New Leadership Praxis: I3 = Inspiration + Influence + Impact

Leadership is changing.

Being a leader is no longer solely defined as having a senior title and managing a large workforce, it’s increasingly about relating to others in a way that enhances collaboration, shared outcomes of success, and generating results from a matrix environment.

As our roles continue to evolve in a digital space, whom we report to and who reports to us becomes less of a question of a hierarchy, and more of managed process of shared decision making. To launch a product, for example, takes marketing, finance, data, engineering, and product teams working together… we are less siloed, and we are increasingly in need of a leadership paradigm that allows us to interact with and challenge those with a skill set or department outside of our own to come along with a shared vision.

We’re creating a new way of relating to and leading each other.

Using models like RACI (which delineates who is responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed on a project/process) clarity roles and goals. It’s essential to ensure senior management is in the know about who’s doing what, while providing a clear JTBD (jobs to be done) responsibility framework for teams, stakeholders, and contributors. The way responsible/accountable parties interact and whom is assigned which job is less about who sits where on the organizational chart, and more about who is able to deliver change and results.

Regardless of where you are in your career today, the tools to add to your leadership toolkit in this new environment are inspiration, influence, and impact.

INSPIRATION 💡

“The purpose of an organization is to enable ordinary human beings to do extraordinary things.” — Peter Drucker

How do you pitch an idea to a senior executive? I asked my colleagues in a training session. I heard: “prove your point with data,” “strive to impress,” or “be airtight with your argument.” All valid points.

What about inspiring them? I asked. The room got silent.

One underutilized technique for managing up is inspiration.

Another word for inspiration is road-mapping: painting a picture of where we are going, what success looks like, and filling in masterful detail of what it looks like once we’re there.

Casting a vision is not simply a task for someone in the C-Suite. Inspiring those around you, lateral or above, with a picture of the flawless product launch, the newly design BI tool, or what it looks like to operate once you’ve rolled out a new project management software is a key part of storytelling mastery.

Inspiration as a leadership tool is about being on purpose with the vision you are casting, and creating a compelling story about what shared success looks like at the finish line.

It’s about creating goal posts — meaningful metrics — that delineate success at each step, so everyone on the journey knows what milestones need to be hit, by whom, and when.

Starting with the end in mind is one of Stephen Covey’s mantras from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and a staple building block to being a leader who inspires on purpose. For managing laterally or down, it is essential to not have “death march” projects that have no defined end or goal post in mind. Envisioning a bright future needs to be paired with smart, tactical planning, with an agreed upon framework of measuring what a job well done looks like.

Being someone who inspires is a challenge for all of us to raise our level of detail, clarity, and energy around storytelling with a deeper purpose to create a shared vision, engagement from the team, and willingness to go on a journey that has been well-defined. And, when needed, flexibly adjust our own best laid plans when we need to iterate, adapt, and change course.

Practical Tips for Inspiring Others:

• Take a storytelling course — learn about the fundamentals of plot, action, voice, and delivery.
• Get comfortable speaking in public. Inspiring others will likely involve speaking out loud, and it is important to remove any roadblocks to your ability to voice your vision to a live audience. Groups like Toastmasters International make public speaking and leadership training fun and engaging, while providing a networking outlet.
• Read about Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey and principles of mythology to understand how myths create powerful visuals about our own day-to-day path.

INFLUENCE 🤝

“A genuine leader is not a searcher of consensus but a molder of consensus.” — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

How do you enact change or mold consensus without being overly political? How do you influence outcomes without being manipulative? In an unhealthy expression, the power to influence others to a particular outcome or decision could be a Brutus & Cassius style situation. To avoid a Machiavellian power struggle, it’s important to define what a healthy expression of influence looks like.

Influence, in a positive realm, is about the power of authentic relationships being leveraged to create change.

More than an action, influence is a posture. A posture of listening, learning, and leaning into the changes that need to be made in order to advance the group’s evolution or plan.

If you want to become influential, become the most keen observer and active listener in you organization. Pay attention to the space between the sentences when someone is speaking. Intuit and understand where the gaps lie between where we are today, and where we are heading.

In order to lead, listen. Speak less, speak slowly.

I recently heard that the more you move up in your career, the more managing up becomes important. I agree, but that’s skipping a couple of steps. The more you advance in your career, the more important it is to manage yourself first, and build a network around you of authentic, genuine relationships.

