Ep. 025 - Leading Without Authority: Building Influence Beyond Your Title

Welcome back Bridge Builders to Bread to Lead, the podcast transforming leadership across industries. I'm your host Dr. Jake Taylor Jacobs and I'm thrilled that you're here. We're currently ranked as the 30th top business and leadership podcast nationwide and it's all thanks to listeners like you. Bridge Builders, if you haven't already grabbed a copy of my book, Bread to Lead on Amazon, it's packed with strategies to elevate your leadership game. Got questions or ideas for the show? Visit us at breadtolead.com and if you're finding value here, please take a moment to rate and review us on Apple Podcast. Your support helps us reach more leaders. Now let's dive in and continue breeding excellence in leadership. Today's episode awaits Bridge Builders. Listen, listen Bridge Builders, thank you so much for coming back to Bread to Lead. As you know, I'm always excited to share this time and space with you. We had our very first leadership summit this past weekend and it was absolutely phenomenal. If you missed out, I'm sorry to tell you, you missed out. It was an absolute beauty to see the type of leaders that we had to participate in our leadership summit and the reviews that we received were absolutely amazing. So the next time that we have a summit, make sure you go and take care of that. If you want to get access to the trainings that we went over in the summit, the first of many executive edge summit lessons on how to really get your upline to support you and your initiatives, go to breadtolead.com and on the site you will be able to see somewhere how you can get inside the SIPS Leadership Institute and get access to the executive edge summits that we have in our institute. And we're changing a lot of things in this space. We're breaking a lot of records, pushing identity or narrative of this space to continuously highlight what quality information does to people who are ready to listen. And Bridge Builders, can I tell you something? This podcast is one of my highlights every week. I love to talk with you all. I like to share insights with you that could definitely drive you to the next space. And we will be having what we call our exclusive interviews with C.Sweet and senior level leadership. So you can hear from the minds of what they think about on a daily basis as we introduce the topics, those thorough processes, and hearing what they think about their periop and OR and all those things. You can hear in the mind of what they typically focus on and what they would love to hear from their leaders within these healthcare organizations. Now if you're not in healthcare, please understand one thing. This podcast is to teach leadership overall. However, the space that our company is in is in healthcare. We specialize in turning around OR and central thorough processes and departments all over the country. So we're based here in Dallas. If you're new, please say, I just want you to know something. This is going to be a podcast. This is a podcast that you put inside your ear and you listen to what you're working, you listen to it while you're working out, you listen to it while you're driving so that you can pick up little tips that you can utilize on a daily basis. The whole purpose of it is not to just entertain you, but also to give you educational tips that can give you the edge in leadership. So I'm very, very excited. If you don't know, I call you people, bridge builders. I call you all bridge builders because that's exactly what we are. When you're connecting generations, you're connecting ideologies, you're connecting different spaces that people come from, environments. When you're connecting even what people are used to when it comes to leadership, the old way of doing things versus the new ways when you're connecting a technology into these spaces that didn't used to have technology like it is. Now, this is what bridge building is about. How can we connect the older ways of doing things with the newer ways of doing things and no one feels like they're left out or there are gaps? And in true leadership, it's about getting rid of as many gaps as possible. So let's just get right into it. Today Bridge Builders, we're diving into something that fascinates me in organizations. And what fascinates me is how some people seem to make things happen without having any formal authority, while others with impressive titles struggle to create real change. And today's topic is leading without authority, building influence beyond your title. And we talked about that in the summit on how you can literally leverage your ability to create change regardless of the title that you have because leadership is not about a certain position per se. It's about being able to be an influence to create change that is needed. And I'm very fascinated with what we call those super influencers that are in organizations that they may not have signing ability per se, but they absolutely have a strong say in what they say goes and they're typically supported. You know exactly what I'm talking about. We've all seen that person in our organization who regardless of their title seem to have an unusual ability to get things done. People naturally follow their lead, support their initiatives and help them succeed. Meanwhile, there are others with fancy titles who can't seem to move the needle despite their former authority. As you guys can tell, I think you can kind of get the cadence from a previous episode and including our content that we create. I'm a very firm believer of I'm a very firm believer that titles do not make up the man or the leader. Matter of fact, the reason I have my doctorate is to prove that titles don't matter. Because usually as you're growing in academia or you're growing and expanding in your specialty, you typically have more titles and more certifications and more education that you need just to be considered one of the people. And so my biggest focus on getting certifications and degrees and all these other things were just to show none of these things matter and it doesn't make me more professional or doesn't make me be less myself. It just proves that a lot of leaders hide behind titles, certification degrees in said positions. And when you can hide behind those titles, it reminds me of the Wiz. And when you're watching the Wiz or the Wizard of Oz, whoever, whatever your palate or taste is, if you notice, everybody was scared to talk to the Wiz. They said the Wiz had all the answers. The Wiz was this. But then when they peeped around the corner and saw the Wiz, it was this frail, scared, insecure man. And what I found is that there are a lot of leaders who have these said titles that create all of these nuances that keep you from getting close to them because they don't really want you to know that they're truly insecure and scared themselves. But all of those antics make you feel that they're more powerful. But real leadership is authenticity and transparency where you can be able to impact. And so that's what I really love about those that are in that influencer state, because you don't really have the all authority. However, they get things done. And it's about understanding. It's about being able to see how, how without said authority, how can you still move the needle? And this isn't talking about luck or personality. It's about understanding a fundamental truth about leadership that too many people miss. Positional power isn't enough. In fact, relying on positional power often undermines undermines your ability to create real lasting change. I want to share something I've observed repeatedly in organizations. When leaders rely primarily on their position to drive change, they actually limit their influence. Let me repeat. When leaders rely primarily on their position to drive change, they actually limit their influence. Why? Because positional power only gets compliance, not commitment. Positional power only gets compliance, not commitment. And in today's complex organizations, compliance isn't enough. There are so many ways that people can make money these days and have careers that you have to start to focus more on people that are committed to your cause, committed to your vision, committed to your stance, committed to protecting you, committed to edifying, committed to being in a trench with you, not just being compliant so that they can just stay in line. And I want you to think about it. When was the last time you saw a significant organizational change succeed through authority alone? I'm talking about real change, lasting change. That requires something more. It requires influence that goes beyond your formal authority. And I recently worked with an organization where this dynamic was playing out in real time. They had a senior executive with all the right titles and formal authority, but he couldn't get his initiatives off the ground. Meanwhile, there was a mid-level manager who consistently got things done across multiple departments, despite having no direct authority over most of the people that she worked with. What was the difference? The executive relied on his position. He expected things to happen because of his title. And the manager, on the other hand, built real influence. She developed trust, demonstrated value, and created networks of mutual support, through the organization. Are you ready to transform your leadership journey? Get my book, Bread to Lead on Amazon now. In it, you'll discover the proven frameworks and strategies I've used to help leaders across industry master each phase of their leadership development. Don't just lead, be Bread to Lead. Get your copy today on Amazon. Don't just lead, be Bread to Lead. Go and get that copy. If you have not gotten a copy of Bread to Lead, please stop right now. Pause, go to Amazon, type in Bread to Lead by the name of the company. Dr. Jake Taylor Jacobs with an ER and I didn't know her. And go ahead and get a copy for Christmas. Get a copy for your team. Get a copy for your organization. So you can start going through these, I guess you call it trainings. My books are like trainings, honestly. So that you can start the conversation on how to actually become better at leading. So let's get back to what we're talking about. So we talked about prior to the commercial, how a mid-level manager, how she was able to get more things moved down the line. And what I've realized is that there are four key elements to building a real influence. Credibility, connection, contribution, and consistency. Let's start with credibility. This isn't about your resume or your title. It's about demonstrating genuine expertise and judgment that others can rely on. I worked with a leader who had an amazing technical credentials, but he couldn't build influence because he kept trying to prove how smart he was instead of helping others succeed. Contrast that with another leader I worked with who built incredible influence throughout her organization. Her approach was different. Instead of showcasing her expertise, she used it to help others solve problems. She became known not for what she knew, but for how she applied that knowledge to help others succeed. That brings us to connection. Where real influence comes from building genuine relationships across your organization, not superficial networking, but real relationships based on understanding and mutual support. So when you have that piece where the genuine relationship is being built, what it allows for you to see is that so many relationships have worth or superficial to start. And what I mean by superficial to start, what I'm saying is that if your connection is not real, there's going to be there's going to be no trust, two trusts built there. And I see it in organizations when people leave an organization where they go to another hospital, they go to another company, or they go to another corporation, they start their own business. You notice when the connections weren't real, when the moment you leave the facility that you're at that connection dissipates, it dies. And we're talking about building real change. The connection never dies. So the first was credibility. The second element in building real influence is connection. The third element in building real influence is contribution. Contribution is where many leaders, Mr. Mark, they think influence comes from being in charge, but real influence comes from adding value. You know, I have an example. Let me give you one. I worked with an organization where a mid level manager had more influence than most of the executive team. Why? Simply because she consistently found ways to contribute, contribute, contribute to other success. When other departments had challenges, she didn't just offer advice. She rolled up her sleeves and helped. She became known as someone who made things better, not someone who just pointed it out on what needs to be fixed. Someone who got in the trenches with the team to make things better. And when we're looking at the contribution, the question I have for you, whether you're an executive C-suite all the way down to maybe a team lead, when you're contributing, because it's your job to contribute, it's not the same as when you go above and beyond to help your team win. Regardless of the notoriety, regardless of people's performance, regardless of people are paying attention, how are you contributing to make that organization better? Here's so many people complain about the organization, but when I asked them, what is your contribution, they say, I do my job. That's not contributing to the organization. That is you doing your job. Contributing to the organization is an above and beyond task. You don't have to wait to be asked to truly want to contribute to the organization. And if every time someone talks about contribution or more than enough contributes to the organization, and it has to be directly tied to a compensation, you do not mean well by that organization at all. So we probably need to stop acting like you actually care about the organization or in leadership role. And matter of fact, if that is you, you are a scary person to be in leadership because those type of people would do anything to be in powerful positions only to be little subject, isolate, create silos and destroy organizations because you really don't care about the organization or people that are involved. You care about putting yourself first. And those type of leaders never make it in our organization. We snuff them out, we put them out, we push them out. Because if you're going to be leaders in an organization, you want to create a culture where people are actually wanting to be there and help each other out. Remember, we're spending more time with the people that you work with. Oftentimes, then the people that your family and your wife, your spouse, your husband, that you're married to. So if I'm going to spend more time actually being around people that I work with, wouldn't I want to create an environment? Wouldn't I want to create an environment that where people actually want to be a part of? Wouldn't I want to create an environment where people actually want to say, Hey, I look forward to going to work because I know I have a team there. Whether you believe it or not, when you're working at that office, you're working in that facility, you're working at that hospital, you're working at the organization, you're spending eight to 10 hours a day with the very people that you're not trying to contribute more to if you don't get paid more. But when you're in any other organ in any other environment, whether it's family, friends, you do more in beyond, regardless of if you get paid or not. But the place that you're at the most. You only contribute when asked or you only contribute when paid. That is not the makings of a leader that will be people centric. That is a scary leader, that a potential leader that I would never hire because that's going to be a leader that will always put themselves before the organization or anybody else. That's dangerous. Then the fourth element to this is consistency. This is what turns temporary influence into lasting impact. It's about being reliable, following through and maintaining your standards, even when it's difficult. Now, when we're processing consistency, consistency is not you showing up. When things are great. Consistency is you showing up when you don't feel great, when you messed up, when you made a mistake. And I've noticed that everybody wants to be on the side of accountability until you have to be the one that's accountable to your mistakes and your shortfalling. Leadership is not about being perfect. It's about being available. It's about being on the front line. And it's about guiding your organization, regardless of if you make a mistake. You're there feet, 10 toes down, showing that you're not going to be showing that even through mistakes, you're going to be there. That's consistency. And I want to talk about more about that after this commercial. Bridge builders developing transformational leaders is crucial for the future of healthcare. As Sims Healthcare Solutions, we offer comprehensive leadership development programs designed specifically for healthcare professionals. From executive coaching to immersive workshops, we can help you cultivate the transformational leadership skills your organization needs. To thrive in today's complex healthcare landscape. Visit sipshealthcare.com to explore our leadership development offerings and take the first steps toward transforming your organization. Want to find more about our leadership? Our leadership that's within our organization. Go to sipshealthcare.com forward slash leadership. If you want to find out more information about our summits, go to sipshealthcare.com forward slash summit. Now let's talk about specific strategies for building influence without authority. Okay. Because understanding these principles is one thing, but putting them into practice is another. So the first that the first strategy I teach leaders is what I call value first leadership. This means looking for ways to add value before you need to ask for anything in return. Most people do the opposite. They wait until they need something to build relationships or offer help. Here's how value first leadership works in practice. When you join a new team or an organization, your first priority should be understanding what others need to succeed. Not what you need from them, what they need to achieve their goals. I saw this play out beautifully with the leader who is put in charge of a cross functional initiative. Instead of immediately pushing her agenda, she spent the first few weeks meeting with each of her department head, understanding their challenges and finding ways to, uh, uh, that her initiative could help solve their problems. Okay. Uh, the result was when she needed support for her project, she didn't have to rely on her authority. She had built genuine influence by demonstrating how her success contributed to other success. Let me share a powerful strategy. I call the ecosystem approach. Most leaders focus only on their direct relationships, but real influence comes from understanding and engaging with the entire organizational ecosystem. Think about, think about the most influential people in your organization. They usually have a strong relationship, not just within their department, but across functions, levels, and even outside