How Can We Influence Senior Leadership?

19 Jan 2023 · 1 min

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Simon Sinek argues that you cannot directly influence senior leadership; instead, individual leaders should take responsibility for the people immediately around them, practicing leadership by helping teammates rise and spreading an "infinite" mindset. Over time, as people move between teams, their behaviors propagate through the organization and can produce lasting cultural change that outlasts misaligned senior leaders.

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Senior leadership doesn't get it. What do I do? How do I influence them? The answer is you don't. You cannot influence other people. What we can do is take responsibility for the people to the left of us and the people to the right of us. Regardless of where we are in the corporate hierarchy, we can be the lowest level. We still work with or for someone. And we can come to work every day and work tirelessly to see that those people rise, to see that those people feel seen and heard and understood. That's called leadership. And if we have an infinite perspective, then these teams are going to be really high functioning and high performing. And one of them, one of the people in those teams may be promoted out and join another team. And they'll take everything they've learned and bring it to their new team and then they'll move on to another team. And before you know it, the tails wag the dog. Before you know it, the whole organization has changed. So as long as we are willing to take an infinite minded perspective, we, we can affect profound and positive change in an organization. Especially when senior leadership doesn't get it because our work will outlast them.