Power of Influence
When I started my job almost 7 years ago, my coworkers told me about these annual “leadership” meetings. They told me that during this meeting there were all types of decisions that were made surrounding our business including some high level employee goals. I am extremely outspoken anyways so I always voice my opinion when I feel strongly about something, but during my first 5 years, it remained just an opinion.
Last week was a huge milestone for me in my career because, as a Business Development Engineer, I am finally in a position to attend these coveted meetings. I have to admit, I squealed (quietly) in excitement to both my boss and my prior boss who were both in attendance and I think they appreciated the fact that I was that enthusiastic about contributing to our strategy. This was my seat at the table and I was going to make the most of it.
Out of 15 people globally, I was one of two women on day one and the only woman on day two. I felt great responsibility to make sure our group had diverse perspective on the topics at hand, so needless to say, I contributed A LOT. Even when I felt like I should leave certain topics alone, my colleagues made sure to drive that conversation back to me.
Let’s unpack that a bit: I am super vocal and I have always been really transparent about my work. I have regular conversations with my colleagues about our strategy and why I think certain aspects are vitally important. I repeat myself constantly because I am obsessed with the work that I do and how I can better contribute to our overall strategy. What I didn’t know is how well this resonated with my team members. When I didn’t see the value in defending one of my points, I had a team member that knew how strongly I felt about it. They spoke up, validated my point, and guided the conversation to let me elaborate. I was floored.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is inclusive decision making. This is a true seat at the table. This is the embodiment of the phrase “you can go to the dance, but you need to actually dance at the dance”. But I’m going to take that analogy one step further: I was also “asked to dance” which is such a huge compliment. Just like when you attended your middle school dance, it was great to get dressed up and go, it was great to dance in a group with your friends, but what gives you butterflies is someone asking you to dance with them. My team asked me to dance with them and I have never felt so grateful in my 7 year career.
Our discussions during this meeting were long with many voices weighing in. When I want to contribute, I am not in the business of cutting others off. If my time in sales taught me anything, it’s to let someone finish because they may actually be getting to your point on their own. There were a few times that I couldn’t get a word in edgewise since they were extremely hot topics that everyone had opinions on. Our director actually stopped the conversation and specifically said “I want to hear what Rachel has to say”.
What that action meant didn’t manifest itself until much later. Going back to the dance analogy, it was like the DJ was asking me to play my song so everyone could dance to it. Thinking back to earlier in my career, I would have carefully curated my playlist thinking about how many people would have really liked the song. Now, I don’t care if people don’t like my song; I play it loud and proud.
I wanted to tell you this story because my advice for this week revolves around how I think I got there: become obsessed with an idea. Whatever your mission in life is, create such an fixation with it that it works its way into everything that you touch. You have to be so obsessed with this concept that you can repeat yourself daily for years on end and never get bored of it. I find that the more I have fixated on my concept with this type of compulsive repetition, the more the idea develops. It gets better integrated into my work with a solid strategy behind it.
Honestly, I didn’t realize how concrete my strategy was until I presented it to our VP last Friday (on Valentine’s Day). Our team had a large-ish ask for funding behind an activity, so I volunteered as tribute to pitch this one. I had the “what” and the “how” but the “why” in my mind seemed a bit scattered. I wrote down a few bullets and organized them into buckets for our presentation. It wasn’t until I was almost through explaining our full strategy behind this request that I thought to myself “damn, Rach, this is pretty robust”. The obsessive focus I put on this idea over the past year formulated this cohesive strategy pretty much on its own. Granted, I have been doing the work around it, but it somehow keeps evolving into something bigger and better every day.
Now, here’s my second piece of advice because its not like this strategy came out of thin air: always look for opportunities to move that idea forward. Through my networking in our industry, my idea has shifted and morphed into many different moving pieces, but my one thing still remains my one thing when it boils down to the root of those moving pieces. I ask myself if this “yes” or this connection I am making will contribute to my overall mission. If it does, I don’t waste any time debating it and go for it.
An important note I want to make on this is that these moving pieces need to be prioritized for your bandwidth. Not all of my moving pieces are handled by me personally. I have made sure to get others on board with the same passion so we can work towards something together for the greater good. I found this to be difficult at first, but what I think it comes down to is the type of energy you put out into the world. Good will always find good – maybe not at first, but eventually it does.
With so much positive vibes from last week, I am starting to feel that excitement of jumping out of bed for work in the morning. I thought I knew what it meant, but I think I’m only just touching the tip of the iceberg here. There is so much drive and passion I have to offer the world and it’s such a great feeling to pour that into my everyday work. I just hope I can inspire you to do the same with your life, your career, and your mission. Go get em, tiger.
