Your Personal Impact
Have you ever sat in a meeting with someone who sounded incredibly persuasive, to whom everyone listened? Did you ask yourself, "Why can't I do that?"
If you want to make more of an impact at work, it can be very helpful to learn from such people. At the same time, there is a risk that you focus on the wrong things.
Some people can be very persuasive in meetings (which is fantastic), but they don't achieve sustainable results. Others are very effective at delivering individual results (which is also fantastic), but they’re unable to influence the people around them.
In contrast, people with “personal impact” influence the people around them so that they achieve the organization’s strategic goals together.
Influence for Good or Bad?
Having worked with a number of very impactful people in both large and small organizations around the world, I can safely say that while there is no secret recipe for all situations, there are certain ingredients that I've consistently found in highly impactful people:
While these three ingredients are deeply inter-related, let’s look at each of them separately.
Deliver Results
Personal Impact starts with delivering results, and this doesn’t mean just doing what’s in your job description.
Of course, you have to deliver what is asked of you by your manager, but impact comes from having drive and taking initiative beyond what is written in your job description.1 This is how you deliver results that will truly move your organization closer to its strategic goals.
What about Phonies who get promoted?
Many people feel they are delivering results because they don’t take breaks, or because they often work late into the evening and on weekends. While some managers might appreciate this display of dedication, it isn’t the same as delivering results.
In the end, the impact you make is not judged by your effort or sacrifice; it is judged by how much you actually contribute to moving your organization closer to its strategic goals over a sustained period of time.
In many cases, delivering results can be a major source of inspiration for the people around you
Of course, delivering results beyond your job description requires much more than drive and technical skills; it requires emotional intelligence.
Emotional Intelligence
The concept of Emotional Intelligence (EQ) was first introduced by Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer in 1990, in which they published an article describing it as the "appraisal and expression of emotion in oneself and in others, the effective regulation of emotion in self and others, and the use of feelings to motivate, plan, and achieve in one's life."
Since then, the concept of emotional intelligence has been studied, expanded, and applied to the business world, most notably by Daniel Goleman. While the framing continues to evolve, for the sake of simplicity, I'll separate it into four components:
Self-Awareness
Self-Management
Social-Awareness
Social-Management
Let's briefly look at each component.
Self-Awareness
"Self-awareness" at work means understanding everything about yourself that might impact your performance, such as:
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Your physiology (e.g. energy, focus, stamina, etc.)
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Your personality (e.g. what drives you, what stresses you, how you think, how you feel, how you behave, etc.)
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Your competences (the ones you have and lack)
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How other people see you and the trust they have in you (aka your personal brand)
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The overall effect you have on people (e.g. how much people in general feel seen by you, liked by you, inspired by you, stressed by you, etc.)
Understanding what drives and inspires you, and how that also affects the people around you, is crucial to your personal impact.
Self-Management
"Self-management" at work is everything you do in order to bring out the best in yourself so that you can perform at your highest potential and inspire others to do the same. This means regulating things, such as:
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Your physiology (e.g. sleep, diet, exercise, etc.)
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Your thoughts and feelings (e.g. getting inspired, setting goals, what you focus your attention on, etc.)
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Your actions (e.g. choosing what to prioritize, developing competences, following a plan, pacing yourself, etc.)
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How you communicate (e.g. your words, body language, facial expressions, etc.)
All in all, it’s about being intentional in how you “show up” at work.
3 Keys to Self-Management
Social-Awareness
People with personal impact know that there is a limit to how much they can achieve on their own,4 that long-term results come from collaborating well with others.
This requires social-awareness, which means understanding each of the people you work with more deeply: what drives each person? How do they think and make decisions? What stresses them? (maybe it’s you)
In a group setting, social awareness is about understanding the interplay between everyone in the group, including yourself, as if you were in a musical band.
Playing in a band
“People with personal impact know that they cannot achieve long-term results on their own.”
An interaction can have different kinds of goals (e.g. get to know each other, share information, make decisions, etc.), and sometimes multiple goals simultaneously.
Social-Management
Of course, it’s not enough to just understand the people you work with. The fourth component of emotional intelligence is absolutely essential to your personal impact.
Social-management means adapting your behavior in each interaction (e.g. meeting) so that you not only bring out the best in yourself, but bring out the best in the people you work with.
This requires two things:
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Identifying the goal of each interaction and proactively deciding which part of your personality and which competences would contribute most to that goal.
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Adapting your behavior based on what happens during the interaction
contributing One-on-One or in a group interaction
By adapting your own behavior in an interaction, you impact the behavior of the other person or people, and both these things impact the overall social dynamic between you.
To be clear, social-management—like personal impact overall—is not about manipulating other people like puppets.
Healthy relationships and group dynamics develop organically and therefore cannot be controlled by one person. Think of a jazz band improvising together, not a conductor leading an orchestra.
