At a glance
In his work as a global change expert, Campbell Macpherson – author of The Power to Change: How to Harness Change to Make it Work for You and The Change Catalyst – made an alarming finding: 90 per cent of change undertaken in organisations fails.
“Why is that?” he asks. “It's because a lot of leaders are command and control – ‘Do as I say. You're either on the bus or you're under it.’”
Where change succeeded, it was because leaders took a different approach: They took their teams along for the journey.
“Leadership is about helping people to want to change,” says Macpherson, who used this insight as the basis of his leadership program, Leading with Influence.
When considering the extraordinary leaders he’d worked with, Macpherson realised they shared one quality: “They deliver sensational results that are sustainable,” he says.
“And how do they do that? They deliver results through engaging people.”
Macpherson – a speaker at this year’s CPA Congress, where he presented a leadership masterclass – argues that using influence rather than authority is a more effective way to achieve these exceptional results.
Steve Vamos, a former CEO of Xero and author of Through Shifts and Shocks: Lessons from the Front Line of Technology and Change, also recognises the power of influence in leadership.
“As an organisation grows, the need for influential leadership grows, too,” he says.
“Once you become a company that serves multiple markets with multiple products, you inevitably end up with senior people having to collaborate because they can't control the whole organisation.”
Influential leaders care
In his leadership program, Macpherson identifies 12 essential traits shared by extraordinary leaders, including integrity, humility and clarity.
“They're really clear about what they want, what they're seeking to achieve and why,” he says.
Critically, influential leaders care. “That may sound fluffy, but it's not,” Macpherson says. “They care about the outcomes, the organisation, their people and the customers.”
Vamos says an influential leader must be adaptable and open to learning.
“In a world that is changing so fast, it's my ability to learn as a leader that is arguably more important than what I know.”
Influential leaders embrace success – and failure
Influential leaders empower their teams by creating an environment where people can thrive.
But empowerment isn’t just about the wins.
“Empowerment requires trusting people to deliver and then picking them up when they falter and not blaming them for failure,” Macpherson says.
“Empowering leaders to try to remove failure from their lexicon – it's about learning lessons. It's having a glitch or making a mistake and learning from that.”
Macpherson cites the examples of one leader he works with – the CEO of a major insurance broker in the UK — whom he says does this very well.
“He's really clear with the vision and both the short-term and medium-term goals, and it gives people the skills and the safety net to then go and use their initiative to deliver,” Macpherson says.
“When they don't deliver, when they fall over, those with the right attitude he … picks up and says, ‘OK, what went wrong there? Let's not do that next time’. Those with the wrong attitude he lets go.”
Influential leaders call on the power of persuasion
Influencing others requires understanding their motivation and goals.
Ahead of any meeting, Macpherson recommends getting into the habit of asking a series of basic questions: “Who are the key people you need to influence in this meeting? What is their situation? What are they seeking to achieve?”
Before engaging with these key stakeholders, Macpherson recommends running through American psychologist Robert Cialdini’s six principles of persuasion – reciprocity, consistency, consensus, authority, liking, scarcity or unity – to establish if any fit the context.
“If it’s reciprocity, think about what you could give them in advance of them asking for it. Giving someone something they haven't asked for that they need builds the relationship and increases your influence in their eyes.”
Influential leaders are self-aware
To most people, the importance of trying to be a leader who is caring and enables their team to succeed, accepts mistakes and is willing to listen and learn is obvious, Vamos acknowledges.
“The reality is, though, when I'm thrown into a changing situation or I'm under pressure, it's not easy to think in a sensible way,” he says.
“The only way you can do it is if you are self-aware in the moment and conscious of how you're reacting.”
One of the best ways to develop self-awareness is to seek quality feedback.
As a first-time manager at IBM in the 1980s, Vamos had a mandatory six-month review, which included feedback from his team. “I thought I was doing a great job,” he recalls.
The results from his team shocked him. “They thought that I was task-oriented, that I had no interest in them, and it was all about them being a tool to get my job done.”
He had no idea his team perceived him in that way, and the insight shaped the leader he would become.
“It changed me and made me aware [that] the way I interacted was creating that impression,” he says.
Vamos’s advice? “Always ask for feedback.”
