Leadership Through Influence
How can you develop the ability to influence and lead without authority?
Last week I focused on defining your purpose and identifying what's driving your career. One key to success in your career is finding the intersection where your principles and skills meet to provide value.
I've always been someone who likes to network and have been able to open doors, connect, and collaborate with others to solve problems. I am also curious and passionate about sustainability, innovation, and technology.
I've realized that my interests and skills align to create value in understanding customer's challenges and needs while collaborating internally to develop solutions accordingly. This is similar to a job description I’ve been pursuing and that is a Strategic Account Executive (SAE) - someone who develops strategies to benefit their business and customer in a win-win relationship.1
This week we’ve learned from Northwestern's High Performance Collaboration course that there are 3 attributes of successful teams: expertise, engagement, and execution. How can a Strategic Account Executive foster trust and lead a virtual team of talented (expertise) and motivated (engagement) colleagues to realize business outcomes (execution)?
Strategic Account Executives do not manage teams - or at least they do not have any direct reports. This means they have no formal authority over other members of their organization, but still need to influence many different stakeholders to drive desired outcomes. How can you be a leader within an organization without having formalized authority? The answer is by leadership through influence or leadership without authority - however you word it, it's the ability to influence people over whom you have no formal authority.2
The concept of influence without authority has many layers and there have been books written on the topic, but I do want to touch on a couple of highlights.
Build Base Knowledge and Support
It's important to spend time getting to know the key stakeholders in your organization before asking for resources or support.
More importantly, it’s essential to develop a deep understanding of your customer’s business from procurement procedures to logistics challenges.
Give and You Shall Receive
Understand how your colleagues' performance is measured and what their personal objectives or challenges are.
Help your colleagues solve their problems and they will help you solve yours.
Focusing on the core concepts of Leadership through Influence can bring success to Strategic Account Executives - and anyone who is leading a team or needs support from colleagues they don’t manage.
‘How To Become A Strategic Account Executive’ https://www.zippia.com/strategic-account-executive-jobs/
‘Leading People Who Don’t Report to You’ https://insights.dice.com/2015/09/29/leading-people-who-dont-report-to-you/