Nevertheless, you can decide how to contribute in the most constructive way and bring out the best in others in each interaction.
Delivering results and emotional intelligence are absolutely essential if you want to have an immediate impact on your closest colleagues. However, making a lasting impact requires that you think about more than just a single meeting or presentation. You need to have a strategic approach.
Strategic Approach
A "strategic approach" in your personal impact means looking at the bigger picture and thinking about how each interaction (e.g. meeting, e-mail, presentation, etc.) lays the groundwork for other interactions over time.
Having a strategic approach is always an important part of your personal impact, but especially so if you don’t have direct contact with everyone at work.
A strategic approach in your personal impact is comprised of three parts:
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A 360 Mindset
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Think Short-Term & Long-Term
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Influence Directly & Indirectly
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A 360 Mindset
It is all too common to focus myopically on building a relationship with, and impacting, a single person/group, forgetting everyone else.
I've seen people invest all of their time and energy speaking with their manager, while neglecting to develop relationships or communicate regularly with their colleagues.
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How much balance is needed?
I've also seen many people focus most of their attention on the members of their own team, while forgetting to check in and maintain the relationship with their manager.
Having a 360-degree mindset requires that you have a certain amount of balance in your relationships and communication with all the stakeholders around you.
Think Short-Term & Long-Term
You may be skilled at convincing your colleagues during a meeting to agree to a new way of working. They may even respond very enthusiastically, as if they are completely on board. But after several weeks or months, you notice that they have defaulted back to the old way of working.
short-term Agreement is not long-term commitment
Alternatively, you may not persuade someone in the first meeting, but if you follow up with the person after a week, you discover that after the person has had time to reflect, they are now more open to your idea.
What’s most important is that you recognize the difference between your short-term and long-term impact. Short-term impact means people have agreed to something in a meeting and are inspired to take action; this is great. Long-term impact means they are truly committed to working in the new way and continue to do so over a sustained period of time; this is crucial.
It's essential that you think about how each interaction (e.g. meeting, presentation, e-mail, phone call, etc.) paves the way for the next one, and then the next one, building commitment that will lead to lasting results.
Influence Directly and Indirectly
It is absolutely crucial to speak directly with key stakeholders, so that they are fully committed to the project/initiative you are proposing or have agreed upon.
You may, however, find yourself in a situation—especially in a larger organization—in which you yourself are unable to speak directly with all stakeholders about working in a new way. And in many cases, you are not the best person to speak with certain stakeholders.
Most of the time, your key stakeholders play an essential role in spreading the message and leading the way. This means they need to communicate and motivate their own teams and colleagues to work differently.
While you may communicate in a clear and inspiring way, there is a high risk that the communication of your key stakeholders to their teams and stakeholders lacks the same level of clarity and inspiration. All too often, employees get no sense of personal commitment and urgency from those who are supposed to lead them. Instead, they hear someone “forwarding a corporate message.” Or even worse, they hear conflicting messages from different messengers.
If this is the case, it is almost certain that the stakeholders with whom you have little to no direct contact will make no—or only temporary—changes to the way they work.
For this reason, it is absolutely crucial that you have an anchoring process with all of your key stakeholders, ensuring there is 100% alignment on what the goal is, what the new way of working is, and that everyone consistently communicates the same message with a sense of co-ownership. Not only that, you need to support your key stakeholders in how they can spread the message in the most impactful way.
conclusion
Personal impact is about bringing out the best in yourself and the people around you.
It requires the ability to tap into your own motivation so that you can take initiative and deliver strategic results, navigate the social dynamics at work, and inspire others to take action.
It also requires you to have a strategic approach in how you impact various people at work, so that you directly and indirectly influence the decisions they make and the actions they take, both in the short-term and the long term, so that they and the organization succeed over time.
Now, if you want to have a large-scale impact over a significant period of time, then you need to think like an organizer.
Reflection Questions
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When have you delivered results that made an impact at work and when have you delivered results that didn't make an impact? What determined the difference in impact?
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How much do you reflect on your motivation level and what drives you to perform at work?
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In which work situations do you feel most confident adapting your behavior in order to bring out the best in another person and/or group?
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Who do you know that has a strategic approach to making an impact at work? In what way is this person strategic?
CHallenge
Yourself
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In every meeting, think about when you step forward to share an idea and when you step back, giving space to others to share their ideas. Think about the way in which you do it and the consequences it has, both on the person and the dynamic of the meeting.
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In what ways could you be more strategic in your impact at work (e.g. 360-degree perspective, thinking both short-term and long-term, thinking about direct influence and indirect influence)?
References
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Steve Radcliffe – Leadership: Plain and Simple
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P. Salovey & J. Mayer – "Emotional Intelligence," Imagination, Cognition and Personality
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Daniel Coleman – Emotional Intelligence
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Seth Godin – Tribes
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F. Uit de Weerd & M. Fridjhon – Systems Inspired Leadership
