How to improve your influence skills with internal stakeholders
WHAT DEFINES A GOOD LEADER? LOOK FOR THESE SIX QUALITIES
Modern business challenges can require new approaches. Leadership will need to evolve in order to continue to guide organisations in tomorrow's world of work. But what are the characteristics of a good modern leader in the workplace - and how can organisations develop them?
Many studies draw parallels between effective leadership and solid organisational performance. But whether they’re a junior manager or a senior executive, the qualities that leaders need are changing.
Nearly 1,500 HR professionals ranked leadership development as the number one priority for 2025, with managers feeling 'overwhelemed' by the expansion of their responsibilities. In today’s unpredictable world, you must combine traditional leadership skills with new abilities. So, what does an effective modern leader look like?
1. Remember what makes a good leader
Before looking at the new skills future leaders may need, it is worth reflecting on what a leader actually is.
What are the qualities of a good leader? It’s not what you may think.
Being in charge of colleagues does not necessarily make you a ‘leader’. Former Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg explains: “Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.”
Retired astronaut Chris Hadfield believes that good leadership is: “Not about glorious crowning acts. It’s about keeping your team focused on a goal and motivated to do their best to achieve it. Especially when the stakes are high and the consequences really matter.”
There may be varying opinions on the strengths and weaknesses of leaders. But overall, most people believe that great leaders motivate their team members to perform their best and achieve common goals.
What traits do you need to achieve this in the modern workplace?
2. Use blended leadership styles for a VUCA world
Stacey Philpot from Deloitte Consulting maintains that the core skills needed historically in leadership roles have remained unchanged.
“These skills allow someone to become a leader faster than their peers. This is even true in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) environment,” she says.
The core skills for leading in a VUCA environment include:
- Pattern recognition
- Motivation
- Agility
- Emotional intelligence
- Ability to understand, control and express emotions
This represents psychological assessments of 23,000 senior leaders globally over the past 25 years.
Consider introducing servant leadership:
Leaders need new styles of leadership to deal with changing cultures. Being comfortable with not having the answer and owning failure can create an environment of trust and openness.
Collectively, these behaviours form ‘servant leadership’. The Chartered Management Institute (CMI) defines servant leadership as emphasising behaviours and values such as:
- Active listening
- Empathy
- Leading by example
These are instead of opting for a more authoritative, ‘command-and-control’ leadership style. Leaders create the conditions for team members to excel by displaying vulnerability. But given the stigma around servant leadership, how can organisations encourage it?
How to combat stigma surrounding servant leadership:
Alsu Polyakova, HR Leader for GE Healthcare, says reducing stigma around servant leadership will take a specific strategy. Most importantly frequent performance appraisals for leaders.
“We give leaders lots of opportunities for self-reflection, so they understand how they behave,” she says. GE Healthcare’s most successful leaders help to encourage behavioural change, Polyakova says. The company measures success by how well employees rate leaders on achieving GE Healthcare’s ‘cultural pillars’. These pillars include inspiring trust and empowering employees.
3. Create a culture of trust in the workplace
Gaining workers’ trust is more important than ever. One way to build trust is for leaders to take action on issues such as climate change. 71 percent of employees consider their CEOs’ social awareness as critically important, according to the Edelman Trust Barometer.
Social awareness may yield rich rewards. The Edelman poll shows that workers who trust their employers are far more engaged and remain more loyal than their more sceptical peers.
Leadership styles are clearly changing. The most effective leaders will need to tailor their styles to suit different scenarios, says Professor Sattar Bawany. “Leaders need a broad repertoire of management styles and the wisdom to know when each style should be used,” he says. “In crisis scenarios like cybersecurity breaches, for example, leadership should be authoritarian because the scenario is unstructured.”
4. Adapt your leadership style for different generations
Managers must also balance leadership styles to suit different generations. Modern workplaces will soon house up to five generations under one roof. Therefore, there will be many people with differing preferences on leadership style.
As of 2023, millennials are the biggest group in the UK workforce, at 35 percent. Modern leaders must mix old and new leadership styles that meet the needs of younger generations. Doing so will future proof organisations. However, new leadership approaches cannot come at the expense of alienating older workers.
5. Commit to lifelong learning
With the workplace evolving so rapidly, leaders cannot rely on past experience alone to get by. Ben Farmer, Head of HR at Amazon UK agrees: “Experience is not always synonymous with wisdom and judgement. And naivety doesn’t always engender novel thinking and openness to change.”
