Expanding Your Circle of Influence

FountainBlue’s May 14 When She Speaks women in leadership series program, on the topic of ‘Expanding Your Circle of Influence’. Please join me in thanking our hosts at Oracle and our esteemed panelists. 

We were fortunate to have such a fun and influential set of panelists for this afternoon’s panel discussion. They represented an assortment of companies, roles and backgrounds, but they had much in common:

• They humbly shared their stories of how they grew their influence.
• They ‘switched lanes’ frequently, sometimes by designed and embraced each change in role, title, function and geography as learning opportunities.
• They cherished the opportunities both to learn and grow themselves, but also to spread the knowledge and success to others, paying it forward.

They are movers and shakers who are also easily moved and shaken as they navigate their lives and careers. Below is a compilation of their advice regarding expanding your influence.

Know Yourself

• Be clear on what you’d like to influence and why that matters to you, to others, to the team, to the organization, to the world.
• Be self-aware enough to know what you’re good at, where you need to grow, how you’re coming across to others.
• Be authentic and sincere and uniquely you – embrace your personal style of influence.

Stretch Yourself

• Dare to be influential, even if if’s not your job, not your role.
• Be gentle with yourself when mistakes happen – they are the best learning opportunities. 
• Be open and curious when others disagree with you, for it’s a learning opportunity.
• Invite and learn from feedback.

Be Strategic

• Take the opportunity to influence projects you’re targeting, but also be open to influencing projects others ask you to influence.
• Consistently align your thinking, with your speaking and actions, and ensure that all are in alignment with the corporate/team/industry objectives.
• Invite participation and engagement rather than commands and instructions.
• Build bridges between people and groups and silos, and make the combined group more influential.

Be Other-Centric

• Read the room, read the motivations and intentions of others so that you can better communicate and connect with others.
• Facilitate a conversation around goals and intentions rather than providing prescriptive advice and orders on how things should be done.
• How you see yourself is not necessarily how others see you, so be curious about how others see you.
• Speak in the language most respected by your audience – whether it’s the language of data, images, stories, or bulleted summaries.

Embrace Opportunities to Learn

• Be inquisitive and curious, and willing to work hard to make things happen. Proving yourself in these ways could make you more influential.
• Know when to persevere and when to just let go.
• Own your success and your path to influence and success.

In closing, each of the panelists invite us all to be more influential, and support others in doing the same.

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