What’s in it for me? Don’t wait for permission to lead.
Are you hitting your goals in the workplace? If you’re anything like most people, you probably think you could achieve more if you were given more resources or more control. Perhaps you daydream about being promoted to a leadership position, where you could finally start changing the way things are done.
But the truth is, you don’t need to wait to become a manager to make a big splash in the office. You can begin leading your department or your organization right now, regardless of where you sit in the company food chain. Whether you want to improve a particular process, or promote a better working environment, these blinks will show you that you don’t need formal authority to start taking charge.
Packed with actionable tips and advice, this is your how-to guide to convincing your coworkers, increasing your influence, and kickstarting your leadership journey.
In these blinks, you’ll learn
who’s really on your team;
how to win your coworkers’ trust; and
why the best leaders are always celebrating.
Exercising your authority isn’t going to help you achieve all your goals.
How can you achieve your goals in the workplace? You might assume that the more authority you have, the easier it will be. If you’re a manager, say, then you have a team of people at your disposal to do exactly what you tell them to do. But in reality, it’s not as simple as all that. In today’s workplace, you should look beyond your official team if you want to make an impact in your organization.
The key message here is: Exercising your authority isn’t going to help you achieve all your goals.
Picture a scenario in which a Human Resources Director is tasked with introducing a new bonus pay system across her organization. The Director instructs her HR team to implement the new system, but before long, she encounters a problem: the Sales Director doesn’t like the idea, and has decided to set up his own independent bonus pay program for his department. So even though the HR director has effective control over her own team, she still cannot achieve her goal of a company-wide rollout.
If you were in the HR Director’s difficult position, your instinctive response might be to go to your own boss and complain that you don’t have enough control over the situation to achieve your objective. After all, you have no authority over the sales team. You cannot tell the Sales Director what to do, and without his cooperation, you cannot implement the new bonus system.
Often, the people who can help you get what you want are beyond your direct control. So how should you respond when you find yourself in a situation like the one facing our beleaguered HR Director? Well, instead of seeking to control more people or resources, you’ll need to focus on building authentic and mutually beneficial relationships with the coworkers whose cooperation you need. In the case of our HR Director, she’ll need to start treating the Sales Director as a friend, rather than as an adversary who can be bested. The two Directors need to sit down with one another to explore why their conflict has arisen, and how the bonus program can be implemented in a way that works for the sales team as well as the HR team.
In the following blinks, you’ll see how you can develop these mutually beneficial relationships so that you can begin to lead change, even when you don’t have authority.
The first step to leading without authority is to identify a problem.
What do you do when you’re keen to take on a leadership position, but your bosses don’t think you’re ready yet? He might say that you haven't been with the organization long enough, or that you don’t yet have the skills to be a manager. In this case, there’s only one thing you can do – start leading anyway, even without authority.
That’s exactly what Zina, a talented young doctor, decided to do. Zina wanted to step into a leadership role so that she could transform her hospital’s approach to patient care. Frustratingly, she was told that she hadn’t worked at the hospital long enough to become a manager.
Fortunately, though, Zina didn’t wait for anyone’s permission to start leading the hospital toward positive change.
Here’s the key message: The first step to leading without authority is to identify a problem.
More specifically, look for a problem in your workplace that no one is currently addressing, and that’s negatively affecting people’s ability to work effectively. For example, Zina identified a constant shortage of medical equipment in her ER department. The problem, it seemed, was that Devon, the nurse responsible for medical equipment, never seemed to know when supplies were running low.
Once you’ve identified such a problem, you can be the one to step up and solve it.
Of course, this can sound like a daunting prospect. Without any authority over him, Zina wondered how she could persuade Devon to work with her on this issue. He had a prickly reputation in his department and was often defensive when people questioned his approach.
But if you’re trying to lead without authority, you shouldn't start by confronting people about their wrongdoing. Instead, begin by simply getting to know them, so that they can start to trust you. Zina started by inviting Devon to lunch, asking him about his life outside of work, and sharing stories about her own experiences in medicine. Once the two had built a rapport, Devon stopped being defensive, and shared with her the issues he was facing with the medical equipment. Then she helped him solve the problem.
Even though Zina wasn’t officially a leader yet, she had already started to do the job of a manager. So if you’re looking to skip the queue when it comes to promotions, start proving to your bosses that you can take the initiative, solve problems, and lead people in your workplace toward positive change.
You can show your coworkers that you care about them by being generous.
Can you provide leadership to someone you don’t care about? The author believes that you can’t. To be a great leader, either with or without authority, you need to care about those on your team.
If the people you’re seeking to lead think you don’t care about their feelings, their careers, or their interests, then they won’t trust you. This lack of trust is a major stumbling block, because trust is the bedrock of meaningful relationships.
The key message here is: You can show your coworkers that you care about them by being generous.
