By Brad Englert
You can master influence inside your organization by creating and nurturing authentic business relationships with your boss, direct reports, all your staff, peers and influencers, and executive leaders. Business relationships are authentic when they are mutually beneficial, trusting, and enduring–often spanning years and sometimes decades. Three principles are true in all of these relationships: understand their goals and aspirations, set and manage expectations, and show that you genuinely care about their success.
Relationship with the Boss
Establishing and building an effective relationship with your boss is one of the most important hard skills in business. You need to consciously work with your supervisor in order to get the best results for them, your organization, and yourself.
In my experience, your boss will appreciate you initiating a conversation regarding what is important to them and how you can help them be more successful. Some managers are good at communicating their expectations, but some are not. It is your job to seek to understand what your boss’s expectations are. Managing the expectations of your supervisor avoids confusion on both sides and shows them that you are engaged and curious—both traits they look for in leaders. In order to help your boss be successful, you also must genuinely care about their success. Demonstrate that you care by offering options to resolve problems, and by demonstrating grit and the will to succeed.
Establishing and building an effective relationship with your supervisor is your responsibility. You need to consciously work with your boss in order to get the best results for them, your organization, and yourself.
Key takeaways
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Understand your boss’s goals and aspirations.
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Set and manage their expectations.
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Genuinely care about your supervisor’s success.
Relationships with Direct Reports
Effective relationships with those who report to you are critical for the success of the organization. You must start with the assumption that everyone reporting to you is working in good faith toward the same goals. You need to demonstrate a trusting, humble, and honest approach to doing business. As the boss, you need to be a mentor, coach, visionary, cheerleader, confidant, guide, sage, trusted partner, and perspective keeper. It also helps to have a sense of humor.
It is first vital to articulate the organization’s values, set expectations, and establish mutual accountability. Then you can focus on creating a safe work ecosystem. Finally, you need to let your team leaders know you care about their success and growth and the success of their teams. Happy employees lead to happy customers, and in the private sector, happy shareholders.
Let your direct reports know that you care about their success and the success of their teams. Demonstrate grit and lead by example. Seek to understand their goals, aspirations, and inner purpose. Ask them to build a variety of long-standing business relationships with peers and customers. Recognize and celebrate success. Build trust with transparent decision-making, and invest in their skill development. Creating and nurturing authentic business relationships with your direct reports is your responsibility and is critical for the success of your organization.
Key takeaways
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Articulate the organization’s values, set expectations, and establish mutual accountability.
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Create a safe work ecosystem.
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Let direct reports know you care about their success and their team’s success.
Relationships with All Your Staff
When you have the unique opportunity to lead an organization, establish the values of the organization and set expectations with all of your staff as you did with your direct reports. Seek to create a safe work ecosystem, especially if you inherit a wounded workgroup. Build a work environment where honesty and trust will thrive. Let all your staff know you care about their success and the well-being of the organization.
You’ll begin to change the culture by establishing the values of the organization. This is an important step to ensure that everyone is on the same page and working toward the same goals. Then, you’ll need to make sure they understand what is expected of them. This is similar to how you need to understand your supervisor’s expectations and the need to clarify your own expectations for your direct reports. People are not mind readers. If people don’t know what’s expected, they can’t meet—or exceed—those expectations. Finally, let your people know that the relationship is a two-way street. Leadership is not issuing top-down commands; it is an ongoing conversation.
Build enduring professional relationships with all your staff. Let them know that you care about their well-being and the organization. Be emotionally and materially invested in helping all your staff be successful.
Key takeaways
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Establish the values of the organization.
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Create a safe work ecosystem, especially if you inherit a wounded workgroup.
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Let them know that you care.
Relationships with Peers and Influencers
You need to know who your peers and influencers are in your organization. Peers are at the same level that you are in an organization. Influencers can be at any level in an organization. Once you identify who they are, you need to understand how you can help each other. You need to seek to understand the values, goals, and aspirations of your peers and influencers and enlist their support and collaborate.
