how do I go about doing that? How do I maybe even move up the levels? And it’s really focusing on this. And so we have, nine acrostic. This is a long sermon, Perry. I’m used to three points or five points.

Perry Holley:

That’s why it’s two lessons.

Chris Goede:

So, we broke it up into two. So, we’re going to talk today about the first four, and then I hope you’ll join us for our next session. We will finish the five that are left there. So, why don’t you get us started.

Perry Holley:

And this is not for you to memorize. What does the I stand for? This is for us to put in some actionable things we can do. And so I’ll present what the letter and how John set that up, but I’d love for your kind of real world… How do you see that?

Chris Goede:

Yeah.

Perry Holley:

But the I in the word influence, as we start off, stands for integrity, and it is really how we build relationships on trust. And you think about your walk matching your talk, and not only about being honest and having high character, but you think about the word integrated or integers. You are one. How you act, how you think, how you talk is all integrated, and people can trust who you are about integrity. My favorite thought there is about consistency. You’re a known quantity. People know what they can expect when they see you because of the high level of integrity.

Chris Goede:

I love that. Yeah. When you talk about integrity with influence, I love the word consistency. It does compound what you do. And so integrity is really the linchpin of all influence. I think if you don’t have integrity, man, there’s no chance of you increasing your influence, growing your influence, developing others. Your actions as leaders have to line up with your words. And you don’t want to ever… Have you worked with somebody that you go, “Man, I mean, is he or she telling me the truth? What are they trying to… What’s the motive here? Is there deception?” You can’t do that. Your words and your actions have to align, and people that you have the privilege of connecting with have to believe that you have high integrity. You also don’t want to mislead people. You don’t want to look better than you are. And I love the word you talked about. You said trust. And for us, trust is a currency to all influence.

And without integrity, there can be no trust. And I know that a lot of us can say, man, I remember working for a leader where, number one, they did just didn’t line up to what you talked about. I didn’t trust them, felt like it was for themselves, and I don’t think they have integrity. And so one of the things that when we talk about practical application for me in regards to this… And I really, really have to work hard at this and I’ve got to get better at this. Because as I look at my leadership, I go, okay, what is something that I don’t do well that maybe I say I do well that could be affecting my integrity? That’s the approach I took about it. You’re going to be shocked when you hear this answer. It’d be around communication and commitment and responding to communication.

Perry Holley:

Falling off my chair.

Chris Goede:

Yeah, stop. Stop. Jake, turn his mic off. But one of the things I am trying to work towards, and again, I’m just sharing with you kind of where I’m at right now so that the integrity of my leadership stays intact, is, man, I got to learn to say no, or I got to learn how to set realistic expectations on the response time. I think it does two things. One, I think it helps me take pressure off of, man, I know that I told Perry I’d get it to him on Friday afternoon. And here it is Sunday afternoon, I’m just now even looking at it. That weighs heavy on me because integrity is a big part of it. So, how could I have done that differently? I should have probably assessed a little bit differently on the front end and said, “Hey Perry, you’ll have it first thing Monday morning in your inbox,” knowing that then that would give me Friday, maybe Saturday night and Sunday as I’m working on it.

So, the realistic expectations. And then when you know… If you’re a people pleaser or you want to serve people, you’re going to have to learn how to say no. And I think there are times that all of us, we say yes to things that either A, we don’t want to do and we’re not motivated to do it, so we drag our feet to do it, or just B, we don’t have time to do it and then we don’t do it. And then people are like, “Well, he or she told me that, but they never followed through.” And when they start saying that, I think that’s when your integrity becomes in question.

Perry Holley:

Yeah. Well, I appreciate your candor. It’s also a two-way street. As you’re talking, I’m thinking it has to be at least two times in the last week. You have had to ask me twice for something. And I thought, “Well, I knew I had it and I knew I couldn’t get to it right away,” but integrity would’ve said, “I should respond and let you know.” So again, setting expectations.

Chris Goede:

That’s good. Yeah.

Perry Holley:

Not after the fact that I didn’t do it and I’m late or whatever, but that I’m going to have to… Just here’s the straight scoop on that.

Chris Goede:

Yeah.

