Costs
Part of Leadership influence: what the experienced already know
Getting leadership influence exercises right the first time
Leadership influence exercises: eight audits and trials that produce evidence about your own effect instead of answers shaped by the fact that you asked.
If you hold authority, asking people will not reveal most of your effect on them. The people you ask shape their answers because you asked.
These exercises produce evidence, not opinion: written artifacts, counts, and observed behavior. They gather it without relying on anyone telling you the truth to your face.
Treat the underlying capability as practices, not a temperament. The federal service does exactly that, breaking senior work into executive core qualifications that you can develop one at a time.
Each exercise takes fifteen minutes to a month and ends with something on paper. Several will show you something you would rather not have seen. That is why you do them.
What to take away
- Everything a leader does is amplified, so every exercise here is about measuring the amplification rather than guessing at it.
- Run the exercises on evidence you can collect alone. Where an exercise involves other people, it is designed so that what they do, not what they say, is the result.
- The results are not a verdict on the team. They are a list of your own habits, with a change attached to each.
1. The question audit
Time: forty minutes with your own notes.
Stated Priorities vs. Actual Questions
Stated priorities
- Source
- Priorities sheet
- Time
- Written after the quarter
- What it shows
- What you say matters
- Winner
- —
Questions actually asked
- Source
- Meeting notes, messages
- Time
- Reconstructed from records
- What it shows
- What team optimized
- Winner
- Questions won where lists differ
Take a quarter's worth of meeting notes, messages, and calendar entries. List every question you asked about the work, in your own words, as accurately as you can reconstruct it. Then, on a separate sheet, write what you would say your three priorities were for that quarter. Compare.
What it reveals. The gap between what you say matters and what you actually asked about. Whatever you asked about most is what the team has been optimizing, whether or not it was on the priorities sheet. Where the two lists differ, the questions won.
2. The remark trace
Time: ten minutes, once a week, for a month.
Weekly Remark Trace
- End of weekpick two or three people
- Askdid anyone start anything because of me?
- Write down the answers
- Compare to what you thought you asked for
- Repeat once a week for a month
At the end of each week, ask two or three people the same question: "Did anyone start doing anything this week because of something I said?" Write down the answers. Then compare them to what you thought you had asked for.
What it reveals. The workstreams you created by accident. Most leaders find at least one per month: a remark, a wondering-aloud, or a neutral question that was received as an instruction because of who said it. Each one is a piece of the team's week spent on something you did not mean, and each one is a register you failed to label.
3. The reasoning test
Time: twenty minutes.
Does Your Reasoning Travel?
Uninvolved person gets all three adjacent cases right?
reason clear enough to extend without you
decision received as instruction without principle
Take a decision you announced recently. Write the decision and its reason in two sentences. Give the two sentences to someone who was not involved and describe three adjacent situations the decision did not explicitly cover. Ask them to say what they think you would want in each.
What it reveals. Whether your reasoning travels. If they get all three right, the reason was clear enough that people can extend it without you. If they get them wrong, the decision has been received as an instruction without a principle, and it will be brought back to you every time a new case appears.
4. The dissent count
Time: thirty minutes with notes from the last five meetings you led.
Two Numbers to Count
- 0Times anyone said you were wrong across five meetings
- 0Objections you had not already thought of
- 5Meetings led, notes reviewed
Count the number of times anyone in those meetings said, in substance, that you were wrong about something that mattered. Count separately the times anyone raised an objection you had not already thought of.
What it reveals. Two numbers that most leaders overestimate. Both are proxies for whether it is safe to speak in a room you run. If the first is zero across five meetings, you are not being agreed with; you are not being told. If the second is zero, the room has stopped contributing and is reflecting your own concerns back at you.
5. The bounded handover
Time: one decision, followed by not touching it.
Running a Bounded Handover
- Choose a decision you normally make
- Set cost boundaryabove which they return
- Set date boundarypast which they return
- Set consequence category that must return
- Do not touch it
- Recordsame decision? urge to intervene? when?
Choose a decision you normally make yourself. Hand it to someone with three stated boundaries: a cost above which they must return, a date past which they must return, and a category of consequence that must return. Then do not touch it.
