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Leading Without Formal Authority

Notes taken from LinkedIn course Leading Without Formal Authority

Cultivating informal leadership doesn't happen overnight, so don't wait until you have the title or the salary or the courage, and don't wait until you feel 100% confident you can do it perfectly, just start. Someone who is actively trying to be a good leader is better than someone who isn't trying.

Leading Basics

Develop a leadship mindset

Why should you develop a leadership mindset if you're not in charge of a formal team?

  • Improve the ability to set direction, adapt to change, and win the hearts and minds of the people around you
  • More likely to engage on your projects and get support from your peers
  • Set the stage for more formal leadership
  • Open possibilities that can lead to some major breakthroughs and leave a lasting impact

Even if you don't have a formal team reporting to you, viewing yourself as a leader in your organization, a driver of change, and a supporter of your colleagues helps you rise to the occasion to create big impact and do your best work.

Find opportunities to lead

Points for enthusiasm, but you only have so many hours in the day and you want to make sure that your leadership is providing a lot of value to your organization while helping you grow as a professional.

When opportunities to head up project teams, lead initiatives, or take charge of a task force arise, step up to the leadership plate if you:

  • have expertise, or experience in whatever the objective or opportunity or challenge is
    • say something like In my past project xxx, we experienced a similar challenge. I learned a lot through that, and I think I could help us avoid a few of the hiccups by leading this project.
  • have connections, or personally know a lot of the key stakeholders and have strong relationships with them, your network and influence can be a huge value
    • say something like I know the engagement of such and such a team will be important. I worked with them closely before and I'd be happy to connect with them to kick off this project.
  • have the strong will to lead and grow from this project
    • say something like I've been working on developing a deeper understanding of our customer base. Because this project will involve a high level of customer analysis, I'd like to take the opportunity to lead the initiative.

One of the best ways to learn is actually to lead. It forces you to do your homework, ask for support, and step outside of your comfort zone. Avoid waiting to be asked to do something.

While that is said, stay away from investing time in things that will suck up all your energy or don't offer a lot of value to the organization or provide little opportunity to grow professionally. Take a big look at the strategic goals of your team and your organization. Look beyond the task and ask yourself How can I leverage my strengths and make a big impact?

Find or become a mentor

Mentoring is a great way to develop your organizational influence.

To find a mentor, the most obvious place to look is your boss but expanding your horizons can be a great thing. A good mentor can help hold you accountable for your goals or help you think about long-term career planning from an unbiased point of view. Think about people who share your role, who have more experience, or people who are in a different role but have been in the industry a long time.

Avoid directly asking someone to be your mentor. Instead, find a way to make it easy for them like asking for help for an issue, then ask if it is okay to reach out from time to time with other questions. The relationship gradually grows.

The key to attracting a great mentor is to demonstrate that you are coachable. That you take advice and feedback and critique and you act on it.

You can also be a mentor. Even if you're new to the organization or your role, offer to help out new employees, less experienced team members, or anyone who has expressed an interest in mentorship.

Being a mentor help you think more deeply about your own job or career and practice your leadership.

Develop leadership brand

Leadership isn't defined by how you look, the position you have or how long you've been with your organization. It's defined by how you behave and the sum of many small interactions from your brand. There's no personality type that's best suited to leadership.

When you're defining your leadership brand, you want to build on your natural strengths:

  • organizational acumen, which comes when you have a lot of experience with your company to get the insight on how to get things accomplished, what is available, who to go to, what for, and the nuances of your org chart
  • expertise in your role
  • brainstorm and ideas, the will to think differently and adds insights on solving problems creatively
  • feedback, give good feedback to people and help their work and growth
  • empathy, ability to emotionally calm people when things get intense

To lead without authority, you need to build credibility both up and down through the organizational hierarchy. Think about the advantages and knowledge you've gathered, and how that can best serve your organization at all levels.

To move your expertise up the hierarchy, the best bet is moving through your boss, aka leading up. Your conversations with your boss will influence their conversations with their boss. The more strategic and helpful you are in those conversations, the more likely your ideas will rise up through the ladder. Talk strategically about the areas where you have information and expertise.