Perry Holley:

“I got your mail. I understand what you want. I’m going to have to… I’m booked. I’ve got this, but I’ll have it to you then.” And my tendency is just the opposite of yours. I’ll just… Yeah, I’ll get to it when I get to it, and I don’t bother telling you.

Chris Goede:

Right.

Perry Holley:

And the integrity would require-

Chris Goede:

That’s good.

Perry Holley:

… something different of me. The N in the word influence stands for nurturing, and this is where you care about people as individuals. And definitely if you want to become a person of influence, you absolutely have to be known as someone who cares for people. People are not influenced by people that they don’t feel care for them. If it’s just transactional, you asked me for something, there’s not a lot there. I used the word genuinely cares. I love that.

Chris Goede:

I love that.

Perry Holley:

Because I’ve actually worked for a leader that I knew that when he started asking me how I was, he wanted something. He didn’t really care, but it had a pattern with it that caused me to… I felt manipulated somehow when he began to ask that. And I love this word nurturing because nurturing really takes caring to the next level. You think, I care about… If you nurture someone, you’re actually doing more than caring. You’re actually… You’re helping them grow them, protect them, develop them. You think about nurturing a plant, and then you feed it, you water it, you weed it, you take care of it at a different level. So, we don’t often use that word, but-

Chris Goede:

No, I like that.

Perry Holley:

… I like it a lot. Thinking if you’re worried about being a person of influence, do I have integrity? And so the practical things. You need to practice, as we talk about. But nurturing, am I doing more? I’m taking caring to the next level.

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Chris Goede:

What I love about the word nurturing is that it really encompasses the model that we have built this off of that we talked about. It’s really the level two, three, and four of the five levels of leadership.

Perry Holley:

Oh, that’s good.

Chris Goede:

Which is connecting with people, helping people develop and win and then developing them. To your point, those things kind of fit right there. And so as you become aware of that, as a leader, you go, okay, so what are the things I can be doing to increase my influence around nurturing? And you mentioned a couple of them, but you really have got to make sure that you really know them. Understand… I was talking to a gentleman this morning who I’m very excited to get to know and spend more time with, and you are going to as well. His name is… Which you didn’t know that, but now that we’re communicating here and being transparent, go ahead and commute right now. I’m letting you know.

Perry Holley:

I’ll let you know. I’ll get to that when I can.

Chris Goede:

That’s good. But we were talking. His name was Andy and he used to be a faculty member at the National War College and served in the Air Force. And man, extremely sharp-

Perry Holley:

Better get to that one sooner.

Chris Goede:

… dude, executive. Yeah, he knows people. You and I both need… That’s why we’re making a public right here. But it was interesting. He said, “When you understand how your team is wired, what their strengths and their weaknesses are,” he said “it is a doorway to being able to be empathetic with them. It’s a doorway to empathy.” And I thought, “Wow, that’s good.” And he goes, “Well, sure, because…” Not sure because it’s good [inaudible 00:14:51], but sure this is how it works. He’s like, “You understand that not all of us are empathetic?” And I was like, “Have you been talking to my wife? Yes, I completely understand that not all of us have a lot of empathy.” And he goes, “Well, what I’m finding and discovering is the better we know our team, the more empathetic I can be to them.” And so that’s part of that whole nurturing process. And I think the other thing is, are you intentionally looking for opportunities to set them up for success, to develop them, to make sure that their future is in alignment with exactly what they want to be doing?

I’ll give you another story real quick. One of our team members, we went through the assessment, the working genius. Great conversation.

Perry Holley:

Yes.

Chris Goede:

Getting to know each other. And Pat did a phenomenal job with that assessment. And so our team is going through that. Well, we have an anomaly in our team, which is in the category what they call wonder. And this poor team member, she’s on an island when it comes to our team. And so we began to unpack this towards the end of last year, and I challenged her. I said, “Man, that is a gift that you absolutely can bring to the team that would help us and help you, and we need to nurture that.” And she’s like, “Well, how are we going to do that?” And I said, “I’m going to hold you accountable to once a week, once every other week, I want you to go somewhere…” We used to call it white space or thinking time.

Perry Holley:

Yeah. Right, right.