of the organization. They understand how different parts of the organization works together. I worked with the leader who transformed her effectiveness by mapping out what I call an influence ecosystem. She identified key stakeholders, understood their priorities and challenges and found ways to create value across the network. Within six months, she built more influence than people have been there for, for years. And here's something crucial about building influence. You need to understand the difference between what I call position power and partnership power. Position power pushes from above. Partnership pulls people toward a shared goal. Listen, position power pushes people from above. It's like a, it's like a, it's like you're pushing your power down. Like you have to do it because you're under me. Partnership pulls people, partnership power pulls people toward a shared goal. Okay. You want to make more money. You want to get hired. You want to hire a position. Well, if you help me execute this, I'll make sure you get whatever your credit is for this so that it's made known either here, you are capable of whatever you can do, or at least you have it in your CV or in your portfolio to be able to show when you're moving on to another organization, your abilities because you were able to display them here. I work with two leaders trying to implement the same type of change in different organizations. The first leader relied on his position. He had the title, the authority and the mandate, but the change stalled because people were complying without committing. Remember, we talked about that earlier. Compliance for power is difference for then commitment because of your leadership. Because of your leadership. If people are compliant because you have position of power, a lot of people begin to start thinking that they're great leaders because people are complying without realizing they're scared to get fired. They're scared to not get a promotion. They're scared to not get a raise and they know that you're in charge of that. So when your organization is moving because you speak, you have to be very careful to ask yourself, are they complying because I'm in leadership or are they committing because they believe in my leadership? Hello. Are they complying because I'm in leadership or are they committing because they actually believe in my leadership? Those are two different things. The second leader took a different approach. Despite having less formal authority, he built partnerships across the organization. Do y'all see the common theme that I'm giving you examples of different organizations where you have one who had power, one who had influence and how things change? The second person, the second leader helped others see how the change would benefit them. He involved people in designing solutions. Most importantly, he made it about their success, not just his initiative. That makes sense. So if I'm wanting people to participate in what my initiative is, I also have to expose, expose to them or show them what benefit, what will benefit them in helping me execute this initiative. What's in it for me? Everybody has a what's in it for me. And when I feel like you're consistently asking me to do stuff or someone's consistently asking me to do something and there is no symbiotic pool, everybody will start to stop and say, wait a minute, what's in it for me? I see you elevating. I see you getting credibility. I see you getting notoriety. I see you making more money. I see you getting more power. I see you climbing. I see you growing, but I'm the one that's here helping you every single time. Eventually you will erode your leadership or your connections because you're not connecting them to a shared goal. And one of the biggest things I believe is my superpower is that I don't need credit. I will think of an idea and pull somebody in and say, Hey, here's an idea. It's going to be your baby. It's going to be your project. I want you to do it because I want you to get credit and I want people to see your ability. And I can build out a full plan and give it to somebody and say, this is yours. You run with it. Why? Because my job as a leader at C-suite is to move the organization forward. I don't care about getting credit when my job is to move the organization forward, but also to move the organization forward. I need leaders who are developed and who are confident to help me do it. So versus taking a shine, I'll give it to somebody else and let them shine because when you got a whole organization of people that sign it, baby, we bright. And this brings me to another key strategy, visible value creation. OK, it's not enough to create value. You need to make that value visible in a way that builds credibility rather than ego. I see so many leaders get this wrong. They either hide their contributions, thinking humility means invisibility. Or they go to the other extreme and become self promoting. The key is making your value visible in a way that focuses on impact rather than personal achievement. Here's how one leader matched with this. Instead of talking about what she did, she consistently highlighted how collaborative efforts led to success. She created forums where her teams could share their wins and learn from each other. She may value creation visible while keeping the spotlight on the collective achievement rather than personal glory. There's only it's only so it's only so long that people will go. Pushing you up and elevating you. There's only so long that people will go saying, hey, you're great. Eventually, somebody wants you to also say you are great too. And it makes me want to talk about something that trips many leaders up. Scaling influence. It's one thing to have influence when you're working directly with people. It's another challenge entirely to maintain influence as your organization grows or as you move up the ladder. This is where most leaders fall back into positional power. They think that as their responsibility grows, they need to rely more on authority. But actually, the opposite is true. The bigger your scope, the more you need to rely on influence rather than authority. Let me share a framework I use. It's built around what I call the three C's of skilled influence. Cultivation, capabilities and cascading. Cultivation is about deliberately growing your influence network. This isn't about collecting LinkedIn connections. It's about building genuine relationships at scale. One leader I work with set up what she called these little influence circles. Where she had regular forums with people from different parts of the organization where they could connect, share challenges and bring solutions together. So if I'm cultivating, this is why I tell a lot of people, if you're cultivating genuine relationships, you can't really cultivate 10, 20 relationships at a time. And I see so many leaders trying to fast track this influence. If I be this person's friend, I talk to this person, I shout this person out, I deem this person, I put them on LinkedIn, I come in here, I say, hey, what's going on? You start to look like you're for everyone and those relationships don't seem genuine. To truly build real relationship, it takes intentionality. And you can't be intentional with 10 people at the same time. You can be cordial, but it takes one at a time, two at a time, potentially three. But cultivating something genuine, you want them to have that good feeling. Like, man, we really have something. The second C is capabilities. Capabilities is about developing the skills that allow others to extend your influence. This means teaching others how to build influence, not just following your own skills. Not just following your authority. The most influential leaders don't just have followers, they develop influential leaders. If you're a leader and you only feel comfortable when people are following you or their followers, you're not a leader. Because true leaders develop leaders because leaders want to be around leaders. I want to be around free thinkers. I want to be around people that have an opinion, but your opinions need to come with some basis of facts. I need to be around people that can actually add value. I can say, here, take this, you run with it, I believe in you. If you look at your organization and you don't have that, you haven't been doing a great job of building the capabilities of the leaders or the potential leaders around you. That's why you need to be sending them to bread to lead. That's why you need to be sending them to SIPT Healthcare, our leadership institute. That's why they got to go get books like bread to lead and other leadership books out there like John Maxwell's books. Because when I'm building up the capabilities, watch this, we talked about, we talked about commitment versus compliance, right? True commitment is they have all of the ability to leave you, but they choose to stay because they love how you lead them. Compliance leadership is I'm going to keep you down. I'm not going to develop you. I'm not going to invest in you because I want, I need you in my organization and I don't want you to leave me. Commitment leadership says, hey, I'm going to give you all of the tools you need to be great. And in most times, those leaders have more committed leaders in their organization because those influence leaders love how you influence and lead them. But if I'm not truly building on the capabilities, I'm gaslighting them, tell them how amazing they are just to keep them under my wing. I want people to be like, hey, I think I could do this on my own. I want you to go and fill out resumes, send your resumes, send your fillers out. I'm going to support you. I'm going to celebrate you. I want you to move on if that's what you're called to do. And then when you open that up and then they go out there and they see the world and they see that a lot of leaders are authority leaders, compliance leaders. They're going to come right back and say, hey, what can we do to really build this thing up? You want people that are willing to be committed to you, not committed to you because of compliance and fear. The last one of the three C's to scale your influence is cascading. It's about creating systems that naturally spread influence through the organization. This means setting up mentoring programs, creating cross functional teams or establishing regular forums and sharing knowledge, building connections. You may say, Dr. Jack, I don't have that I'm not in a leadership position, but nobody said that you couldn't you couldn't go talk to the team lead that's in the or in the team lead. That's an EVS in the team lead. That's in every order in admin and the team. Whenever level you are, there are other levels in in the departments across the organization that you can build relationship with. So as all of you rise, guess what your influence circles rise and you can continue to build it. Don't wait until you're in leadership to build these relationships. And then work together to continuously get better. Because I want you to remember something, bridge builders. Real influence isn't about position or power. It's about creating value and building trust. It's about understanding that lasting change comes from partnerships, not authority. And most importantly, it's about recognizing that true leadership transcends titles. And as we wrap up today's episode, I want to leave you with three key principles. First, always lead with value creation. Look for ways to contribute to other success before you need their support. Second, build influence ecosystems, not just direct relationships, but understand how different parts of your organization work together and find ways to create value across your network. And third, focus on developing influence capabilities in others. Your greatest impact comes not from your own influence, but from helping others build their influence. Okay. And once you do that and you combine them all and you're intentional with that, you're going to realize that maybe you haven't done as much work and made enough impact where you are as you should. And when you start to really focus on these things, you really start to really develop yourself. You're going to realize that a lot of these cross-functional skills you're learning to apply your organization, you're going to start applying them in your real life. And that's when things start to change. When you're not just a leader at work, but you're a leader everywhere you walk. This is Dr. Jake Taylor, Jacob signing off. Thank you for tuning into another episode of Bread to Lead. Until next time, keep leading, keep building influence and keep breeding excellence in everything that you do. Remember, Bridge Builders, your title might give you authority, but your impact comes from influence. Make it count. Thank you for joining me today, Bridge Builders. I'll see you next time on Bread to Lead. Share, like, comment. Most importantly, come back next week. Peace.