You want to take a similar strategy when you share your ideas down the hierarchy. The conversations you have with your subordinates will likely be at a more tactical level. Cite your experience and provide examples from your role.

Speak with intention and be very clear, make it easy for others to spread your words. Focus on themes and big picture initiatives that you can speak to with the expertise you've gathered in your role.

Leader Language and Behaviors

Add value in meetings

As an informal leader, you can create the opportunity to reframe meetings from blah to strategic, even if you're not the one running them.

If you are organizing a meeting, planning is important. Send out an agenda and explain what you want to accomplish as a result of the meeting and include an accurate timeframe. Make sure the meeting is comprehensive and actionable. Ask in a collaborative tone, and then listen. Remember to end the meeting positively and thank the person who organized the meeting or the people who attended. Finally after the meeting, summarize the meeting and make sure there are action steps moving forward.

Mindful listening

A leader is not always the loudest voice in the room. When you're mindfully listening, you're paying attention to a person's words, their tone of voice, their body language, small changes in their facial expressions and other small nuances that give you a more holistic picture of the person and the conversation.

To mindfully listen, try and rid yourself of all kinds of distractions. Before you engage in the conversation, just take 10 seconds to clear your mind and think about the importance of that conversation and instead of thinking about what you want to say in the conversation, try to think about what you want to understand. During the conversation, look into the person's eyes. Repeat what they're saying in your own head and think about how they feel. Mindful listening can boost your self-esteem, help you retain more information and also increase your attention ability, and also help you sort and frame information before you finally speak.

Inspire others

As an informal leader you want people to be inspired to help you, to buy into your ideas and work hard for your organization. You'll help others feel inspired and you'll also feel more inspired yourself. People are looking for meaning and inspiration and they always gravitate to the people who provide it.

To get emotional engagement, paint a mental picture of the customers you help, the impacts of the projects you've done or in some cases, the consequences of not doing them. When you can, include names, details, talk about how the other people feel and the lasting impact that you're having on them.

Adapt to change

When presented with a change, your first decision is to determine where you stand. As a rule of thumb, unless there are huge flaws, your best bet is to support changes brought by senior leadership. Even if the change has some small potential errors, your public support at the beginning will create enthusiasm. Later, you can raise those smaller issues at the right time and with the appropriate party. If you genuinely believe your organization is making a big mistake, it's your duty to say something, but say something privately to the person who enacted the change.

If you've made the decision that you are mostly supportive of the change, be all in. There are no benefits to holding back and there are great advantages to displaying enthusiasm. If you've expressed your concerns to the appropriate senior party, there is no need for you to repeat them to everyone on your team. Also don't ignore the challenges. Refusing to acknowledge challenges only makes them more pronounced, and ignoring challenges erodes trust.

Setting and giving expectations

The more you clearly communicate expectations up front the better you will be able to avoid challenges of authority down the road.

Connect the expectations to the outcome. Those around you should know why the expectations are important and who will be impacted by the result of fulfilling those expectations.

Hold yourself accountable to the same expectations you are giving out. If you want everyone around you to be on time, prepared and efficient, hold yourself to that same standard.

Don't be afraid to set high expectations. Setting a high bar leads people to rise to the occasion. Done right, the way you communicate with those around you will set your team up for success.

Avoid small mistakes

Small things like being late to a meeting matters and can undermine your long-term leadership. The same is true for others like missing an internal deadline and holding up a project, forgetting a small promise like promising to proof a peer's presentation, and not responding to emails or returning phone calls.

These mistakes might not seem like a big deal in the moment, but others form an opinion of us based on a combination of a lot of small actions. Overcome and avoid these mistakes makes you look good in front of your peers, your boss, and senior leaders always helps you in the long run.

Give/Ask for feedback

Giving feedback is a great way to establish leadership as an individual contributor.