Chris Goede:

“And I want you to pick a question or two and I just want you to wander on it, no pun intended. And she’s like, “Are you serious? Oh my gosh, that’s awesome. That would develop it.” So, that’s an example, not of my leadership, it’s just an example of saying, “Hey, get intentional about truly understanding these strengths and weaknesses so that you can be empathetic to where they are.” And how this led to empathy for me, as I’ll wrap up here… Now, I know why you made it two part series here, because you’re like, Chris is not going to shut up.

But how it worked was this. I had no idea that that was a skillset of hers. The more I began to understand why it was an anomaly on my team and learn more about it, I then was able to understand some of the frustrations she has with me and others’ systems or processes or lack of thought in some things. And so it just allowed me to kind of nurture that in there. And when you do that, leaders, when you understand that, when you go at something like that, it does nothing but increase your influence. And that was all under the letter N, the second one that we’re at today.

Perry Holley:

So, you want influence, integrity, nurturing. The F stands for faith. Do you believe in people? I often teach… And some people scratch their heads when I do this, but every human being has a self-concept, how you see yourself, your self-image, your self-esteem, your self-belief. And I just believe that how you see yourself determines in part how you perform your role. And leaders can give a great gift to people when they believe. You started saying like, “Can I help demonstrate my faith in you and that how I see you?” And you can really tell when someone believes in you. And you’ll usually the raise your game to not disappoint someone if they think highly of you. But I’ve wondered if you get thinking about how you demonstrate belief in the people on your team. You do this really well, but I wonder if you’ve captured how you do that.

Chris Goede:

How I do that? Well, I think this is such a big thing to me because I had so many people in my life and in my career, and I think all of us listening would agree with this, that you look back and there are some people that had faith and believed in you more than you believed in yourself. And it really comes across the way you speak to them in one-on-one and how you speak into them. It also, in written communication, goes a long way. And the other thing I think that it does, and it goes a long way, is when you do it in front of their peers or when you do it in front of the team. But listen, we’ve talked about this a couple times already. Man, we want you to be authentic about it. I’m not saying blow smoke and make up something and be so general that the team goes, “Yeah, that’s just Chris speaking faith into Perry. Even though we’re trying to get rid of Perry, he keeps speaking into him.” Right?

But I also want to encourage you that we believe around here that it’s okay for people to struggle. It’s okay for people to fail. That means that they’re innovating, they’re trying something different. And there’s a difference between you know that, and then just not showing up for work, right? We’re not talking about that. But when that happens and you can see a little bit of discouragement in your team or in your people, that’s when you really need to even speak more of that positive way and affirm them for their effort, not just the results. And here’s key. When you do it… This is one of the things that I think are so important to making sure that it’s authentic. When you do it, make sure it’s specific to things that you see, meaning…

Let’s just say we were in a meeting and I was going about speaking my faith and my belief and affirmation in you and be like, “Man, Perry, that podcast where you talked about influence and you built out this acrostic and whatnot, that was awesome.” And so then all of a sudden the team’s like, “Okay, Chris is not just over here speaking belief and having faith in Perry because they’re both level two nature and they like to play golf together. He gave us tangible reasons.” And so as leaders, give specific examples. And I think when you do that, it’ll help the faith in that individual, but also the faith of the team of why you have the faith in that individual.

Perry Holley:

I think it’s huge because… I know you and I both played football. Have you ever had a football coach… I had coaches that I make the same mistake or lack of execution on the football field, one coach would say it in a way that you mess that up and really come down on you. And that would affect so good the way I see myself within… I would then internalize that in almost a shameful way. Versus the coach that says, “Perry, you can do better. Let me show you how you might be able to do that.” Then it actually elevates by having that belief in me. And so I believe that you believe I’m an idiot, then I’m going to act like an idiot. If I believe you believe I can do it, I’m going to raise my game. I thought that belief really starts to show up.

Finally for today, the L in influence. So, we had integrity, we had nurturing, and we had faith. The L stands for listening. And this… And it’s probably too bad influence doesn’t start with an L because this would be the first thing.

Chris Goede:

The first one.

Perry Holley:

… you could probably do, but I doubt you can find a truly influential person who is not a good listener. If you’re talking about you or talking about other things, you’re not listening to the people on your team, it’s going to be very hard for you to nurture, have faith to do that. It’s probably what I’ve determined, the number one way you can show value to another person, is to listen to them. So, most of us think we’re pretty good listeners, but I think we could all improve. What are some practical ways you found you think that we could be working on listening?

