Relationships are a Leader's main currency. These relationships are what allows us to accomplish goals, make the right connections, and influence decision-making. It's this network, or Power Base, that enables Leaders to succeed. Learning how to leverage and strengthen your Power Base is a learned skill that needs to be continuously refined as we progress in our career.
Why Your Power Base Is Important
No matter who your Power Base consists of, a strong network can provide three critical things to your career.
They make things happen.
These individuals are the ones who help you accomplish the required work and tasks throughout your days. They have direct influence on your work and can either help accelerate or be a barrier in the process. Having positive relationships with those who also have a strong level of power or influence can help with gaining approvals for things like additional resources, increased budget, and access to other key players.
They provide hidden opportunities.
Because of these relationships, you are exposed to new opportunities before they're publicly known. This can be referred to as the Hidden Job Market or your Opportunity Flow. This access to hidden opportunities can provide better and more exciting positions.
They provide access to information.
Having strong relationships with the right people can provide access to resources and information that others don’t have. This will help you be more prepared for upcoming challenges and opportunities, increasing your chances of success.
Evaluate Your Current Power Base
So let's begin with an evaluation of your current Power Base and your ability to maintain strong relationships and connections.
What does an ideal relationship look like? Here are a few questions you can consider starting with.
What are the top 5 criteria for creating a strong professional relationship?
How do you rate yourself in general on these criteria?
Who are people in your network that are excellent at building relationships and how can you model their behaviors and attitudes?
Who are people with whom you have already built especially strong professional relationships? How do you show up to these and what can you apply to other relationships in your network?
What traits/strengths can you leverage in building a strong network?
What traits do you have that may be a barrier in building a strong network? How can you turn this into an opportunity?
Once we have a clear image of a strong professional connection, we can then map out your current Power Base and relationships.
First, we identify the key relationships that matter. These relationships may include team members, senior leaders, peers, as well as external relationships with clients and advisors. It may even include relationships within your community and social network, depending on the type of work that needs to be done. The key thing to consider is who has the capability to influence your current work or career, either positively or negatively.
We then evaluate the current health of these relationships and rank them into categories.
Sponsor or Mentor: The individuals who advocate and promote you and your work. They actively create openings and opportunities for you.
Supporter: They support you and are willing to help.
Neutral: They do not have an opinion in either direction.
Negative: They have a negative view on your work but may be able to put their views aside for the sake of the work.
Nemesis or Blocker: The individuals who actively block your progress or oppose the work.
Not on their radar: Relationships that you want to establish but have not had the opportunity to do so.
We also consider two additional factors.
Power of Influence: How much power does this person/role have on the outcome of your work? We rank this from 1 (lowest power) to 3 (highest power).
Proximity: There are different layers of your Power Base ranging from your immediate team, senior leaders and cross-functional partners, as well as external connections.
With these details above, we can create a visual relationship map. This will help identify the relationships to focus on and effectively build a plan to strengthen and improve the connection.
Sample Relationship Map
Key To Map
In this sample map above, you'll see that each person's level of influence is indicated by the size of the box (smaller box indicates a lower level of influence) and the health of each relationship is indicated by the border color. The rings of the hexagon will indicate the proximity of the relationship. For example, the first inner yellow ring represents the client's direct team and manager. The next white ring indicates those who are one level removed, typically senior leaders, cross-functional partners, and/or clients. The outer ring then indicates the external connections such as vendors and advisors.
The goal is to target the larger boxes and turn them all green while also eliminating any red boxes on the map.
A Systematic Approach To Strengthen Key Relationships
A leader's Power Base will evolve and grow throughout his or her career and it is ideal to periodically evaluate the health of the relationships in order to strengthen the ones that are more critical to the role and work. To keep the process simple, there are 3 key steps - understand the other person, assess the relationship, and then create an action plan to strengthen the relationship.
First, let's start with how well we understand the other person. While there are a lot of aspects to understand about each person, here are a few questions to start with.
What are his or her business goals and priorities?
What are his or her personal goals and aspirations?
How would you describe his or her leadership and communication styles?
How would you rate this person's tolerance for risk?
What criteria does he or she focus on when making decisions?
What would be sure to frustrate him or her?
Second, let's assess the current relationship.
What are the frequency and quality of your current communications?
Does this person feel like you share the same goals and priorities?
Are you helping the other person succeed?
Are you bringing value to the other person?
How are you adapting to their communication and thinking styles?
Are there any current or historical issues that need to be resolved?
Third, let's put together an action plan to strengthen the relationship.
What would you like the relationship to be like in 6 months?
How can you move the relationship up one level (i.e. from neutral to supporter)?
How can you adapt to his or her style of leadership, communication, and tolerance for risk?
What business value can you offer (information, knowledge, skills, relationships)?
What else can you say or do to strengthen the relationship?
How can you use your other contacts to build the relationship?
As you finalize each action plan, be sure to assign a timeline to each item as well as a way to measure progress. Ask yourself, how will you know if the relationship has been improved?
Design Your Future Power Base
At a more advanced level, you can design a future Power Base that is intentional and strategic - one that provides you with career opportunities that match your goals and aspirations. Here's a framework that has worked well for my clients.
Design your career and/or business vision. What is your short-term and long-term goal? Consider what role you want to target next as well as the role you ultimately want to achieve.
Identify who you need to know and connect with in order to accomplish this.
Expand your network through new introductions. How can you become more visible to the individuals you need to build a relationship with? Who can you leverage in your network that can help you make that connection?
Expand your network by reconnecting with older contacts whom you may have lost touch with. You may have former colleagues or clients who have moved on to different opportunities and you can learn from and broaden your network with.
Decide how you will show up differently in each relationship in order to accomplish these goals?
Expand your network through new activities such as getting involved with advisory boards, different committees, professional development event, or industry related activities.
About HEXA Executive Search + Coaching
An McLeod is an Executive Recruiter and Executive Coach who helps high-growth companies build their leadership teams and bench strength while also preparing the leaders for continued growth and successful transitioning. With over 20 years of both in-house search leadership and external coaching experience, she focuses on critical transitional moments from search to succession planning.
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