Organisations should look for leaders who understand the future as well as those with experience. “Success comes from the ability to combine understanding of exciting, new trends with the experience required to put that knowledge into action,” says Farmer.
But what is the right balance? There is no one-size-fits-all approach when balancing experience with adaptability. Achieving the right balance will mostly depend on the organisation and the sector it operates in.
6. Be conscious of culture
Organisational culture is an important factor. Risk-averse firms may prefer experience over novel thinking. Leaders may be fearful of a backlash from stakeholders should novel thinking fail. To lower risk, companies should seek leaders who use both scientific evidence and intuition when making decisions.
Ultimately, there’s no single blueprint for an effective modern leader. Each organisation must tailor their approach to leadership development. There must be a focus on organisational culture, industry nuances and employee mix.
But above all, leaders should recognise that today’s reality may be old news tomorrow.
For more expert advice, take a look at the following articles:
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HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR INFLUENCE WITH INTERNAL STAKEHOLDERS
People often forget that procurement professionals have to do as much selling as salespeople. Except in procurement, your buyers are internal stakeholders rather than external customers.
Learning how to influence stakeholders is an essential skill for procurement professionals. The ability to influence stakeholders enables you to have a positive impact on spend related activities within your organisation.
But where to begin on your journey to becoming an expert in internal stakeholder influence? Take a look at our tips for improving your influencing skills.
1. Identify key stakeholders and find common ground
A project can have many stakeholders. But each stakeholder will have different priorities and levels of interest in your project. Identifying key players enables you to focus your energy on individuals with the biggest impact in the long term.
It’s important to look at the bigger picture and assess which stakeholders will have the biggest impact. For example, a senior manager may have little interest in your project, but their buy-in may be significant. On the other hand, a junior team member may be very interested in upcoming projects with limited influence.
Make sure to align stakeholder interests with your own
By finding common ground and aligning expectations you can build trust. Building trust acts as a solid foundation for long-lasting stakeholder relationships. This, in turn, improves your stakeholder influence. It’s important to:
- Invite key stakeholders to exploratory conversations.
- Be transparent regarding the details of your proposals.
- Communicate frequently and openly with stakeholders.
- Understand that a stakeholder’s engagement in a project can change quickly.
Remember that you won’t be able to please everyone all of the time. But by ensuring that everyone is on the same page from the start, you can help your project run more smoothly.
2. Prove that you are a trustworthy source of advice
Not everyone may be willing to admit it, but most people love to buy. However, few people like feeling under pressure to buy. For procurement this means removing the perception that you are forcing stakeholders into a one-size-fits-all process.
To help combat this perception and win the trust of stakeholders, you need to make it obvious how and where you can help. Your personal PR is very important in this respect. For example, take a reflective look at your LinkedIn profile:
- How do you come across?
- Would people view you as a business person in a procurement role?
- Do you have an online voice?
- Do you make insightful comments on blogs and articles?
- Do you repost insights amongst your network?
You may think that these things only have surface importance. But the more visible your credentials are, the better your perception amongst relevant, local communities. This increased visibility is often the case both internally and externally.
3. Inspire fresh thinking amongst your stakeholders
By inspiring fresh thinking among stakeholders, you can accelerate your path to influence. Try taking the following steps to influence stakeholders:
Speak with key players face to face: If you have good examples of working together at the individual project level, schedule time with key internal stakeholders. Ask these stakeholders face to face to project their needs for the next 3-6 months. Having this information will enable you to establish how you can support them.
Stakeholders should be receptive to your understanding of their needs. However, if not, you know you have to do more to establish your partnering credentials in their eyes.
Hold a series of stakeholder engagement meetings with a focus on innovation: The second plan of action is to host a series of meetings with your regular suppliers:
- Focus the time on discussing new ways to innovate.
- Ask suppliers how they think they can improve the level of value they bring to your organisation.
- Proactively take these ideas to the internal stakeholders.
4. Be bold and confident when maintaining stakeholder relationships
Stakeholders often bring procurement professionals in at the eleventh hour. Additionally, these professionals frequently receive incomplete and unrealistic requirements.
Open communication channels and assertiveness is the only answer here. You need to be confident in your assessment of the situation and able to make stakeholders understand any issues. Believe it or not you may gain more credibility by confidently pushing back.
Being submissive and subservient will lose you the respect of stakeholders. This behaviour can also result in problems for your project down the line. After all, you wouldn’t accept this behaviour from a supplier and the same is true of a procurement professional.