I like to think of corporate leadership as having three levels: manage, influence, and inspire, corresponding roughly to the relationship a leader has with the people they work with: managing is for the leader’s team, influencing is for those the leader works with but in different areas of the organization, and inspiration is for those the leader doesn’t interact with personally – the wider audience who might listen to the leader, read their writing, or follow their strategies.
As a leader rises in an organization, their leadership level must rise with them to succeed. As the reporting structure under a leader becomes larger, and their relationships become more complex, the tools that worked in a previous levels become less effective. Rising in an organization doesn’t mean abandoning the previous levels, but rather adding layers to them.
Managing is telling people what to do.
Managing is performing the corporate function: getting a team to deliver accomplish their goals. Being a good manager requires being able to set clear objectives and deliverables, prioritizing regular 1:1 coaching, mediating and resolving conflict as it arises, guiding career planning, and protecting their team from distractions.
Influencing is getting people to understand why need to do what they need to do.
Influencing is affecting those a leader works with the intent of getting work done. Being a good corporate influencer requires a leader to be clear communicator, developing a strong sense of empathy, operating with strong integrity, focusing on building relationships vs. transactions, and an acceptance to compromise.
Inspiring is getting people to want to do what they need to do.
Inspiring affects everyone the leader interacts with: the wider team, other corporate functions, external stakeholders, and even outside the business context. Inspiration requires self-mastery, knowing one’s strengths and weaknesses and acting accordingly, it needs a strong sense of authenticity and honesty, even vulnerability, and it communicates via storytelling, where people can find common values. Above all inspiration needs aspiration: an inspirational leader needs to adopt a grand vision; puny goals have never inspired anyone