When they decide, write down whether you would have decided the same, whether you were tempted to intervene, and at what point.
What it reveals. How much of what you control is controlled from habit rather than necessity, and how strong the urge to take it back is. If the result was acceptable and the urge was strong, you have located a class of decisions that are yours by reflex and not by need.
6. The sixty-second rehearsal
Time: fifteen minutes, alone.
First Sixty Seconds: Actual vs. Wanted
What you actually do
- First words
- Write them down
- Face
- Note your expression
- First question
- Often 'how did this get this far?'
- Problem
- Reach for it or leave it
What you want described
- First words
- Write the version you want
- Face
- The expression to aim for
- First question
- Aim for 'what do you need?'
- Problem
- Leave it with them
Write down, in order, what you do in the first sixty seconds after someone brings you an unresolved problem. Include your first words, your face, your first question, and whether you reach for the problem or leave it with them. Be honest; use the last time it happened.
Then write the version you would want a member of your team to describe afterwards.
What it reveals. Whether the first minute is one that teaches people to come back. The first question is the tell: if it is any form of "how did this get this far", you have taught a lesson that will take months to unteach. If it is "what do you need", you have bought the next early warning.
7. The exception ledger
Time: thirty minutes of recollection, then an ongoing line per item.
Exception Ledger Entries
- Rule waived
- Deadline extended for one person
- Standard relaxed once
- Was it labeled an exception at the time?
- To whom was it labeled?
- Who gets exceptions, and would you defend it?
What it reveals. How many unlabeled exceptions are now rules. Every one that was not marked has been generalized by whoever saw it, and the next person refused the same thing has a fair complaint. The ledger also shows you your own pattern: who gets exceptions, and whether that pattern is one you would defend out loud.
8. The prediction round
Time: one meeting.
Can the Team Model You?
Do private predictions match your decision?
reasoning legible, people act without asking
unpredictable, everything returns for approval
Before announcing a decision at a meeting, ask each person present to write down, privately, what they think you will decide and why. Collect the papers before you speak. Then announce, and compare.
What it reveals. Whether the team can model you. If the predictions match, your reasoning is legible and people can act without asking. If they scatter, you are unpredictable in a way that forces everything back to you for approval, which looks like being needed and is actually a tax on everyone.
The set together
| Exercise | Artifact | The habit it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Question audit | Two lists, compared | What you actually direct attention to |
| Remark trace | A month of accidental workstreams | Whether you label your register |
| Reasoning test | Three adjacent cases, answered | Whether your reasons travel |
| Dissent count | Two numbers | Whether you are told anything |
| Bounded handover | One decision left alone | What you control by reflex |
| Sixty-second rehearsal | Two scripts | What the first minute teaches |
| Exception ledger | A list with labels | Which exceptions became rules |
| Prediction round | A stack of guesses | Whether the team can model you |
Do the question audit and the dissent count first. Both use material you already have, both take under an hour, and between them they tell you whether the remaining six are urgent.
The mechanics being measured, the filtering of information toward good news and the amplification of everything you say, are described in leadership influence. Exercise 3 is a test of the reasoning format covered in executive communication. Exercise 5 is the delegation practice from control and influence, run once as a trial.
The equivalent set for someone with no authority, where the difficulty is being ignored rather than being obeyed, is in influence without authority. Exercise 6 is where a leader most often fails the disclosure test set out in positive influence, and it is worth running with that test in mind.
Common questions
Some of these will be visible to the team. Does that spoil them?
The handover and the prediction round are visible, and that is fine: both are also useful practices in themselves. The audits and counts are private, and should stay so until you have decided what to change.
What if the dissent count is zero and I am fairly sure I am usually right?
Being usually right and never being contradicted are compatible, and the second is still a problem. It means the one time you are wrong, nobody will say so, and you will find out from the result.
Can I have someone else run these for me?
The audits, yes, and a second pair of eyes helps with the question audit in particular. The rehearsal and the handover have to be yours, because the thing being measured is your own reflex.
How often should I repeat them?
The two quick ones quarterly. The others once, then again after any change in the team's composition or a difficult quarter, since those are the moments the habits being measured tend to slip back.