When the author was trying to establish a relationship with a potential investor in his business, he looked for ways to be generous toward him, right from the start. During their very first meeting, the author asked him if he would like an introduction to any of his business contacts. When the investor declined this offer, the author changed tack, and instead offered to help the investor’s college-age children find internships. Finally, the author offered to pay for the investor to have a session with a psychotherapist when he learned that he’d just gone through a difficult divorce! Incredibly, the investor took him up on it.
Showing this level of generosity to a near-stranger might sound unusual, but it's crucial to showing the other person that you care. As long as your offer of help is genuine, and you sincerely want a long-term relationship, then it never hurts to be immediately generous.
In fact, research has shown that “givers” – those who are generous with their resources and time without expecting anything in return – tend to be among the most successful people in any chosen profession.
This should come as no surprise. After all, givers make us feel valued. We leave a meeting with givers feeling touched and motivated, and their care and generosity inspire trust and loyalty in everyone they meet. The author, for example, will always be thankful to one of his former bosses, who took it upon himself to pay for the flowers at his father’s funeral.
So, before you start trying to manage those around you, think instead about how you can serve their needs. By showing your coworkers, clients, or potential investors how much you care, you’ll gain their permission to lead, even when you don’t have authority.
There are three golden rules to turn every employee into a change leader.
How can you make change happen fast? Well, let’s respond to that with the following example. In 2016, Target, an American retail corporation, was failing. Foot traffic in their stores was decreasing rapidly, and experts were predicting that it wouldn’t be long before they would have to close their doors for good.
But just three years later, Target had turned their ship around. In fact, 2019 was their most profitable year on record. What was their secret? Simple. They empowered their people to lead without authority.
This is the key message: There are three golden rules to turn every employee into a change leader.
The first rule is radical inclusion. This means giving a voice to a diverse range of people in your organization in order to garner fresh ideas, innovations, and solutions.
In an effort to boost their bottom line, Target decided to design and introduce over a hundred new Target brands into their stores. Not only was this a huge undertaking, but the retailer also involved nearly every department in the brand-creation process – from the sales and marketing teams to the legal department. Everyone was involved in discussions from an early stage, to ensure that the final brands reflected the vision of all the employees in the organization.
In addition to radical inclusion, Target also followed the rule of bold input. This meant that, even at an early stage in development, they sought candid feedback from many people within the company. So, instead of the design team simply sending out the finished brands for approval, and employees in different departments sending polite emails with a few comments, people could jump in with feedback at every stage of the design process. As the word “bold” suggests, this approach takes some courage. The design team had to be able to withstand criticism of their designs from the word go, without letting it affect their creativity and morale.
Finally, Target focused on agility. They decided that they wanted their new brands to be ready within months, not years. To achieve this, the retailer held weekly, quick-fire huddles that saw people from across the organization come together to eliminate obstacles and troubleshoot in real time. For instance, during these huddles, the legal team would check branding databases as new suggestions were being made, to check for any legal issues that could present a problem farther down the line.
If you want your company to be agile, it's important to meet regularly, and to be prepared to make fast, impactful decisions during such meetings.
True leaders are generous and courageous with their feedback.
Whose job is it to coach employees and give them feedback? You might assume it’s a manager’s job, not yours. For instance, when you notice that your coworker could improve her performance, you might shrug, and think it’s not your place to tell her where she’s going wrong. Well, think again – because a fundamental tenet of leading without authority is coaching your colleagues and offering them feedback.
Although it might seem unusual to give your coworkers coaching and performance feedback, in some environments, it's the norm. For example, on a visit to a military academy, the author was struck by how the cadets in training urged each other on through every military exercise, and routinely gave each other advice on what they could do better next time.
The key message here is: True leaders are generous and courageous with their feedback.
If you feel uncomfortable offering your coworkers honest feedback on their performance and competencies, then ask yourself where this discomfort is coming from. Is it simply that you’re afraid of hurting someone’s feelings? If so, then don’t let this fear hold you back. After all, in your personal life, you probably have plenty of experience giving people valuable feedback in a sensitive way. For example, offering advice and guidance is often a big part of being a parent, or being a good friend. So why should you hold back in the workplace when you notice a coworker could do with some feedback, too?
The truth is that we often don’t offer our coworkers candid feedback because we don’t want to risk getting too involved or create tensions by upsetting them.
Instead, we prefer to play it safe and stay on the person’s good side, even if we can see that they’d really benefit from someone being honest with them. We’d rather just be nice. But this niceness can also be described as manipulative insincerity, and it doesn’t come from a good place. Manipulative insincerity indicates that you don’t care enough about the person, or her career, to be frank with her. So what you need to start doing is acting with radical candor, meaning that you brave the consequences and tell the person what you really think.
