Multiply and Shape Your Impact

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As an executive, the legacy you craft depends on how you empower others, lead or build something that is smarter or better, nurture the right culture, use teachable stories, work with impact on what matters, prefer influence to authority and create a multiplier mindset.

SETTING THE SCENE

Certain operating styles create differentiation and impact. Here are three models that I find particularly useful.

Impact Players: they figure out the real job to be done; they step up and lead; they move things across the finish line; they are learning and adapting to change; they make heavy demands feel lighter. (Liz Wiseman)

Multipliers: they get more done with fewer resources, develop and attract talent, and cultivate new ideas and energy to drive organisational change and innovation. They leverage the intelligence, capabilities and motivations of the people around them. (Liz Wiseman)

Shapers: someone who comes up with unique and valuable visions and builds them out beautifully, typically over the doubts of others. Shapers get both the big picture and the details right. Shaper = Visionary + Practical Thinker + Determined. (Ray Dalio)

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

Why do some people break through and make an impact while others get stuck going through the motions?
Have you ever worked for someone who was able to get people to be their best? Does this help you decide what you need to keep doing and what you need to do differently?
How do you influence others?
How do you create work that is meaningful and connected for teams?
How can you be in peak form in the most crucial moments?
During change what do you do to minimise distress, restlessness and angst?
What needs to be in place for your teams to do good and feel good while working towards mutual and shared success?
What are your teachable stories for feedback and coachability?
What legacy are you creating for sustained, ongoing performance?

“At some point in my career, I shifted from being the guy designing the thing, to the guy building the stage for others to do the work.” - David Kelley, founder of IDEO.

Happy reading and stay curious!

Here’s more about the selection of books.

Real-Time Leadership: Find Your Winning Moves When the Stakes Are High by David Noble and Carol Kauffman. The best leaders, in the biggest moments, know how to read the situation, respond in the most effective way possible, and move forward. The hardest part of leadership is mastering the inevitable high-risk, high-stakes challenges you will face. The book sets out the tactics you need to slow down high-stakes situations before they speed you up. You'll learn to master the moment, generate response options, and quickly evaluate those options before acting. As you get better and better at using the framework, you'll find you can recognise these moments as they arrive.

Master of Change: How to Excel When Everything Is Changing – Including You by Brad Stulberg. Offers a compelling new framework for negotiating our changing world and workplace, and going on to thrive within uncertainty. Borrowing from the high-performance world of business, resilience-training and mindset-hacking, science and spirituality, philosophy and psychology, Stulberg presents a new framework to help overcome the challenge of change. When we start to implement “rugged flexibility”, we learn to view change as ongoing cycle of order, disorder, and reorder, and we become adept at thriving in the midst of flux. The result of becoming a master of change is to be less stressed, less anxious and more confident, to experience sustained performance at work and beyond, and be happier and more fulfilled in life.

Coachability: The Leadership Superpower by Kevin Wilde. Avoid blind spots and expand your career potential and leadership effectiveness. From this insightful and practical guide, you’ll learn: five common faulty assumptions that cloud our thinking as we lead and what to do about them; a pragmatic framework of coachability; four essential practices to strengthen your coachability habit; seven strategies highly coachable leaders use to skillfully solicit feedback and improvement; a better approach to overcome natural resistance to feedback and coaching; how five factors stall our good intentions to improve and how “parking downhill” is one of seven enablers to move the odds back into your favour.

Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact by Liz Wiseman. Why do some people break through and make an impact while others get stuck going through the motions? In every organisation there are Impact Players—those indispensable colleagues who can be counted on in critical situations and who consistently receive high-profile assignments and new opportunities. Whether they are on center stage or behind the scenes, managers know who these top players are, understand their worth, and want more of them on their team. While their impact is obvious, it’s not always clear what actually makes these professionals different from their peers. Wiseman identifies the mindsets that prevent otherwise smart, capable people from contributing to their full potential and the five practices that differentiate Impact Players: they figure out the real job to be done; they step up and lead; they move things across the finish line; they are learning and adapting to change; they make heavy demands feel lighter.

Collective Intelligence: How to build a business that’s smarter than you by Jennifer Sundberg and Pippa Begg. Businesses need to be smart to succeed, but it’s not enough to make yourself smarter as the leader or to fill the company with smart people. Businesses full of smart people (and led by them) make stupid decisions all the time. Instead, in today’s rapidly changing, uncertain world you need to design your business itself to be intelligent, to harness the collective abilities of its people by systematically addressing critical thinking, communication and focus. The real lesson from Amazon, Google and the like – that enables them to keep winning year after year – is that they do business intelligently. Business is complex, which is why it requires a deep, practical intelligence to survive, let alone thrive. This book shows why businesses that act smartest, and display an organizational capacity for critical thinking, underpinned with clear and effective communication, allowing them to develop razor-sharp focus, are the ones that really stand out and achieve sustained success.

Influence Without Authority by Allan Cohen and David Bradford is the classic guide to getting what you need from people you don't control. Getting things done requires collaboration, and convincing others to contribute requires political skill; this book introduces the Exchange Model, in which you get what you need by offering something of value in return. The key lies in knowing what the other person values―that's their "currency," and it's your immediate tool for coaxing their cooperation. This model has been proven over decades, as organizations around the world have turned away from frustration and resignation toward collaboration and results. This book shows you how to implement the Exchange Model at the personal, team, and organizational level to raise the bar for performance and leadership. This new third edition has been updated reflect the changing face of the workplace, and includes new examples and information on geographically dispersed virtual teams.

A final thought

FURTHER IDEAS AND LEARNING

EVERY EXECUTIVE NEEDS A TRUSTED SOUNDING BOARD Most executives understand that the higher they are, the more difficult it is to talk about their real issues or concerns – and to do so free from the weight of company expectations. It is even harder to find effective and neutral listeners. Whether the objective is to be more effective in a role, to assess next-level strategies or contribute to a board, it helps to have trusted guidance.

LEADERSHIP, PERSPECTIVE and POWER Mentor-Coach Conversation: it is important how leaders perceive and use their power. People do not ‘have’ power as it is both conditional and situational. It depends on context, relationship, timing and dynamics. Empathetic, ethical and purposeful uses of power is what makes a better leader.

LEAD THROUGH QUESTIONS Do you have all the answers? Inquiry and curious questions makes for better problem solving, uplift value, foster learning, innovation, performance improvement and forge different paths.

EXCEL AS A CONNECTOR Mentor-Coach Conversation: the executive and director of the future will need to be a connector, possessing stronger capabilities in building and sharing professional relationships, and do so strategically.

EMPATHY: THE HUMAN SIDE OF LEADING Mentor-Coach Conversation: loss is often deeply felt during careers. Empathetic managerial leaders understand the impact of disruption on an individual during decisions relating to advancement, transition and change

TRUST: A LEADERSHIP ROADMAP Mentor-Coach Conversation: while it is important not to be naive, a lack of mutual trust derails a business. Sustainable trust is an ongoing process that relies on maturity, perspective, empowerment, engagement, ethical behaviour and respectful relationships.

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