To determine who your peers and influencers are, you’ll need to first find out who has the power. Who is the person other people listen to? Who drives decisions? Who else do you need to be talking to? Once you identify them, ask how you can help each other. Then set and manage expectations, establish mutual accountability, and demonstrate that you genuinely care about their success.
Creating and nurturing authentic business relationships with your peers and influencers helps you navigate issues, conflicts, and setbacks. You need to reach out to those peers and influencers to enlist support and collaborate. Get out of the office and let them know you care.
Key takeaways
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Seek to understand the values, goals, and aspirations of your peers and influencers.
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Enlist support and collaborate.
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Demonstrate that you genuinely care about their success.
Relationships with Executive Leaders
At various points in your career, you will likely be asked to work with executive leaders. Prepare for these opportunities by learning more about your enterprise. Executive leaders are the group of people with the most important positions in the enterprise: founders, presidents, senior vice presidents, vice presidents, chief executive officers, chief financial officers, chief marketing officers, chief operating officers, chief information officers, members of the board of directors—and in the public sector—appointed and elected officials. Fostering these relationships can accelerate your own career advancement and you will differentiate yourself from other employees by understanding the purpose of the organization and offering to help.
First, you need to understand the organization’s mission and strategy. Strategy is about positioning the organization relative to its competitors. Understanding strategy helps you work in concert with the organization’s leadership. Aligning your own goals and actions with the organization’s strategy, mission, vision, culture, and goals will also position you to add value that can accelerate your career advancement.
Second, you must set and manage expectations. Everyone has expectations, and those expectations can be difficult to control. You can dramatically improve your effectiveness by understanding what is being asked, agreeing on the scope of a proposed solution at the beginning, and being honest about whether you can help. It is much easier to make corrections to expectations at the start–and to realign them along the way–than it is to discover a catastrophic and possibly irreparable mismatch later.
Third, as with your supervisor, you must genuinely care about the success of your executive leaders. These are three crucial aspects of building effective relationships with your leadership team.
Be ready when the time comes to work with executive leaders. You will differentiate yourself from other employees by understanding the purpose of the organization and offering to help.
Key takeaways
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Seek to understand your organization’s mission and strategy.
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Set and manage expectations of your executive leaders.
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Genuinely care about the success of your executive leaders.
Conclusion
Master internal influence by creating and nurturing authentic business relationships with your boss, direct reports, all your staff, peers and influencers, and executive leaders. These important business relationships are authentic when they are mutually beneficial, trusting, and enduring.
Brad Englert is the founder of Brad Englert Advisory and an author, advisor, and technologist. Brad worked for Accenture for 22 years, including 10 years as a partner. He then served The University of Texas at Austin for eight years, including seven years as the Chief Information Officer (CIO).
During Brad’s career with Accenture, a global management consulting and technology services firm, he worked in a variety of information technology leadership and operational roles for large, complex institutions of higher education (Ohio State, U of Michigan, U of Illinois, Cal State), state governments (Texas, California, Minnesota, Montana), and commercial organizations (Best Buy, Caterpillar, Whirlpool, Bell South, Deutsche Bank, and Wyeth). When Brad retired as a senior partner in 2006, he had a proven track record in information technology operations, large scale information systems implementations, and strategic planning. At The University of Texas at Austin from 2009 to 2017, Brad led the modernization of mission critical information systems serving 54,000 students, 4,000 faculty, and 21,000 staff.
Prior to Accenture, Brad held managerial positions in payroll/human resources and labor relations at the Internal Revenue Service, and was a high school teacher in Maitland, New South Wales, Australia. Brad is married to Corliss Hudson Englert. They have two sons, Eric and Nathan.
Brad earned a masters of public affairs degree from The University of Texas at Austin and a bachelor of arts degree in social sciences with honors and distinction from Shimer College, which is now the Shimer Great Books School at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois.