What is influence-based leadership? Influence-based leadership involves being able to affect the beliefs and behaviors of those you lead. You observe how your team responds to your leadership and leverage that knowledge to achieve positive outcomes.

In management, influence-based leadership is grounded in mutual trust between you and your team. Around 59% of leaders consider employee feedback to be of great importance, and cultivating this trust can facilitate the reception of such feedback.

As an influential leader, it is important to be receptive to constructive feedback and actively seek it out. You recognize that feedback is vital for the team’s overall well-being and for your own growth as a leader.

You also need to interact with your team and involve them in your decision-making process, rather than making decisions in isolation.

What is power-based leadership? Power-based leadership involves using sources of power to motivate others to act. While power-based leadership can influence how people behave, it may not necessarily alter their beliefs or level of commitment.

Power-based leadership also tends to centralize power and decision-making in the hands of a single individual.

Rather than building trust with your team and encouraging them to trust you, you focus on seeking external means to boost performance.

“The only way in which one human being can properly attempt to influence another is by encouraging him to think for himself, instead of endeavoring to instill ready―made opinions into his head.” – Leslie Stephen

If you rely solely on power-based leadership, you may not actively solicit feedback from your team, although you may be willing to listen when it is offered.

Achieve positive leadership by striking a balance between power and influence. Power allows you to enforce your decisions, while influence can shape beliefs and behaviors.

As a leader, it’s necessary to exercise your power on occasion to direct your team. However, by relying on influence, you can establish a strong foundation of trust and loyalty.

Even when you lose your position of power, the influence you’ve cultivated remains, enabling you to continue leading.

Take advantage of personalized coaching from your peers, NCOs, or other mentors to enhance your leadership skills and become a bold and motivating leader for your Marines.

In addition Emotional Intelligence, or “EI”, remains a key ingredient in the development of leaders. Influence as a competency refers to the ability to have a positive impact on others, to persuade or convince them to gain their support. With the Influence competency, you’re persuasive and engaging, and you can build buy-in from those in your sphere of influence.

Best-selling author and Korn Ferry columnist Daniel Goleman reveals the 12 key skills behind emotional intelligence. Here is an example cited in his Introduction to Influence: A Primer.

A CEO who led a company based in Manhattan decided to move the company to a small city 1,000 miles away. He hoped to save money because there were tax benefits and labor was cheaper. Also, he had grown up there and never felt comfortable in Manhattan. But when he announced the move, it resulted in a wave of people quitting. They didn’t want to go to that small city. He particularly lost people in the IT staff. With them went a lot of crucial, unwritten information about how IT operated at that company. The company ended up having to hire the former employees for a high consulting fee to retrieve the crucial information.

“Your influence on others is your net worth, treat it as such.” – Peprah Boasiako

The company suffered significant financial losses and missed out on revenue due to the CEO’s lack of influence competency.

Scientific evidence highlights the crucial impact of influence, as demonstrated in a study of financial service sales executives, where the Influence competency was found to predict greater sales revenue. Successful sales are heavily dependent on the ability to influence, with building a strong and ongoing relationship being deemed more important than making a specific sale, especially for top salespeople and client managers. Lyle M. Spencer, Jr. and Signe M. Spencer’s analysis of 650 different jobs in their renowned research, Competence at Work: Models for Superior Performance, further supports this conclusion, indicating that stars would rather maintain their customers or clients than sell them something that would leave them dissatisfied.

The significance of the relationship for the capacity to influence is highlighted. Social psychologist Robert Cialdini suggests that establishing trust is a crucial prerequisite for easy influence. To persuade someone to change their mind, it is beneficial to first develop a connection that enables them to be more receptive to what is being said.

In the realm of helping professions like healthcare or education, Spencer and Spencer’s research showed that Influence was the most critical competency that differentiated outstanding performers. Success in these fields relies on the ability to connect with people’s perceptions of what is significant, understand their perspective, and use that insight to communicate effectively. For physicians, for instance, it means ensuring their patients adhere to their medical recommendations, whether it’s exercising more or taking their medication.

Influence can have a significant and positive impact on the success of any executive, particularly for leaders who oversee multiple groups. As leadership involves effectively delegating work to others, influence becomes a crucial tool in achieving that objective. Furthermore, influence is essential when working with a division that is integral to the success of the larger organization, but over which the leader has no direct authority. In such cases, persuasion or inspiration is necessary to encourage the team to put forth their best effort towards the shared goal defined by the leader. As a result, influence becomes a powerful means of driving progress towards the defined objective.

“Influence does not require position.” – Richie Norton

We all possess a personal sphere of influence, making us all leaders to some extent. Different leadership styles leverage influence in unique ways. Visionary leaders, for example, express a powerful vision that resonates with and inspires others, demonstrating one of the most apparent uses of influence. Meanwhile, coaching and mentoring are additional leadership styles that facilitate personal connections, acting as a pathway for influencing others. Two other styles, consensus-seeking and affiliative leadership, emphasize the significance of building positive relationships and enjoying time together, ultimately allowing leaders to exert their influence in more ordinary interactions. Overall, these different leadership styles all demonstrate the positive impact of influence on the emotional climate of the organization.

Know this – your light will always shine its brightest in the dark place. Seek that darkness and let those there bask in the warmth of your light.

~ An Excerpt from “Cast Your Light”