3 reasons influence is a must-have skill right now for people who want to advance their corporate careers

I'll never forget the moment one of my old managers said this to me - "The most powerful person in the country is not the president.  It's the person who the president listens to."  He was talking about the power of influence.  There are two sources of power in most organizations - authority & influence.  Authority is bestowed on people by the nature of their role and depicted in organizational charts.  Influence is much harder to see but more often actually drives decisions and how organizations run.

Here are three reasons that influence is an important skill for emerging leaders who wants to advance their career:

1) Influence has grown in importance as companies have become more matrixed.  It's less likely that you will have authority over the people you need to do things in order for your project or work to be successful.  Teams are more cross-functional.  There's been an increase in senior-level roles with no reports.  The people in these roles are influencers - they are tasked to drive a result without formal authority.  

2) Companies want their workforce to be motivated and engaged.  Doing something because you want to (influence) versus because someone has told you to (authority) leads to higher levels of employee engagement.  Also, employees are more likely to work harder and more effectively when they're bought into the outcome.  Influence is how you get buy-in from others.  Influence is about creating a shared understanding and common desire for a specific vision.

3) There's too much information out there for all of us to process.  Every day we tune into the people we trust to help us filter through all the information.  We trust those people to provide us objective views (perhaps, sometimes wrongly) that we can use to move forward so we are not constantly living in a state of overwhelm. 

Leaders are in information overload at work too.  They need help filtering all of the information that comes their way.  So they rely on people they trust to help them do that.  These people are their influencers because they are often relied upon to evaluate information and make a recommendation.   In many organizations, these people may have a role of COO or chief of staff.  But either way, you just have to observe a leader for a couple days to recognize their influence-power map.  The key here is to recognize that leaders listen to a select few.  You need to develop your influence skills in order to be one of those few.

Influence is not manipulation.  It is not screening.  It's often not intentional on the end of the person being influenced.  We trust someone because they've proven over and over again that they are worthy of that trust and so we let them influence us.  Similarly in the workplace, influence is built on a foundation of trust.  

Are you interested in developing your influence skills? I'll be teaching a course built around my Strategic Communication & Leading Change Framework which focuses on helping emerging leaders in engineering and technology build their credibility, influence, and thought leadership.  For more information, visit the program website. There's an early bird option through 7/17 that you won't want to miss.