You manage not only up and down in your career, but also laterally with your peers. If you are in the business of co-creating success, you can enlist other’s best ideas, data, and frameworks to build a braintrust of ideas instead of a me vs. them scenario.

Allowing power to be distributed and team-focused, you can help to create an environment where decision making is shared and equitable with many voices represented at the table. Of course, you will still need to nominate a super decision maker (even if that’s a group vote) to avoid inaction from endless debate.

If one style of leadership is “because I said so,” then the influential side of leadership might be defined as “come follow me because of who I am.”

There is a difference in leading from a position of authority versus a place of authenticity. Influential leadership seeks to locate and know yourself, and be able to positively listen to and inform outcomes in the organization for everyone’s shared benefit (and the bottom line).

If you want to inspire, be a person who is inspirational.

Practical Tips for Influencing Others:

• Build your muscle of active listening. Practice listening at multiple levels and increasing your awareness of what is being said, or not said, when you are listening to others.
• Dale Carnegie has the seminal text… How to Win Friends and Influence People.
• Hire a coach. Consider partnering with a leadership development expert who can help you level up your communication, presence, and authenticity as a leader.

IMPACT 🚀

“Genius is in the idea. Impact, however, comes from action.” Simon Sinek

If inspiration is WHO the and influence is the HOW, then impact is the WHAT of leadership.

Being able to paint a picture of success, and create goal posts to measure what matters, and listening to what others are saying, is essential. The way it all comes together is by affecting deep change and taking meaningful action.

Impacting an organization, simply put, is leaving it in better shape than when you found it.

This could be on a project-by-project basis, or thinking about the legacy of what you leave behind when you go to the next adventure. Fundamentally, the question is, how did we change as a result of partnering together? What is different now than when we started?

Impact starts with radical accountability. Being accountable to results, to people, and to the bottom line is about being able to take what is there today and transform it to what the organization needs for tomorrow.

Stagnation is the enemy of impact.

Becoming bored, complacent, bureaucratic, or slow is a sure way to lose the fire of inspiration amongst the treacherous day-to-day busy work of to do lists.

To affect deep change, and influence new outcomes, impact is about staying accountable to the vision for a transformed future, and being able to turn down mediocrity in an effort to turn up results that are actually generating movement, growth, and expanding the capacity for future innovation.

Being a champion of a transformational change process, and impacting real results, means you are a filter — filtering out someday/maybe and distracting/unfocused projects into NO buckets so we can collectively say YES to co-creating outcomes that move the needle forward.

We’ve looked at impact from a project or change model perspective, but there is also the impact of personal relationships. Affecting change at work, or really anywhere, usually starts with an ability to relate authentically and genuinely to others. Want to impact process? Start with people. Want to impact results? Start with people. Want to impact change? Start with people.

The quality of the relationship you have with your people in a one-to-one, group, and company-wide basis will determine the expression and range of change possible within your organization.

Practical Tips for Impacting Others:

• Measure what matters. Set goals, write them down, measure them. If the goals are not being measured or tracked, it is impossible to understand what impact is being made.
• Invest deeply in your relationships. Hold regularly 1:1s, socialize over a breakfast meeting or coffee, get offsite with your team for bonding or brainstorming, take time to be fully present with those around you. Stick to the cadence you set up.
• Look backward so you can move forward. Hold a regular retro of what is working versus not working in your team/company, and elevate your ability to illicit honest feedback from the team. By the way, these are not just for product teams, they can be for any initiative/project in your company that is designed for and measuring a changed outcome!

To get to a bigger outcome and brighter future, start inside with your own style and toolbox.

Influence, inspiration, and impact are tools and ways of being that you can apply immediately to your leadership practice in order to simulate growth and change.

Leading today, more than ever, is a process of continual evolution, and willingness to expand what’s possible for yourself and for your team.

✨ hey, i’m cassandra! ✨
I coach companies to tell their story & inspire leadership teams to execute on purpose. By aligning people, process, and projects around story, we scale profitable growth, while adding more joy & humanness to the journey. P&L management intersected by people development is where I maximize impact. Connect with me on LinkedIn. #strategicoperations #humanresources #executivecoaching #expandingpossibilities #magicmaking #experiencedesign