Create your authority, not presentations

Sometimes, you need to influence senior leaders and senior partners with no hierarchical power.

How would you go about it?

Presentation? Probably just another presentation.

Do you know how many presentations a day senior leaders have?

It's because everyone has the very same idea about the approach to influence.

To tell you the truth, you won't stand out with another presentation, especially if it uses the same good old corporate template that everyone else is using in your company.

But what is better than a presentation?

You won't believe me.

It's your authority.

And it's not your hierarchical authority, not the positional authority.

It's your other type of authority - the expert's authority.

The way to do that is to establish your authority on the decision at hand.

How can you show that you have the true expertise beyond their own?

You can do a few things:

1. Project your competence by describing how the situation will unroll, when, and what will be the result of it

2. Point out the opinion of a legitimate and recognizable expert or multiple experts about a similar situation

3. Ask questions that only an expert can answer, knowing that you have the right answers

This is how I built my authority to find new opportunities.

In most companies, there are "All Hands" meetings where top executives talk about their results and upcoming plans.

In the end, they usually invite questions.

That's your time to shine.

Create context by describing the situation, indicating the challenge, pointing out to the authority, and then asking your question.

If you're an Agile professional, your strength relies on systems and metrics that improve the outcomes.

Therefore, your question may sound this way:

"Thank you for a fantastic presentation. It sounds like we're making great progress and desire to improve further.

To facilitate successful business we're engaging in many projects and create plans to complete them at specific dates. And we measure our results by how accurately we progress according to the plan.

We often do, but sometimes, life gets in the way. We have a challenge and make our plans 'easier.'

In Toyota company management came up with the approach based on the concept of a Cycle Time to assess the efficiency of the projects. It brought Toyota to the leading position in the automotive industry.

What systems do you endorse to assess the productivity of the projects?"

As you can see, you follow these three steps to indicate the challenge, mention the authority, and then ask your expert question to challenge the status quo.

This builds your authority and opens doors for further conversations.

Remember that the best time to build relationships of authority is in situations when people are uncertain and have to make a choice.

If people are pretty confident about the situation, your advice or reference to the expert won't take much effect.

First, you need to demonstrate that the current way of dealing with the situation is not the best.

If you want to learn how to do it, join my sample negotiation practice, "Easy Start."

https://bit.ly/easy-start-30-min