Chapter 1
The Hidden Rules of Professional Success
Ever wonder why some professionals thrive while others with similar talents struggle? Picture this: You're working diligently, delivering quality work, yet somehow your ideas aren't gaining traction. Your colleagues seem to advance effortlessly while you feel increasingly frustrated. This disconnect isn't uncommon-according to a Gallup study, only 34% of American workers feel engaged at their jobs. Bill Berman and George Bradt's "Influence and Impact" addresses this precise problem, having helped thousands of professionals bridge this gap through their executive coaching practice. The book has become required reading at major corporations like Microsoft and Goldman Sachs, with Warren Buffett reportedly recommending it to young professionals as essential career guidance. Its practical approach to workplace effectiveness has made it a staple in MBA programs nationwide.
Chapter 2
The Fundamental Disconnect: Why Hard Work Isn't Enough
Have you ever felt that despite your best efforts, your work isn't being recognized or valued? This frustration stems from what Berman and Bradt identify as the fundamental disconnect between what professionals think their job entails and what their organization actually needs from them. Many of us inadvertently focus on the wrong priorities, doing what feels comfortable or familiar rather than what creates true organizational value.
Consider Tommy, a business unit leader who spent most of his time micromanaging his team's operational problems. While he believed he was being helpful, he was actually neglecting his true responsibilities: developing enterprise strategy, planning reorganization, and fostering cross-business collaboration. Only when Tommy stepped back and allowed his team to handle operations did he free up time for the high-level relationships and complex challenges that truly deserved his attention.
This pattern manifests in several common ways. Some leaders do their direct reports' jobs because "it's faster" or "it has to be done just right." Others attempt to take over colleagues' responsibilities out of a misguided desire to help, creating friction and undermining trust. When promoted, many cling to familiar tasks from previous roles rather than embracing new strategic responsibilities. Some rigidly follow job descriptions without adapting to changing organizational needs, while others refuse to adapt to cultural norms around communication and decision-making.
When things go wrong, we naturally tend to externalize problems-blaming our managers for poor leadership, our teams for underperforming, or our companies for toxic cultures. While these external factors sometimes contribute to workplace challenges, focusing exclusively on them severely limits our options for improvement. By contrast, taking personal responsibility opens numerous possibilities for developing and demonstrating value.
The solution begins with a mindset shift: accepting your current situation rather than clinging to what you believe your role should be, rediscovering your unique value, and applying yourself to what your organization needs most. This isn't about blindly following orders or suppressing your voice-it's about understanding your job's larger context and deciding if it aligns with your goals.
Chapter 3
Uncovering What Your Organization Really Needs
Enhancing your influence requires gathering information about what you need to do and how you need to do it to demonstrate value. This involves a three-part process: identifying essential information sources, collecting overt data, and observing implicit behaviors and assumptions.
Start by understanding your organization's business strategy. Michael Porter's framework suggests focusing on "Where Play" (areas of focus) and "How Win" (differentiation). Different functions may have different priorities-Apple's overall design focus versus Apple Stores' service orientation, for example. Organizational culture exists at three levels: observable behaviors ("artifacts"), articulated values (operating principles like "Quality first"), and underlying assumptions (mental models held by most of the organization).
Your relationship with your manager significantly affects your ability to influence others. Ask direct questions about expectations, responsibilities, and communication preferences. Focus on both what to do and how to do it. Equally important, observe what your manager prioritizes in meetings, when they probe for details, and what captures their attention. Their behavior often reveals more than their words.
Beyond your manager, map out everyone who has a perspective on your role: those in your direct line, indirect connections, suppliers who provide resources, and customers who depend on your output. Jose's experience shows how understanding stakeholder expectations-even those whose involvement seems unnecessary-can streamline decision-making in consensus-driven organizations.
Trusted colleagues serve specific functions across all stakeholder levels. "Seconds" are internal people who can ask questions on your behalf or gather information others might be reluctant to share directly with you. "Informants" observe other parts of the organization and provide information through back channels. "Scouts" are external people with different perspectives like customers or former employees.
After gathering data from multiple sources, analyze it to find essential themes and patterns that indicate what you need to do more of, less of, or differently. You're close to identifying both mission-critical priorities and unwritten cultural rules of your role.
Chapter 4
Creating Your Working Job Description
Now condense your findings into a clear working job description that explains what drives your work, organizational norms, your manager's responsibilities, stakeholder needs, your essential priorities, and team dynamics. This isn't about figuring out what you did wrong-contexts and priorities change. Reframing your job to match current expectations can increase your influence and impact by at least 50%.
Begin with why your position exists-the problems you need to solve or opportunities to capture. Identify what wouldn't happen correctly without you and your team. For example, Dana's mission was preparing his company to be put on the market.
