How To Deliver What Your Organization Needs Most From You

 

Accomplished leadership and executive coaches Bill Berman and George Bradt have discovered over the past 30 years that: 

People lose their ability to influence others and impact the organizations they work at because they are not focused on the most essential, mission-critical business and cultural priorities of the organization. 

From CEOs to first-line managers, Berman and Bradt explain that too often individuals are unintentionally misunderstanding critical aspects of their job. And, to often, these individuals do not understand the organization’s top priorities. 

These discoveries encouraged Berman and Bradt to write their new book, Influence and Impact, which provides an easy-to-follow, common-sense approach to building influence at any level of an organization. 

More specifically, they explain how to: 

• Evaluate what values, strengths and capabilities you bring to your role.
• How you can develop new skills to increase your influence.
• Determine if you are in the right place to have the greatest impact. 

You will learn how to apply well-tested coaching tools to becoming more influential and achieving impact at work. The book is ideal for executives, managers, leaders, and any professional who hopes to get a clearer picture of what their colleagues, superiors, and followers expect of them. 

As you embark on the changes you choose to make to become more impactful and influential in your workplace, the authors recommend you: 

• Make the changes that you have identified as important to you, your manager, and your organization.
• Get other people to notice that you have made a change.
• Get others to believe that the changes are real rather than cosmetic.
• Sell your value to others without selling yourself by talking about the work, bringing insights instead of information, putting your hand up, and jumping in to fill gaps. 

All these steps will help you take on more responsibility, expand your impact, and reap the benefits. 

Bill Berman

Today, Berman shared these additional insights for us: 

Question: How might someone considering hiring an executive or career coach incorporate your book into the mix? 

Berman: Most executive coaches will do many of the things we talk about in the book, including assessments and development plans. The Working Job Description we present in Chapter 4 is a novel and very useful tool for integrating all this information into a clear, one-page message about the person, the job and the organization. For example, not all coaches pay as much attention to the context the person works in, and the person-work fit. Influence and Impact will help people from individual contributors to senior leaders focus attention on what the person’s manager, skip-level manager, peers, and colleagues see as critical for their role. It will also help to focus attention on the organizational culture. The most successful leaders are culturally and organizationally agile – they adapt to the situation and the environment. 

Question: What two or three of the best techniques you teach in the book can leaders use to help an employee have more influence and impact in their company/organization? 

Berman: The good news is, Chapter 13 is called “A Primer for Managers.” It is a five-page summary of all the takeaways that managers can use to help their employees build their influence and enhance their impact. 

If I had to pick the two or three things in that list that would have the impact, it would be the following: 

 #1, make sure you, and your employee understand what the essential priorities of the job are over the next few months. 

#2, make sure you and your employee know what success looks like. Of the six things you would like them to accomplish, what are the two or three really critical elements. 

#3 would be to build trust and challenge them to do more than they think they can do. I showed the book proposal to a senior manager, and he told me, “This is great. I used it with an employee. I told him he wasn’t focused on the most important part of the job.” That is what really makes the difference. 

Thank you to the book’s publisher for sending me an advance copy of the book.