Influence

I've been thinking a lot about influence lately.  This has been stimulated in part by Mel Lawrenz's (@MelLawrenz) recent book.  As Mel was writing the book, he wrestled with whether to use the word influence or leadership.

• They both involve the role of a person (leader/influencer) on others
• They both highlight distinctive characteristics and point to an ideal (or anti-ideal)

As I have talked with many people recently, I have been struck by how many people think they are not leaders and have only trivial influence.  Really?  I suspect that most people have much more influence than they know.  The real difference may be between those with intentional influence, and those with casual influence.

Perhaps one could illustrate it this way:

To illustrate how much influence you have, try this experiment.  Open up your cell phone or your facebook, linkedin or Google+ account and look through this list.  All of these entries represent people you cared enough to enter into your list.  Grab a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle.  Now as you walk through your friend list, write names on the left side of the page of people who influence you, and names on the right side of people you influence. 

Look for patterns in your lists.  Here are some things to look for:

• Are there more names on the left or on the right?  Why?
• Are the influencers typically older than you are?
• Is there a pattern related the principle setting of your relationships:  Work, school, home, church, community?
• Is there a pattern of the content of your relationship: professional, hunting, sports, politics, online gaming?
• Where you are the influencer, are you a good influence or a bad one?
• When you receive influence from others, are you improved by the relationship?
• Which relationships take more of your time… influencing or being influenced? 

Maybe you can derive some insight from what is not on the list.  Are you missing mentors?  Are you missing a key topic you care about?

My point here is to be thoughtful about the power of our influence and to make choices about direction and content of our influence.  The difference between leaders and the rest of us may simply be intentionality.  Or is it?

I can imagine some saying, “I am very intentional about shaping my kids, but they don’t react to anything I say.”  (Or replace kids with any other group you hope to shape.)  I’m leading, I’m intentional about my influence, but my teammates are still the same schmucks they’ve always been. You’ve heard it said that you’re a leader only if you have followers.  

Is leadership simply a matter of intentional influence?  It appears that there is a measure of effectiveness or power that matters, in addition to the object and intention of our influence.  But it seems to me that intentional influence is an essential component of leadership.

My thinking on this has just begun.  Here are a few questions to stimulate a conversation.  The assumption is that people will want to be intentional about influence:

• How do I improve the impact of my influence when it is important to do so?
• How do I lead differently if there is an influence in my target’s life that is much greater than my own?  Their neighbor?  Family of origin? Disability? Boss?

By the way, if you’re interested in more tools for mapping your social network, here are a few:

Map your linkedin connections	http://inmaps.linkedinlabs.com/
Facebook Friends on a Map	http://geographics.cz/socialMap/
Facebook app: Super Friends.

Success

I was asked today to share some thoughts on what it takes to be successful at GE.  (I don't think this is specific to GE, by the way.)  Here were the three core ideas:

• Be curious
  Curious people are happier, learn more, and have a broader network than their non-curious peers.

• See constraints as liberating
  Whining or suffering silently under constraints is a dead end.  People who try to design a system at 1/10th of the typical cost develop breakthroughs.  People who re-create when faced with a budget cut are more successful than those who just reduce their activities in line with the cut amount.

• Have the confidence to be taught
  If you're learning, you'll be more effective and more influential.  But learning requires the humility to admit an area of ignorance or weakness.  Humility and influence are intimately linked.

Of course, it doesn't hurt to do what your boss asks you to do along the way!

;-)