What We Get Wrong About Influence

Influence is not a thing you “do” to others. Rather, it is about figuring out what you can give to others to help them in their goals and careers.

Deb’s Note: From time to time, I bring in guest writers to explore new ideas that I would not otherwise write about. I love the way Yue Zhao takes a leap of faith and writes from a place of vulnerability and learning. 

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One of my favorite definitions of influence is from Boz, CTO of Meta:

“At its core, influence is the property of people wanting your help. Not needing it. Not being required to have it. But wanting it.”

Why others would invite our influence

Many of us get influence all wrong. We see it as something we do to others, not something that others invite from us. We start with, “I want to influence you.” We focus on how to get someone to see things our way or make decisions that are favorable to us. This line of thinking is self-centered and typically ineffective. Often, it leads us to think ourselves into a corner and risk treading into negative actions like bullying. Boz’s quote highlights that influence is not about the act of doing, but about someone wanting something from us. 

Why would someone want to be influenced? It makes sense if you think about influence as: “How can I help you?” 

When we start from a place of support, our perspective completely changes. We ground our thinking in how to best help someone else (and perhaps even be influenced in return). This helps us align ourselves with their goals, ambitions, and concerns. We consider our strengths and superpowers, and how they might help fill gaps in their work or accelerate a critical task. This is how influence is built—block by block, step by step—over many interactions. 

Underlying this approach to influence is the law of reciprocity. We have a strong, innate human tendency to reciprocate. If someone does something helpful for us, we feel indebted and want to give back. This naturally makes us more open to that person’s requests, perspectives, or ideas.

I am not suggesting that you should aim for transactional relationships; rather, for relationships built on mutual growth and support. Some of these start with you approaching others with an offer to help them. Other times, they start when others approach you for help. Here is what that looks like. 

How to build influence

Influence can be built in two ways: offering to help someone else or helping when asked. The former is what most of us start with early in our careers. The latter is much more scalable as you rise through the ranks. But what leads someone to want your help?

1. Being knowledgeable: Have something to give. 

2. Being accessible: Influence is bi-directional.

3. Being kind: Take responsibility for how you make others feel.

Being knowledgeable means having expertise and competence in the area where you want to be of influence. It means knowing the market, the business, and the people. It means knowing what you are particularly good at compared to others, as well as where you tend to fall short. It also means knowing when to graciously decline requests for support because you have other priorities and limited bandwidth.

Being accessible is about being open. It’s about letting others know that you are there to help—and that you’re open to being influenced by them, too. Most people don’t like to ask others for help because they don’t want to be seen as bothersome. The more senior you are at a company, the more people fear coming to you with requests that are too trivial, too unimportant, or too dumb. Make it known that you want to help. Provide examples of what you can help with and how others can ask you for help. Giving people this level of specificity makes it much easier for them to approach you. It also ensures that the asks come in a format and at a time you prefer.

Finally, being kind is about taking responsibility for how you make others feel. When someone approaches you and you are not able to help them, or you share some honest but harsh feedback, it’s important to be empathetic and consider the impact of your words. This does not mean you need to sugarcoat what you say or be less passionate about your opinions and ideas. But it does mean reflecting on how your actions affect others and showing that this matters to you. This could be as simple as acknowledging the impact with a statement like, “I know this is a difficult decision for you because…” or, “I can see that this surprises you.” It could also mean proactively taking that next step to help them—for example, “Here are some ideas for how you might bring this up with your team,” or, “Here is one thing we can do that might help you.”

Introverts and influence

I often hear from introverts who view their aversion to attention and large groups as a hindrance to building influence. However, introverts are great influencers. They tend to be thoughtful, empathetic, and observant. When it comes to figuring out how to help others, they can come up with meaningful, valuable ideas. When you think about building influence based on helping others, it becomes clear that influence does not require being vocal or talking to many people. It can be done quietly and powerfully one on one.

Given the desire for deep connections, building influence as an introvert may be more about quality over quantity, at least to start. You might not know everyone at your company, but the people you do know are people you can influence deeply. And over time, when you build 15 strong relationships a year across 15 or 20 years of your career, you end up with numerous high-quality connections.

In my experience, introverts are often the people who can truly get difficult things done and convince others of different perspectives. Introverted leaders are adept at working behind the scenes, aligning people toward common goals, and getting past deadlocks between parties. Extroverts, on the other hand, often excel in roles that value large networks or strong and simple rallying cries. This is why politicians, salespeople, and venture capitalists tend to be extroverts: They can exert shallow influence over a large quantity of connections.

Influence versus authority

Influence is often defined in contrast to authority. It is possible to have influence without authority and to have authority without (much) influence. It is no surprise, then, that many product managers build trust by asking individuals on their team and other teams how they can help. They need to build the influence to lead without authority.

Authority naturally comes to those who have influence. When it comes time to promote and mint a new leader, more often than not, the name that rises to the top is the person with the most influence. Often, when the decision is made to bring in outside leaders rather than promote from within, it’s because no one in the organization is perceived to have enough influence to take on the role.

Your potential as a rising leader in an organization correlates with your ability to convince people to work in a particular direction, whether you have the authority or not. While it might feel like a “shortcut” to have an official title, there is no replacement for spending time to build your expertise and credibility, so that people come to you for help. It’s about being able to influence others, and that doesn’t start with figuring out how they can help you. It starts with figuring out how you can help them.

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👋 Hi! I'm Yue. Former Chief Product Officer turned career coach. My personal mission is to support more women and minorities in ascending to the C-suite. I write a weekly newsletter on career growth ✍, teach a course at Reforge on Breaking Through to Executive Leadership 🚀, and provide 1:1 and group coaching to aspiring executives. 👭 .