Most of the leaders I work with are in senior roles, managing multiple teams, if not entire organizations. These leaders are accustomed to leading with authority, as the teams and leaders who report to them naturally recognize their role as their senior leader.
Sooner or later, they find themselves in a leadership situation where they do not have direct authority over the team they are leading. Often, they find this requires a different approach to leadership.
My Experience
Reflecting on my experience, I recall two key moments in my career where I found myself leading without direct authority. While the two scenarios are distinctly different, they share a common thread that runs through my experience.
Early in my career, as a software developer, I was asked to become an “area leader.” It was the traditional stepping stone towards a management role. I was the technical lead for an area of our product, guiding other developers, directing their work, and ensuring the overall health of my area. I had no personnel management responsibilities. Many of the people I was leading were more experienced than I was.
Arguably, this role had some notion of authority. I’ve worked with coachees who had a more extreme entry into leadership. People in individual contributor roles, such as product managers, are expected to guide a product or initiative across a multidisciplinary team. They have to work with people from engineering, finance, services, support, and operations, and they often have no leadership training. Since this isn’t a role that naturally feeds into a personnel management role, they often aren’t afforded exposure to the management training resources their company offers.
Later in my career, as a director managing managers, I was tasked with leading the migration of our client base to our next major release. That, too, had a good bit of implied authority, as the initiative was an existential threat to the company, providing one of those rare opportunities where there was a single clear #1 priority. The approach was so successful that we expanded it, creating six strategic programs and assigning a director to lead each. As I led our reporting strategic program, the role became far more complex, as we now had six high-priority initiatives.
In the first experience, I found myself with no management experience, leading people who had more experience than I did. In the second experience, I had plenty of management experience. Still, I had grown accustomed to a more hierarchical structure in which my authority was explicit, and I could expect my directives to be carried out reliably.
In both cases, the secret sauce to getting buy-in and collaboration without that direct authority was relationship building.
Trust
When people report to you, they are likely to follow your guidance naturally. When you are leading people who report to someone else, there is natural friction. Often, the initiative you’re leading is not the “day job” for the team members.
The single greatest indicator of your success in this situation is the level of trust between you and each team member.
I’ve written about trust before. There are three components of the trust framework that can make or break your success in these situations:
- Sincerity. For colleagues to trust you, they must believe that your words are sincere. The things you say mirror what you are actually thinking and the actions you take.
- Reliability. You will ask colleagues to prioritize work that may conflict with their day jobs. If you consistently follow through on your own commitments, and they see you as reliable, they are more likely to respond in kind. If you are unreliable and fail to meet your own obligations, they will assume the initiative is not important and can do the same.
- Care. Colleagues must see and feel that you care about their interests, not just your own. This requires empathy and understanding. Connecting the mission of the team to each individual.
This simple framework proves incredibly powerful for assessing the health of any relationship, whether a colleague, your partner, a family member, or a close friend. We strengthen our relationships and enhance our leadership capacity by uncovering and healing any gaps in trust.
Intentionality
It’s easy to be intentional about building relationships with your boss and your direct reports. It’s inherent to the organization’s structure. When we don’t have direct authority, that lack of formal structure often results in less investment in relationship building.
Building awareness of the key relationships outside organizational reporting lines is one of the key ingredients of executive presence. Many of the clients I work with like using a simple tool to assess the health of their relationships and prioritize the ones that need work. I’ve written about this tool in detail before. I’ll summarize it here. Note that this is a tool for directing your attention, not for ranking people’s worth. If the numbers feel clinical, assess informally instead:
- Brainstorm all the key relationships in your life. List them in the first column of a spreadsheet.
- Rate the importance of each relationship 1-5, with 5 being most important.
- Rate the health of each relationship 1-5, with 5 signaling it needs the most work.
- Multiply the two ratings together. The higher the score, the more important it is to invest in the relationship.
For some, this approach may feel like overkill. Feel free to assess informally if that feels more comfortable.
The key is to recognize the relationships that need work and to be intentional about strengthening them. Assessing the level of trust is a great place to start. The trust goes both ways. Do they trust you to be sincere, reliable, and to care, and do you trust them across the same dimensions? If there’s a gap, you want to invest the time and energy to heal that gap.
Are you spending regular time with this person? I find regularly scheduled 1-on-1 meetings to be one of the most powerful ways to build trust and strengthen a relationship. If there is critical feedback to share, do so privately, not in front of the larger team. Frequent communication can help you build empathy, which shows you care.
Richer channels build trust faster. In-person when you can, video when you can’t, and be aware that written communication leaves out tone and body language that are key to empathy. Norms vary by team and by person, so ask what works for them rather than assuming.
Relationship building takes energy. It may be out of your comfort zone. As you grow as a leader, it becomes an increasingly critical skill for your long-term success. And spoiler alert – it’s equally critical to your success as a human, regardless of your professional role.
Putting It Into Practice
Leading without authority strips away the scaffolding and reveals what your leadership actually rests on. A few ways to strengthen that foundation:
- Map your relationships. Rate each on importance and health (1-5) and multiply. Let the highest scores tell you where to invest first.
- Audit the trust in both directions. Where’s the gap — sincerity, reliability, or care? Then ask the harder question: do they have reason to doubt you on any of the three?
- Protect your reliability ruthlessly. When you have no authority, your follow-through is your authority. Commit to less, and deliver all of it.
- Put a recurring 1-on-1 on the calendar. Not a project check-in. A conversation. It’s the first thing to disappear when you’re outside the reporting line.
- Connect the mission to the person. Know what this initiative gives them. If you can’t name it, you don’t yet know them well enough.
Tales of Wanderment
In my last update, I was preparing to drive across the country. My journey spanned five days:
- Thursday: Fairfax, California -> Elko, Nevada
- Friday: Elko -> Ogallala, Nebraska
- Saturday: Ogallala -> Des Moines, Iowa
- Sunday: Des Moines -> Columbus, Ohio
- Monday: Columbus -> Ashburn, Virginia
Roughly 3,000 miles and 50 hours on the road. I was fortunate to stay with friends in Des Moines, and we had time for dinner and a bit of downtown exploring. I loved an amazing piece of digital art by Oyoram titled TimePiece. Black Cat Ice Cream was another highlight, with a wall filled with photos of black cats that reminded me of my beloved Kohaku.
I was struck by how relaxing the entire trip was. I was a present, engaged driver, and at the same time, it was meditative and refreshing. Even though I spent most of those five days driving, it felt like a vacation, which I found fascinating.
I’ve now wrapped up two weeks in Ashburn, Virginia. I spent most of my life in Virginia. This didn’t feel like a nostalgic return home. It felt like rediscovering the land as a different human, looking upon it with fresh eyes. Yes, there are familiar stomping grounds and lifelong friends here, but there is something entirely new about this experience.
Next, I am headed to West Chester, Pennsylvania, to stay with my mother and stepfather for a month or so. To my friends and colleagues in that area, please reach out if you’d like to connect!
I am an executive coach and consciousness coach with software executive roots in higher education and EdTech. I coach because I love helping others accelerate their growth as leaders and humans. I frequently write about #management, #leadership, #coaching, #neuroscience, and #arete.
If you would like to learn more, schedule time with me.