Leaders understand their influence

Instead of the typical holiday stress or gratitude column that would be expected this time of year, I want to defy conformity — like a good Dangerous Leader — and share my thoughts on what has really mattered to me as this season cranks into high gear.

Earlier this year, an article in Forbes Magazine forecast that we, as leaders in 2023, needed to have more expertise in humans than in strategy.

I turned 49 a few days ago. That always forces a reflection of the previous year. Reflection is part of the deal when you decide to forge your own path as a Dangerous Leader. What stood out to me from this past year wasn’t the objective achievements I had, but the interactions I had with other humans.

A lot happened in “level 48” — most significantly, the loss of my husband in May of this year. The hidden “gift” in the worst experience of my life was a new way of seeing the world and the interactions I have in it.

Discovering trust

When the worst happens, we can choose to collapse. And I did indeed collapse in a very human kind of way. As I have gotten back up, I have collapsed again, many times. Sometimes unexpectedly, and sometimes, I have taken the knee to collect myself before continuing on. The human interactions I’ve had enabled me to continue on.

The day my husband died, I floundered. There is no playbook for how to handle news like that.

I first reached out to my leader, who wasn’t immediately available. My next call was to a colleague I’d worked with. I had been his professor, and he had been a former leader and mentor to my husband. I reached out to him because he needed to know, and I knew he’d want to know.

He took care of everything at work from there. Dangerous Leaders do this. They take on the tough stuff that needs being done.

Today, this leader works for me and while I knew I could trust him before my husband’s death, the working relationship we have is somehow stronger because of the day he took on what I could not.

Trust isn’t an easy thing for me, and I know it isn’t for many of you. I have always loved the words of Maya Angelou, “when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

And many, many people in my life have shown me I can trust them over the last six-plus months.

My leader

One of those people is my leader. She is a force to be reckoned with in her own right, and I trusted her from our first conversation. Sometimes, you just know someone is your kind of person, the Dangerous Leader kind.

Over the past seven months of working for her, I have found her to be the kind of genuine, caring leader that follows her own path. Her first act every time we talk is to ask how I am, and she expects the real answer. She is a lawyer, she knows if I am trying to bluff.

Anytime I have needed to take the aforementioned knee, she accepts it without question. She tells me to take care of my mental and emotional well-being. She doesn’t just say she cares, she shows it.

As I pull all of this together, I see a really powerful set of Dangerous Leaders anchoring me in the work I get to do as an executive in my organization. These leaders propel me from where they are, and I get to propel them from where I am, even on my toughest days.

I am not great at being vulnerable. I logically acknowledge vulnerability as a strength, and I disparage it as a weakness when I display it. But these two leaders, whom I get to interact with daily, show me that when I am at my most vulnerable, they trust me to do the work. They recognize that the interactions we have influence our collective outcomes as leaders.

Influencing humans

The caution our friend from Forbes offered is that, ultimately, “leadership is about intentional influencing of behavioral change. Leaders don’t influence outcomes; they influence humans to act in ways that drive outcomes.”

He goes on to say that when their outcomes fail, the leader who doesn’t understand the nature of their influence “blames their people, rather than re-evaluating their own influence skills as a leader.”

Dangerous Leaders recognize that humans are the resources we need to care for most. We don’t place the metrics above the meaningful work we ask of people. Instead, we are aware that our model of influence is our superpower as leaders.

These leaders that I follow, and who chose to follow me, have shown me they are experts in human interaction and influence. That they are willing to show up for those they work with on their toughest days and not place the strategy of business above the well-being of the people needed to make the strategy happen.

This is the kind of Dangerous Leadership I hope you aspire to emulate as you move into your next evolution in life and leadership. I know I do.

Live Dangerously. Be You.

Jennifer Smith is a Cedar Rapids-based personal and executive coach, host of The Dangerous Leader Podcast, and unapologetic optimist; jennifer@dangerousleader.com; @drjennsmith