Developing Your Organizational Power and Influence

Andrea Ames says there are 3 pieces of advice to get what you want and need:

• Be the right person to make the ask
• Clearly communicate the right evidence
• Make an emotional connection

Leadership starts with you. Can't be a leader if you're not leading yourself well. Are you the best you can be? Your personal culture is something you carry around with you. Focus on what you can control, lead and manage yourself first, think of yourself as a business; build the brand of you.

Resources are out there. Start with 7 Habits. Become emotionally intelligent, which is about understanding and managing your own thoughts and emotions, and then managing your relationships with other people. Lead well, and to do that, you have to lead yourself exceptionally well.

The best thing you can do is to make your leader look good. Be the person you would like to be led by. Be the person to be wanted on your team.

Ask yourself great questions. Investing in myself? Interested in others? Authentic? Spending time with the right people?

You may not want to be a leader, but if you want to get something done, you have to be the right one to make the request.

Communicating the right evidence goes toward team culture. Understand your stakeholders, and then communicate with them in their language.

Our stakeholders don't care about content. This is why they don't get us. So, measurements about content are the leading indicators of the success of content. Stop talking about content, then, and start acting on the outcomes of content. Many outcomes: product adoption, customer success & retention, customer advocacy, customer lifetime value. Content is the vehicle for delivering those outcomes, but not what stakeholders care about.