How to Lead When You're Not in Charge: Leveraging Influence When You Lack Authority

by Clay Scroggins

While I appreciated the sentiment, I finally had to tell him that I needed him to be more intentional about picking up responsibilities. I told him he’d be most helpful if he could find problems that needed to be solved.

On our team, the people I trust most are the ones handling the most and taking the initiative to find and solve the problems I haven’t even noticed yet.

A waiting posture doesn’t win in the long run. If you don’t know where to start, look around. There are always responsibilities, projects, processes, products, or even people who are underutilized that others around you are just not noticing.

I believe a natural way to reject passivity is to focus on that closet. Choose a closet to clean. Find something that no one else wants to do and just handle it. Find that thing that is always brought up in meetings but no one ever does anything about, and go find a solution for it or choose to own it in a way that a great leader would!

Decide to be the one who isn’t afraid to pick it up and choose to own what others are looking to avoid. That’s the first step in rejecting passivity. Make a choice.

Here is how planning will help you counter passivity in your leadership. The most well-planned idea usually wins the meeting.

Here are a few questions that can help if you’re currently stuck in passivity: • What has my boss established as the greatest “win” for our team? • If your boss could wave a magic wand and have something done, what would it be? • What is your boss most worried about? What is creating stress? How can you relieve that? • On your team, what is a frequently discussed problem? Can you take steps toward fixing it today?

As you train yourself to choose what’s not getting done, plan time for future planning in the margins of your calendar, and then respond to what is most pressing for your boss, you’ll have a game plan that can work. That’s the CPR for resuscitating the proactivity that defeats passivity.

My good friend Tim Cooper has this line that pops into my head all the time: “You will never passively find what you do not actively pursue.”

Without challenge, we do not change.

As the authors of The Leadership Challenge put it, “Leaders must be agents of change.”1 It’s motivating, freeing, confirming, and challenging all at the same time. But just knowing that doesn’t mean it’s any easier to determine how to do it in your organization.

One of the reasons this is true is that I really like the way I see the world. My friend Rodney is one of the pastors at our church, and he thinks all of us are addicted to the way we see the world. I think he’s right. It’s as if we’re intoxicated by the way we think, the way we do, the way we process. We are all attracted to opinions that validate the way we see life and we resist opinions that disagree with the way we see things. It’s why people are committed to CNN and opposed to Fox News . . . or the other way around. Hearing opinions that differ from the way I see things feels like rejection, which is why I resist change. Hearing that I have a need for change is a form of rejection. You’re telling me that something about me is wrong. It needs to go. And I don’t like that.

mind. Challenging someone is threatening because it calls for change. And no matter who you are, change is not easy.

There is nothing wrong with you because you want to challenge the way things are done. It’s quite normal for a leader to feel this drive. But there is nothing wrong with your boss either, just because she seems allergic to change.

When you challenge what is, others perceive that as a criticism of who was. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t challenge. It just means you need to understand how it might feel to be challenged, and be sure to communicate with that in mind.

Don’t underestimate the power of awareness; it’s first aid for ignorance. Remember what G.I. Joe taught us in the eighties: “Now you know. And knowing is half the battle.”

Great leaders challenge up with the best motives.

Great leaders are keenly aware of what the boss is most interested in.

Great leaders challenge up quietly, but they are not silent.

Existing paradigms can change, but it takes wisdom, patience, and the right strategy. You don’t need authority, but you will need influence. You don’t have to be the one in charge to shift the paradigm and challenge the status quo. You can do it from the seat you’re sitting in right now, but you must still learn to challenge well.

Before you set out to challenge, you need to assess whether you’ve put in the work of relationship and if that relationship can bear the weight of the challenge you want to bring.

The words you use when you share your idea are bricks that will either build a bridge of relationship for your idea or a wall of distrust.

You may not directly blame someone for why something is not working, but you still want to avoid statements that imply blame or would lead your boss to question whether you have a particular individual in mind. You want to challenge with enough emotional intelligence to avoid blaming someone for what’s currently being done.

Instead of using an ultimatum to effect change, convince your boss that you are on the same team, that you are behind him or her. Make sure your boss is aware of your perspective and explore together what the implications are if the decision is or is not made. Include them in the process of evaluating, rather than presenting specific choices or actions as foregone conclusions if immediate action is not taken.

Challenging your leader or your boss is a risk. But without the risk, there are no rewards. Remember: how

Victory is not just the change that takes place because you challenge up and lead when you aren’t the one in charge. The victory is also the growth that takes place when you enter this process of learning as a leader. God has grown me more through the process of challenging my bosses than just about anything else at work.

But you need to choose to love your boss. Loving your boss means you genuinely want what’s best for them and you’re trying to do what’s in their best interests.

In every relationship, make sure the other person is convinced of these simple truths: “I am not in this relationship for me. I am in this for you.” That’s love. And to lead well as you are relating to your boss, you have to choose to love your boss this way.

One of the greatest difficulties in challenging up is learning to challenge the process without appearing to challenge the person.

To build trust, practice faithfulness.

Sometimes it just takes more time to show your manager that you are not in it for yourself. Do the little things to build trust.

I’ve noticed that too often, when things aren’t going well for someone, our instinct is to look for more weakness in that person to justify the judgment we have made in our minds.

When emotions are low and we’re speaking in hypotheticals, I’ve found it helpful to ask my boss this simple question, “Hey, this rarely happens, but I’m sure it will. When I disagree with something I see, what’s the best way to bring that up with you?” It’s amazing how disarming that question can be.

The more challenging the conversation, the more private it should be. Challenge privately. Champion publicly.

Nothing affects your posture more than what you tell yourself about yourself and about your manager.

Trusting that your boss has your best interest in mind is a choice.

Simply saying out loud that you do not have all of the information will directly affect how you carry yourself when you approach a challenging conversation. If you think you have it all figured out, that you possess all knowledge, facts, and insight about this situation, what will your posture likely be? My guess is that it will look like this: arrogant, closed, and judgmental. There is no way to engage in a healthy, fruitful conversation if that is your posture.

Ashley Montagu, a British-American anthropologist, said, “Humans are the only creatures who are able to behave irrationally in the name of reason.”

If you can’t stay emotionally neutral about a situation, you’re not ready to bring it up. An emotional person is not a stable person, especially in a discussion with their boss. To be able to talk about something potentially complicated and personal, you need to be able to keep your emotions in check.

The most powerful reason to challenge the status quo is to make it better.

He writes, “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe.”7

The way you lead into a conversation can often trump the content of the conversation.

Great leaders know how to lead when they’re in charge because they’ve been leading long before they were ever given that authority. That’s the big idea I hope you take away from this book.

Effective leaders are inclusive. When they succeed, the people around them succeed.

Dos: • Value every opinion, especially those that contradict your own. • Tell people you value the work they are putting in. • Lead by action first and word second. • Express expectations and make sure those around you know what you want and need from them. • Provide as much encouragement and affirmation as possible. • Be efficient with tasks and effective with people. Don’ts: • Underestimate the intern. • Ignore an idea/belief/criticism shared by more than one person. • Take the people who are doing the dirty work for granted. • Schedule meetings that have no clear goal or purpose. • Act as if you’re better than everyone, even if you are. • Undervalue the time others are putting in to make your job easier.