Your deliverables represent the expectations of four groups: the business, stakeholders, your manager, and your team. Understand the business needs by examining ownership structure and leadership behaviors. Define your objectives, goals, and outcomes-what you're accountable for.
Map your stakeholders, their responsibilities, and what they need from you. Clarify organizational relationships, authority boundaries, and interdependencies. Understand how you can help them achieve their priorities while balancing competing interests.
Cultural norms around collaboration, conflict, communication, and hierarchy shape your approach. Consider both organizational culture and your manager's preferences regarding interaction styles, decision-making processes, and communication frequency.
Synthesize what you've learned about your manager's priorities, their manager's expectations, and what makes you effective in their eyes. Observe what catches their attention and what they need from you. Darlene, an e-commerce leader, recognized her analytically-minded manager needed detailed metrics on customer acquisition. By providing weekly data updates, she earned her manager's trust and was promoted to general manager within two years.
Finally, imagine what your stakeholders would say about you in 18 months. What would make them describe you as "amazing" or "one of the best people I've worked with"? This future-focused vision clarifies what will truly build your influence and impact.
Chapter 5
Navigating Workplace Bias
Even when you understand your job and perform well, bias can limit your effectiveness. You might experience being called by the wrong name, having your ideas ignored until someone else repeats them, receiving unfairly critical feedback compared to underperforming colleagues, or being given "interim" titles while others receive permanent ones.
To address bias effectively, start with calibration-validating your experiences by comparing them to other reference points. Ann's case illustrates the risk of not calibrating: as a woman in the male-dominated construction industry, she attributed her failures solely to her own efforts rather than considering systemic barriers. She became increasingly frustrated until finding a peer who could serve as a sounding board, helping her recognize external obstacles.
Information gathering is another crucial strategy. Byron, a Black American executive receiving feedback about being "too direct and intimidating," recognized he wasn't fully supported by management. Using his extensive network, he gathered information about key career-accelerating assignments and inclusion rates for people of color across business units. This knowledge led him to take an overseas assignment, both because global experience was valued and to move away from a business unit with a poor track record of promoting people of color.
Sometimes proving exceptional capability is necessary to overcome bias. Curtis, a Black CFO at a Fortune 100 company and potential CEO successor, accepted a challenging business leadership role to demonstrate P&L responsibility. Despite performing well while other candidates struggled, he was told his business wasn't performing well enough. Curtis acknowledged the "Black tax" requiring overperformance: "No Black person gets to this level without recognizing there's a Black tax to pay." Despite these challenges, Curtis eventually became one of few Black Fortune 100 CEOs.
When facing bias, you can also attempt negotiation-clearly communicating your concerns and requesting change. If negotiation fails, as in Nigel's case when his senior partner dismissed concerns about calling him "Slick" while greeting everyone else by name, leaving may become the only viable option.
The most powerful approach is transformation, as demonstrated by Melvin, a high-potential Black executive who worried that becoming an officer would require him to "become less Black." His transformation involved testing these assumptions while remaining true to himself. He realized some of his behaviors might have been exaggerated responses to bias, and that at a higher level he could influence how the organization managed diversity. Melvin ultimately retired as a utility president, using his position to demand more diversity in recruiting, mentor Black employees, and create peer networks for Black leaders.
Chapter 6
The Commit-or-Change Moment
Having gathered data and confronted the brutal truth about your job, you've reached a pivot point requiring action. You must answer three fundamental questions: Do you still want your current job? If yes, are you willing to make necessary changes to succeed? If no, do you want to stay with your organization?
Doing your job requires appropriate knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs). Abilities are natural talents you bring that aren't easily taught, while skills are developed through training and experience. Review your job expectations to determine if you have the necessary KSAs.
To excel, you must operate in a way the culture and your manager can accept. When facing differences, determine if they are: Minor and manageable (easy to adapt to); Complementary (valuable diversity that should be embraced); Challenging (requiring direct communication and possible negotiation); or Insurmountable (involving contradictory values or unacceptable behaviors).
The final consideration is whether the job brings you value or meaning. If you don't enjoy or benefit from your work at least 50% of the time, your ability to do the job and adapt to the environment won't matter long-term. A good rule of thumb is feeling positive about your work environment at least 60% of the time.
It's decision time with four possible paths: 1) "I do want this job"-you're willing to commit to doing what the organization needs and adapting to the culture; 2) "I don't want to do this work"-you like the organization but not your current role; 3) "I'm not in the right job"-the position doesn't match your skills or needs; 4) "I am unsure"-you're experiencing ambivalence about your situation.
Chapter 7
Building Your Personal Strategic Plan
If you've decided to stay in your role, create a Personal Strategic Plan to increase your influence and impact. Your working mission reflects what you're trying to achieve within your organization's context. While it must contribute to your organization's mission, it doesn't have to be identical-it should explain what you want to accomplish and how you want to impact the organization.
Your ways of working transform your core values into specific guidelines relevant to your job. For example, if you value collaboration, your working principle might be "Build alignment with all key stakeholders before making mission-critical decisions." Engineer Othmarr Ammann demonstrated this when building the George Washington Bridge-despite the Port Authority rejecting his proposal for stronger pillars to support future expansion, he built them anyway while still delivering ahead of schedule and under budget. His way of working was "Do what the customer needs, not only what they want today."
Change objectives are the behaviors, attitudes, and relationships you want to improve to achieve your mission. Limit yourself to three objectives to avoid diffusing your efforts. Consider how you'll shift priorities to deliver on the most important parts of your job, change behaviors to align with team culture, and adjust interactions with managers, peers, and stakeholders.
Many executives feel overwhelmed not because of time management issues but priority management challenges. Before addressing interpersonal changes, effective leaders must create the context for others to succeed by having the right people in the right roles focused on the right things.
Effective interpersonal influence requires understanding organizational dynamics and cultural norms while developing strong social skills. The four principal themes of Emotional Intelligence (EQ) are essential: self-understanding, other-understanding, self-management, and other-management. Empathy is particularly crucial, enabling you to understand others' perspectives while managing your own emotions.
Political intelligence (PQ) involves developing a network of colleagues at all levels who will happily support your objectives because of strong mutual relationships. As one executive explained, "You have to earn the right to tell people what to do who don't report to you." Understanding how decisions are made, who influences whom, and building relationships with key influencers helps communicate ideas and acquire scarce resources.
Chapter 8
Working Your Growth Plan
Enhancing your influence isn't about occasional bold moves but consistent small actions taken daily that accumulate over time. Think of your growth plan as continuous quality improvement rather than a "one and done" project, following the Plan, Do, Evaluate, Adjust approach.
Learning theory shows that positive feedback increases behavior repetition. Until others provide feedback, reward yourself by setting small, incremental SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time Bound). Effective action plans involve multiple steps-typically five to seven-toward achieving your goal.
When implementing your growth plan, you can either work quietly, making changes without fanfare, or be explicit about your intentions. Generally, involving someone else is recommended-as Peter Drucker said, "Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans."
At minimum, involve your boss in your growth plan-it's in their interest for you to succeed. Review your plan regularly, highlight accomplishments, ask for insights, and direct them to leverage their strengths and resources.
Making behavioral changes involves three aspects: implementing identified changes, getting others to notice them, and convincing others the changes are genuine rather than cosmetic. Begin by hypothesizing-setting objectives and specific actions, sharing with your manager and possibly your team. Then act on your SMART goals, treating them as theories to test rather than rigid rules.
While you'll quickly feel different when making changes, others-even your manager-may not notice for weeks or months. Human nature creates mental models of people that resist updating. Consistent application of the right behaviors over substantial time is necessary for others to recognize your transformation.
Noticing isn't enough-people need to believe your change is genuine and permanent. This requires persistence and embedding new behaviors into your habits. Be aware that occasional slips can significantly set you back, especially when changing negative behaviors.
Chapter 9
Expanding Your Impact and Responsibility
Having established your plan and begun delivering what your organization needs, you've earned the right to expand your influence. This doesn't require self-promotion-which most leaders find grating-but you must clearly signal your readiness for greater responsibility.
Consistent delivery on the most important aspects of your job is fundamental to increasing your influence. This is particularly valuable when achieving results despite challenging market conditions or competition. When you inevitably miss targets, maintain credibility by: accepting the miss without minimizing it, taking 100% ownership without explanations, and clearly explaining what you'll do differently going forward.
While consistent delivery is appreciated, organizations need more than reliable performers-they need innovators. To expand your responsibilities, put your hand up when opportunities arise to address problems or streamline processes. Ask questions like: Can we accelerate this process? Why have we always done work this way? What could we accomplish without these constraints?
Solving problems that have stymied your manager or their managers demonstrates your readiness for greater responsibility. Like Edwina, who transformed warranty services by implementing cloud-based systems that reduced turnaround times by 50% and improved customer satisfaction, you can make yourself indispensable by addressing deeply embedded organizational challenges.
How you communicate your accomplishments depends on your organizational culture. Make your team's accomplishments known without appearing self-serving by finding venues to discuss the work itself. Use town halls to highlight successful change initiatives, arrange joint team meetings for cross-functional work, or send targeted email updates to stakeholders.