That being said, before you engage in radical candor, you should ask for the person’s permission to give feedback. Because while it's often helpful to receive performance feedback, your coworker might not want to hear it. That’s why you have to ask her explicitly whether it would be okay if you gave her your thoughts, and set a specific time and place to sit down to talk.
Lead without authority by celebrating your coworkers.
One of the author’s friends is a CEO who always seems to be chatting on the phone. When the author jokingly asked him how he got anything done, the CEO replied that it was usually an employee on the other end of the line. But, interestingly, he didn’t phone his employees to give out instructions or tell them what they’d got wrong. Instead, he called to tell them what a great job they were doing.
This leader was well aware of the power of positivity, and saw it as his job to encourage the people who worked for him, by constantly praising their achievements, no matter how small.
Here’s the key message: Lead without authority by celebrating your coworkers.
Remarkably, when he couldn’t think of anything specific to praise in the case of some employees, this CEO would scroll through their social media instead, and find something that they’d recently done in their personal lives on which he could congratulate them.
Although this kind of behavior might sound overly warm and fuzzy, there’s concrete evidence that it can improve your bottom line, too.
Research shows that when people are in a good mood or feel good about themselves, they instantly become more productive and better at solving problems. For instance, one study found that, when doctors were given a small gift of candy right before they consulted with a patient, they made faster and more accurate diagnoses than doctors who had not been given a gift. This just goes to show that even the smallest tokens of appreciation can enhance job performance.
Offering your coworkers praise is an excellent way to put them in a great mood and boost their performance. Just be sure that you offer this praise in a way you know the recipients will appreciate. While many people love nothing more than being celebrated in front of others, some of your coworkers will find it deeply uncomfortable to be at the center of attention. If you know that the person you want to praise is an introvert, then take a moment to send him a kind email or a handwritten note of gratitude.
Finally, don’t be afraid to think outside the box when it comes to showing your appreciation. The author knows one leader who decided to celebrate an employee by phoning his father and leaving a message on his answering machine, thanking him for raising such a great man. The employee’s father was so touched that he kept the message on his machine for the rest of his life.
You can’t lead change all by yourself, even with authority.
You can’t always go it alone. The author was once asked to coach a high-profile actor who had her own TV show. The show’s ratings were good, but there was a problem. The actor’s bad attitude toward the rest of the cast and crew was creating a toxic environment on set. As a result, the network was threatening to cancel the show.
To save her show, she would need to change herself, and change the environment in which she worked.
The key message here is: You can’t lead change all by yourself, even with authority.
After all, it was her negative attitude and constant sniping at those who couldn’t live up to her perfectionist standards that had created the problems on set. So the actor needed a core group of people around her to tell her when she was slipping back into her old ways, and to help her and everyone else stay on the path to positive energy. In other words, not only did the actor need to become a leader, but she needed input from other members of the cast and crew to help her affect change.
When you’re trying to lead change without authority, you’ll need to empower others to become leaders, too. After all, one person cannot be around to lead every single small change that can eventually lead to a bigger cultural shift.
In order to lead this type of change, the actor recruited two other people on the set, including another actor she trusted, as well as a producer, to drive progress.
To ensure they were all on the same page, the three developed a list of guiding principles to live by when they were at work. These included rules such as not gossiping behind people’s backs, ensuring that everyone on set felt listened to, and talking to others in a respectful manner. Soon after, the other actor and the producer not only began to encourage their coworkers to live up to these new principles, but they also urged the people on set to whom they were closest to become leaders for change as well. As a result, it wasn’t long before everyone who worked on the television show was taking ownership of creating a more positive environment.
Final summary
The key message in these blinks:
Real leadership isn’t about telling people what to do. It’s about collaboration and mutual interests. With this in mind, you don’t have to be a manager to start leading change. Once you’ve identified the people who are part of your wider team, you can begin building trusting relationships with them. These relationships can then be leveraged to increase your influence in your organization, and help you achieve your goals.
Actionable advice:
Lean in to talented coworkers
Sometimes it pays to lead people outside of your team, too. Perhaps there’s someone in your organization with whom you have little interaction, but who always seems to have great insights and good ideas whenever you meet. Ask yourself if you can create an opportunity to get to know this person better, perhaps by developing a project that the two of you could work on together. Building better relationships with the most dynamic people in your workplace will help you extend your influence and leadership over more of your organization.
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What to read next: Never Eat Alone, by Keith Ferrazzi
Now that you’ve learned how to lead without authority, discover more insights from the same author by checking out the blinks to Never Eat Alone.
You’ll uncover the secrets to successful networking and learn how to build lasting relationships with your business associates. Packed with tried-and-true methods for developing genuine rapport with the people with whom you work, these blinks explain why connecting with potential clients and employers involves so much more than handing out your business cards. So, to boost your professional relationships, head over to the blinks to Never Eat Alone.