Influencing upwards is a major theme in my coaching with leaders. This includes influencing their immediate boss and others that are thought of as ‘senior people’. Usually, they want engagement or support from more ‘senior people’ to make progress with an a project or initiative. The phrase ‘senior people’ or ‘senior leader’ is an example of how we interpret the world around us. This interpretation includes how we are describing who we are in that world in relation to others. Here’s some ideas from people in my coaching sessions that have really helped them to influence upwards achieve important results.
Senior people are not superhuman
Observe how you think and feel about ‘senior people’. How do you feel about yourself in relation to these ‘senior people’?. Leaders often speak about ‘senior people’ with a tone of referential fear. That somehow a ‘senior person’ is not actually an ordinary human being but some kind of super human who is all knowing, all seeing and all powerful. This first up framing drives a lot of the anxiety and ‘playing small’ behaviour. Repeating this story about the great ‘senior leader’ makes them loom larger than life in our mind.
Related to how we see ourselves in the world of our organisation is the powerful and restrictive idea of the hierarchy. This is so vividly expressed in the icon of the organisational chart. Many of the leaders I coach interpret their day to day work experiences and interactions through the image of the towering hierarchy. Like standing under the Eiffel Tower and looking up. No wonder they feel small and lacking in influence. But to push the Eiffel Tower image a bit further, what do you have if you lie the tower on its side? Now you no longer have an over-powering hierarchy but instead a sprawling and complex network that you can explore and climb around as much as anyone else can. And that includes these ‘senior people’. Turn the hierarchy on its side and you have created a network. Networks are open-ended and interesting to explore.
Build your empathy for your boss.
We rarely think of these ‘senior people’ as people. A fellow human being who gets out of bed every day and goes to work, But they are just like you. Influencing is less about clever, psychological techniques to mess with people’s heads and more about putting yourself in the other person’s shoes. In other words, empathy. We expect ‘senior people’ to do this for us but rarely consider that perhaps the reverse is also important. Usually, the boss’s job is at least three times more complex and difficult than yours. Imagine what it would be like to be in your boss’s job. What does it actually involve day to day, moment to moment? In that world, the concerns you have in your job are just one of multiple issues your boss is covering. How can you support and even encourage your boss?
Talk about what matters to the leader you want to influence
We all spend most of our time thinking about our concerns, our jobs, the projects we have to get done and how important our job is. When we go to meet with our boss, we bring a list of things to report back on and things we want them to fix or do something about. If you want to build influence, stop talking all the time about your job and your project and your problems. Start talking about the goals, projects and challenges of the other person. Get more interested in their world than yours. Ask lots of open, curious questions and then do a lot of listening. Make it your goal to live in their world.
And then always, yes always, start with their world whenever you talk about your world. Show clearly and simply how the achievement of your goals are important to achieving their goals. ‘Oh, but I don’t want to play politics!’ Many of us have thought this. This statement of belief is the major obstacle to being influential. Do you have to set other people up to fail? Do you have to fight your ‘competitors? Do you have to be a total jerk? No, you don’t have to do that stuff. But you do have to engaged purposefully with others, including senior leaders, to understand their worlds, what is important to them and what the issues of the day are. That’s not politics, it’s leadership.