Junior presenters often make the mistake of focusing on process details rather than insights. Executives attend dozens of meetings weekly and are bombarded with information. What they truly value is understanding why the data matters and what actions they should take. Start with insights and implications, then provide supporting data only when asked.
Organizations value those who can synthesize different viewpoints into actionable decisions. "Both/And" thinking is particularly valuable-finding solutions that transcend apparent dichotomies like strategic vs. operational, collaboration vs. autonomy, or continuity vs. change.
Chapter 10
Finding a Better Fit: When It's Time to Move On
Sometimes, despite your best efforts, you realize your current position isn't the right fit. This realization can cause significant emotional turmoil, especially if you've invested considerable time in a particular career path. As Kierkegaard noted, "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."
When you discover your job isn't right for you, you'll likely experience emotions similar to grief, even if you weren't fired. You're mourning the loss of the job you thought you had and the associated hopes and dreams. As Daniel Levinson described, most of our adult life is spent in "structure-building periods" that consolidate our identity. Disrupting this structure through job changes can trigger significant emotional responses.
Accept that all feelings about job transitions are normal and will naturally resolve over time. You can feel guilt, disappointment, anger, and acceptance simultaneously or in rapid succession. These emotions don't have to control your actions-you can feel guilty while exploring opportunities or angry while discussing options with your manager.
If you like your organization but need a better role, create a Personal Strategic Plan focused on finding a better internal fit. Your Personal Strategic Plan starts with your personal mission, long-term objectives, and ideal job criteria as your destination. Then conduct a situation analysis of both the organization's needs and your strengths. Finally, develop strategies and tactics to bridge the gap between your current position and desired role.
Building a network beyond your direct reporting line is essential. Think of this process using the AIDA framework: Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action. Create awareness of your capabilities among decision-makers, show genuine interest in others' work to build reciprocal interest, position yourself to meet emerging organizational needs, and ultimately prompt action from those who can create opportunities for you.
Sometimes you need a fresh start in a new company. When job hunting, you're essentially a salesperson with yourself as the product. Focus on the benefits you bring to potential employers rather than what you want. Be strategic about your positioning-identify your target audience, clarify your value proposition, articulate specific benefits you offer, and provide evidence-based reasons employers should believe your claims.
With at least 40% of new senior leaders failing in their first 18 months, proper due diligence after receiving a job offer is crucial. Mitigate potential risks by investigating three key questions: What is the organization's sustainable competitive advantage? Did anyone have concerns about this role and what was done to address them? And what specifically about you led to the job offer?
Chapter 11
Helping Others Build Their Influence and Impact
Great managers help their people succeed by coaching rather than just supervising, recognizing that leadership is fundamentally about developing others. For managers to succeed, their people must succeed-whether managing one person or thousands. Effective managers act as coaches, showing respect that engenders respect in return, creating an environment of trust and mutual growth. This coaching approach helps others evolve by bringing out their best while building confidence and capabilities.
The key is helping employees discover what their job truly entails beyond the basic job description, focusing them on mission-critical priorities that maximize their influence and impact. This involves regular one-on-one discussions to understand their challenges, aspirations, and potential. Managers should work with employees to create comprehensive go-forward plans that clarify the real mission and vision, stakeholder priorities, objectives, top priorities, action steps, and necessary personal changes. These plans should be living documents, reviewed and adjusted quarterly to ensure continued alignment and growth.
When differences between an employee's strengths and role requirements are insurmountable, effective managers collaborate to find new paths either inside or outside the organization. This includes focusing on the employee's existing strengths, helping them identify their core motivations, and finding opportunities where culture better aligns with their preferences and values. Good managers recognize that sometimes the best development move is to a different role or organization, and they support this transition professionally and empathetically.
Successful coaching involves specific techniques: asking powerful questions rather than giving answers, providing regular constructive feedback, creating stretch assignments that challenge growth, and connecting employees with mentors and resources. Managers should also help team members build their networks and visibility within the organization, creating opportunities for them to showcase their work and capabilities to senior leadership.
Leaders succeed when their people are engaged, empowered, and focused on meaningful work that aligns with their strengths. Investing time in developing team members' influence and impact ultimately expands the manager's own influence and impact many times over. This multiplier effect means that every hour spent developing others can yield exponential returns in organizational effectiveness. As Elizabeth Ling Decitre notes, helping team members find the right career path brings the most joy after years of leadership, creating a lasting legacy through the success of others.
Regular measurement of progress through feedback loops, performance metrics, and development milestones ensures that coaching efforts stay on track and deliver tangible results. The most effective managers maintain detailed records of their team members' growth, celebrating successes and learning from setbacks to continuously refine their coaching approach.