Give feedback on things that matter, and be sure to give feedback when you're asked. It shows a good sign since natural leaders are often asked for feedback since they give good feedback. If you do know one or two things that could help, let them know kindly. Walk the other person through your thought process and your rationale. Meanwhile, consider giving feedback on high stakes things, even if you aren't asked.

The best leaders, both formal and informal, rely heavily on those around them. Asking for feedback will help you excel and show people that you have a growth mindset.

High-Stakes Situations

Lead through challenges

Good leaders identify potential roadblocks early on and they help people redirect without shame or blame. If you see failure on the horizon, please keep the following in mind:

  • rectify, offer the opportunity to fix the problem instead of lecturing about the mistakes
  • reiterate, avoid sounding like you're issuing directives
  • remedy, offer the help and ideas without taking over the project

Look after boss's mistakes

There are two types of mistakes: private and public.

Private mistakes are when your boss is about to make a bad decision or do something that will hurt them. Stepping up and help your boss avoid a potential blunder that could be public later; pull them aside and have a conversation about it. Position yourself as someone who has your boss's best interest at heart.

Public mistakes are more challenging to navigate, since it is easy to discredit your boss and make them look bad in front of others. It's not your job to take over and fix the problem, but you can help your boss get on the right track. When you jump in in public, do keep in mind: validate your boss, make your intervention to be conversational, and flip the conversation back to your boss.

Ask for helps

In any leadership journey, outside support is necessary. Support and help from others makes you better and stronger. When asking for help, framing the situation by stating about how the situation impacts you, the organization, or a customer, then make a specific ask. Finally, include a thank you in terms of the impact that help is making.

Making sure you're clear, specific, and strategic in the way you ask for help makes people happier to help you and it makes you a stronger leader.

Long-last Influence

Collaboration culture

As an informal leader, your ability to shape a culture of collaboration can create a huge ripple of positive impact throughout your organization. You and your team will be more effective when you put your brains together, and you'll also develop more influence throughout your organization. Being intentional with your language can help you foster the trust and respect required for successful teamwork.

You can help foster psychological safety for your team by nipping toxic negativity, underhanded remarks, and gossip right in the bud, and don't lose the tether. Always give credit to the originator of the idea.

If you're finding that your team doesn't collaborate as much as you'd like, you can model the behavior you'd like to see. Begin asking for their input on your work and model receiving that feedback well. Thank people for their feedback and act on it, follow up with them, and highlight the difference that feedback made and how you're grateful for their help. This lays the groundwork for others to do the same, and conveys the belief that we're a team who helps each other get better.

Seek diverse perspectives. Ask yourself, who has worked on a project like this before?

Continue Learning

As you grow in your role, your organization, or even just in your ability to lead, you'll need to focus on both the hard and soft skills.

Hard skills are things like software training, sales training, and product knowledge. These hard skills are foundational. Soft skills are things like leadership language, prioritizing, delegating, and communication.

Balancing your time between soft skills and hard skills not only ensures you have the competencies necessary to succeed in your own role, it also makes you a valuable leader.

Create Influence

During tough times, people tend to focus on blame and reactionary activities, which often leads to despair. Start by listening. Staying calm while others air their feelings of disappointment or frustration can help everyone move forward faster. To add empathy, you'll need to put your view on pause just for a second and validate what you've heard, that they're concerned.

Address the root of repeated issues if you have seen it. In a crisis, doing something to help or at least lessen the blow.

Build Trust

Building trust among people takes time and effort.

  • keep your word. It can be keeping something confidential or promising to take care of something.
  • use body language. When speaking to someone, make eye contact and leaning into the conversation.
  • be competent and warm. The first step in getting someone to trust you at work is to be competent and good at your job; the second step is to be warm, or being human and admitting vulnerability.
    • For example, if you're an engineer, don't show your vulnerability in your math skills, instead be open about speaking of your fear of public speaking or something else that makes you a little bit more human.
  • don't gossip.
  • admit when you were wrong. If you made a mistake, which we all do, own up to it.
  • trust others, until they give you a reason not to. If you want someone to trust you, show that you trust them.