Chris Goede:

Yeah. As the world that we live in, everyone is busy. There’s a lot of chaos going on. There’s a lot of noise going on. And I want to encourage us that we’re all in the people business, by the way. Whether it’s your family, which that’s where it starts, community, your organization, there should be nothing more important than the people that we’re with, period. And so I think as you begin to look at, okay, well, if I’m going to invest in and be with my people, what do I need to be doing? We need to be listening and listening intently. I know you talk a lot about curious and being curious and the curiosity. Are you really listening to learn? You also talk about do you want to be interested or do you want to be interesting?

Perry Holley:

Yes.

Chris Goede:

Right? That’s a motive part thing that you need to check yourself there. One of the things that I think we could do is ask better questions. You mentioned early on, as we were talking about a leader that you have worked with in the past, asked you a couple questions, but you knew the only reason they were asking the questions… First of all, they have the same questions over and over again. You’re like, well, here comes Perry. He’s going to ask me how was my weekend. What’d you do? Let’s mix it up a little bit. Okay? And then not just be interested, be curious, and then lead to something that you need. Just be interested and curious in the people that we work with.

We’re not saying you’ve got to build deep, long term relationships with everybody you work with, but if you want to increase your influence, you better increase your ability to ask good questions. I would also encourage you, as we talk about this whole listening thing here is, man, remove any distractions. In today’s world, we have a lot of distractions, digital distractions, all kinds of stuff going on. And I love some of these restaurants and family members that have these little baskets for your phones when you come. And that’s the place I think about families and think about listening to each other and increasing your influence with each other, right? That’s the place where stories are told and you hear things you probably would want to hear.

And so, man, how do you remove the distractions? And then my last thing is, no matter what is going on around me and the noise and the distraction, I really try to focus on like there’s nothing else going on. I don’t do this good all the time, but when I’m one-on-one and I’m with an individual, it’s like, hey, this is the most important conversation that I’m in right now. And I don’t just do that as a learned behavior. Well, it’s become a learned behavior. I just don’t do that to put on a front. I have found I’ve been able to connect better and listen and ask better questions when I do that. And so by doing that, it’s increased my influence with those individuals.

Perry Holley:

Yeah. I think about that be here now.

Chris Goede:

Be here now. That’s awesome. I love that.

Perry Holley:

So, I want you to wrap it up, but just I want to encourage our listeners, get the learner guide, get these first four, and then again, join us next week for the remaining five. And I think for me, these are practical things. If you could just be practicing each and these nine areas, you will develop your influence.

Chris Goede:

Well, I appreciate that. I love you working in the number five there. Remaining five will be next week. Perry and I do want to thank you for just listening and hopefully applying what you’re learning and sharing what you’re learning. We’d love for you to not only share these lessons with people in your influence, but with your team, and then unpack them, debrief them a little bit. What’d you learn? What was the… Hey, from the lesson the other day that Perry put together with the first four, what was the number one? What’s your strength? Where do you struggle the most? Let’s talk about it. Just use this as a dialogue for your team. So as I wrap up and close, the I was for integrity. No doubt, integrity builds relationships, and it’s built on trust. The N is for nurturing. Man, really care about people as individuals.

People, personal first, then professional. F was for faith where you just believe in people. The L is for listening. This is really where you value what other people say, and that will 100% increase your influence. My last comment, and I’ll say this next week as well in the next session, it’s that important to us that you understand it is all about the motive behind why you’re doing this. So, Perry’s bringing this acrostic to us, and we’re working through it and we’re giving you some thoughts. And it’s simple. It’s hard to apply if it’s simple, but man, have the right motive behind it. Perry gave you a great example of a leader he worked for earlier that did not have the right motive on why he was asking Perry about his weekend. And as people, you know this, they can see right through that, and so have the right motive as you’re working to increase your influence.

Perry Holley:

Like what John says, people can tell you’re either motivating me or manipulating me.

Chris Goede:

Yeah, it’s so good.

Perry Holley:

We can tell. Just that reminder, if you would like to have the learner guide, leave us a question or a comment. You can do all that at maxwellleadership.com/podcast. We love hearing from you. We’re very grateful you would spend this time with us each week. That’s all today from the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast.