 Hello, everyone. Welcome to the session, unleashing your influence as a PM. Today, we're going to learn effective strategies for leading without authority. I hope you like it. Okay, let's start with a little bit of background about myself. I'm José Romero. I'm a technical product manager at Amazon, and I've been working as a product manager for over 10 years. I have 20 years of experience working in cloud technologies and technology in general, and along with this experience and some research, that's what I've used to prepare the material for the session today. All right, let's dive into the agenda. We will start with reviewing a little bit of the definition of what is leading without authority. Then we're going to review some of the scenarios in which we need to lead without authority. Then after that, we're going to go through the common framework, or what I call a common framework, that you can use to lead effectively without any formal authority. When I say common framework, what I have seen is common in many models and frameworks out there for informal leadership, meaning leading whenever you have a formal job title. These common framework is comprised of six steps. They include understanding the mechanics, understanding the human factor, understanding the objectives. Then using this to craft a vision that you are going to use to build a network, and at the end, you're going to leverage all these steps into maximizing your influence and the impact in the organization that you're working in. Then this is not going to be easy, so let's review some of the common challenges that we're going to face. Then at the end, let's review some of the common material that you can review to learn a little bit more about this in this topic. To be all on the same page and what we're referring to when we say leading without authority means essentially that we need to influence others without having any formal job title. This is the skills that we need to get things done while collaborating across departments and divisions. We can also see this as being a leader within an organization from a lower level position or when we're working in organizations where there is a flat hierarchy. Pretty straightforward, but it's important to be all on the same page. Now that we're on the same page of what's leading without authority, let's review three of the common scenarios in which we need to use this leadership. The first one is whenever you're working on a project that requires collaboration between different teams or sections of the organization. This means you're maybe working on IT or you're working on marketing and you need to collaborate to get things done with another department like sales. The other scenario that's pretty common is whenever you're trying to implement a new technology or a new process that is not very well understood by others. This is especially if you're working on, say, a new technology from the sales perspective or from the marketing perspective or from the IT perspective. The pure technological aspect of the organization is going to be very difficult to get things done without having to buy in from other departments. So that's not the common scenarios. And then the last scenario is when you need to change the culture or the way of working within the organization. It doesn't matter the size or the structure of that organization. Whenever you require to have a significant change on how that organization works, that's when most likely you are going to need to lead without authority. Well, now that we know the common scenarios in which we may need to lead without authority, I'm pretty sure you can name a couple of other scenarios. Let's go into what I call the common framework. Now, this common framework is essentially the summary of different models and different frameworks that I found out there. And they all have in common these six steps or phases of building an effective network for influencing change in an organization. So you can review the practice framework, the five levels of leadership, the servant leadership model. They're all different frameworks or models that have been created by different authors through history. So if you review all of them, you'll find the common scenario in which you need to go through understanding the mechanics, understanding the human factor, understanding what are the objectives of the organization. And then you learn to use this to craft a vision that is going to be compelling enough for you to build a network. And it's this network where you are going to leverage to maximize your influence and your impact. And by maximizing your influence, you can effectively lead without any formal authority. The first step is understanding the dynamics, understanding and observing the context in which you're working and how this organization operates. This will help you understand how the power balances are divided within that organization so that you can identify opportunity areas and use this knowledge to develop an effective strategy. The first thing is to understand the organization, the industry and how the organization works within the different teams and understanding the environment. Then you need to learn the formal and informal power structures by observing how people relate to each other, how people listen, how people speak and most importantly, learning the culture of this organization. Every single organization has a distinct culture and this is something that is super critical and important to be able to develop an effective strategy for leadership without any formal authority. And then at the end, you need to understand the rules and regulations of the market. So let me pause here and this is something that I'm going to do through this presentation. I'm going to use a fictional company in a meat-sized market that is working on the healthcare business. So for you to understand the mechanics and the dynamics of that organization, first you need to understand the company size, the market cap, what is the specific market they're serving or the sub-markets verticals within that market, then each they're occupying the competitor landscape and understanding pretty much every aspect of that market. Then you need to understand also the regulations because all those things are going to be essential for you to understand how this organization is making decisions. So in this healthcare industry, in this fictional company, it's going to be different to operate and to lead and to communicate as it is to work on, for instance, the financial market. So let's understand these differences, these nuances, and let's use this to build an effective strategy that we're going to review in the next steps. Once you know the context on where you're working, the mechanics, it is important to understand the most important resource in any organization, which is the human factor, how to motivate them and how to get the best out of them. It is going to be essential for any type of leader, even more so for when you need to lead without any formal authority. This means having the ability to listen, empathize, and understand the needs and goals of each individual. Of course, in large organizations, this is going to be a challenge, but you need to get to know a representative sample of the multiple roles, the multiple departments, the multiple teams that compose this organization to understand their behavior and the motivators. So there are three steps that you can follow to understand the human factor. First one is get to know those around you and develop a relationship with them. As I said before, this is going to be a challenge when it comes to medium and large organizations. So you need to get to know people from different teams and different roles, different layers within that organizational structure, and not necessarily get to know every single one of them, but use a good amount of people that is statistically representative and a good sample from the complex organization. Then spend some time talking to them and knowing the personal goals and the motivators. What makes them tick? What makes them get up every day and go to work? What is motivating them, right? Beyond the organization, they have things that are important for them and these things that are important are essential for you to understand what they are trying to achieve. And once you know what they are trying to achieve, you can move into the last step on this phase, which is recognize their achievements and progress towards the personal goals. This can be done only if you have a good relationship with them and you have a good understanding of their personal goals and motivators. It's going to be impossible to recognize someone if you don't get to know them personally. So it is important for you to focus in the two steps to be able to leverage the third step. And this step is going to be key because this step is going to start framing you as a leader. Recognizing their achievements and progress towards the goals of the persons starts framing you as a leader because any leader recognizes this. Has the ability to understand the goals and the duties of each one of the persons within the organization and takes time to recognize the progress towards those goals or if those goals have been achieved. So this is super important and key. So far, you understand the context of the organization. That's what we did in the first step. In the second step, we spent time understanding the human factor. Once we know those two things, it is key for us to move into the third step or the third phase, the third common phase in most of the frameworks requires to understand the organizational objectives. This means that you need to understand the goals of the organizations and how these are framed to every single person within that organization. And also, by doing this, we will understand how these goals are aligned to the mission and the vision of this organization. To achieve this, we are going to tap into any goals that are documented in any level of the organization or in any part of the multiple teams. And then we're going to spend some time speaking about these goals and validate them with executives, with managers, and most importantly with employees. It is important for us to understand if the employees and managers and executives have the same understanding of the goals of the organization and what they mean for their particular team or their particular role. Once we know this, it is important for us to understand how other leaders bring these goals to you, to your position and to your team because this is going to be key for you to frame these goals to other parts of the organization. So you're going to leverage the goals and how they're documented. Once you validate them, once you speak about these goals with other executives and managers within other organizations, you're going to observe how those leaders speak about these goals and you can also understand about these goals by attending meetings and by discussing this with them one-on-one. So this requires time and investing time and going back into understanding this. So let's make a stop here and let's go back to this fictional company in the healthcare system, right, in the healthcare market. So it is important for me as an employee within this organization to do some research. Maybe there's an internal portal that I can read and learn the goals in the different levels of the organization from top to bottom. And if this is a public company, we can find these goals. Sometimes they are shared within the investors' portals. Or if this is a private company, maybe a wiki, internal wiki, internal documentation, sharepoints. There is material that the leaders within this organization, formal leaders within this organization have taken time to disseminate. So it is now time for you to take time in turn and understand these goals because this is going to leverage the next step. And this step is crafting a vision. Crafting a vision is one of the most important parts on this framework or this model, which pretty much, as I said before, any framework and models follow. And when you know the context of where you're working, the organization, and then you know the human factor as well as the goals, you understand how pretty much everyone within that organization is working and contributing towards achieving those goals. And this is going to be key for us to craft a vision. We need to define and articulate an end goal of what we're trying to accomplish. We mentioned before that sometimes you are trying to get a project implemented or you are trying to implement a new technology or you are trying to collaborate within different parts of the organization. So now that you understand these last three steps, you are going to craft a vision, understanding those three previous steps and crafting a vision that is going to be aligned to getting things on for that project or getting things on for that new technology or getting things on across departments within that organization. So it has to be aligned. It has to be relevant for those organizational goals, but at the same time has to be compelling, achievable, and actionable. It is not going to be something that you can create that is going to be super, super in the future that cannot be achieved because then it will be less compelling and less attractive for other parts of the organization. Once you have this vision, make sure that it's clearly and consistently communicated across different teams because when different teams that have listened and that are familiar with your vision are speaking to each other without you being present, they are going to validate this vision and they're going to share what is in common between them and therefore reinforcing or aligning with your vision at the same time. So it is key for this to tailor this vision to the different audiences. You are going to craft this vision in a different way and communicating a different way for the sales department than the way that you are going to communicate this to the human resources department. And it is also important to build this vision working with other leaders on that organization. So if we go back to this fictional company that we were talking about before in the healthcare industry, you need to go and have some communication with sales department and then with marketing department and make sure that your vision resonates with these two departments and make sure that you build this vision working with the leaders in those departments. So this is going to, at the end of the day, allow you to create an effective and compelling vision that you can use for the next phase. And this phase is building that work. Team up and create a network of people that you are going to use to maximize your influence across the organization. So far, we have gone through the steps of understanding the context of the organization, of course, then understanding the human factor, the people behind that organization and then we reviewed the goals. With this knowledge, we created a vision that we're going to disseminate and we're going to use to create a network. This is the network of people that is going to allow you to influence and reach different parts of the organization. And you're going to leverage the knowledge in previous phases to build this effective network. And what's building a network versus just having contacts in different parts of the organization? Well, building a network means that you can access someone from sales and communicate something compelling to sales, knowing that even people from marketing will hear from this or will at some point have a touch point on this that you have communicated to sales. And even though they are in different parts of the organization, they're going to be aligned and you can reach different parts of the organization indirectly by using this network. And for this, it's going to be key for you to engage with different departments and make meaningful collections with colleagues. At some point, you understood what makes people tick, what is important for them, and you have spent some time getting to know them. Now, it is important to maximize these connections with colleagues and effectively partner with other programs and other projects. This will allow you to build momentum into your projects by leveraging other projects as well. And of course, you have to help them with your own resources to achieve their goals. And by associating and by aligning different efforts within different parts of the organization, you are going to maximize your influence. And when you're building a network, it's important for you to understand if you need to refine the previous steps of your influence framework, meaning by building a network, you are going to get to know people more deeply and maybe you are going to change those previous understandings that you had in previous steps like getting to know the human factor or getting to know the goals and maybe upgrading any knowledge that you had in these parts of the organization. And we finally arrived to the last phase of the influence framework in which you are going to lead without authority by maximizing your influence and using the network that you built and the vision that is compelling and that is effective for you to communicate to other parts of the organization and make a compelling case on your product or your project on your new technology, understanding that this new technology or project aligns to the goals of the greater good, of the greater organization. So for this is going to be key to create and maintain consistent channels of communication, meet consistently and often to ensure that you can create and foster this network and use it every now and then to get things done. Sell your vision to new parts of the organization and make sure that this vision that you are communicating is effective and is compelling to other parts of the organization. So by doing this, you are going to ensure that you can maximize your impact and your influence. So if we go back to this example of the company, Midsize Company within the healthcare industry, you are going to be able to effectively influence other parts of the organization without any formal authority by leveraging this network that we created and maximizing our impact by using the vision. So you have your vision, you go back and communicate other parts of sales or other parts of the IT department. By communicating this vision, you are also going to make sure that the goals that you are trying to achieve are consistently aligned to the goals of those other teams. And at any point, you need to understand and go back and refine previous parts of this framework. So it's going to be key to refresh this vision, to build a new parts of this network. So this is an ongoing effort. This is not the end of the line, but the beginning of using everything you did so far to influence without formal authority. And of course, this is not going to be easy. We're going to face many challenges. So let's go and review some of these common challenges. So the first challenge, the first common challenge that we're going to face highly likely is going to be resistance to change. And this is a natural reaction to any significant change in the way that we do things. Of course, the greater the change, the greater the resistance. So it is important for us to understand that this is something that we're going to face, no matter what, and start thinking on ways to overcome this. If you're in a meeting and you identify that you're facing some resistance to change that is natural and inherent of any organization in any system, you need to have effective strategies under your sleeve so that you can use them at your discretion. And you can overcome resistance to change through different multiple ways. I'm going to talk about the main two that I can notice or that I have noticed in the past. And one is focusing on the benefits. Whenever you are communicating, make sure that you highlight the benefits that this change is going to bring for this person. This can mean better processes, better job satisfaction, or increased customer satisfaction. And this can be a benefit for the person or for the team or for the particular part of that organization. So focus on the benefits and highlight the benefits often. Also, it is important for you to incentivize the people that is working in your project or that is collaborating with you. So provide support and incentives such as rewards of recognition. This doesn't have to be monetary. This doesn't have to be something of value other than recognition. We were able to achieve this because this person in this organization is helping us. As we said before, it is important for leaders to recognize others. So it is important for you when you are trying to live without authority to incentivize and to recognize people that is not necessarily reporting to you. And this can be done in presentations, in communication. When you are speaking in meetings, take some time to incentivize people and to highlight the benefits. And this is a way in which you can overcome resistance to change. Now, the next challenge comes from within. One of the most common challenges that I have seen not only on myself, but in other persons, in other leaders that I have observed on my experience is imposter syndrome. And I know this because I have experienced it and because I have discussed this with other people that is driving change in organizations that has the need to live without authority. So important imposter syndrome is when you have a feeling of being inadequate or under serving of accomplishments and success. You may have heard about this and it's something that we need to have in the back of our mind and identify that often. Make sure that you have this in the top of your mind that you are doing something that is actively gauging for imposter syndrome because this can be very damaging and very dangerous if we don't recognize it and we don't tackle it. So there are two things that you can do to overcome imposter syndrome. Of course, we can name many, many different ways of overcoming imposter syndrome but those are the two things that I have used in the past that I have worked for me pretty well. One is focus on the positive, remind yourself of your strengths and successes and focus on the progress and the goals that you have done so far. Acknowledge your competency and skills and remind yourself of your hard work. And of course this is going to be most effective if you share this with others. If you share the fact that you are experiencing imposter syndrome with other people they can also help you to overcome this imposter syndrome by recognizing things in you that you have achieved that probably you are neglecting. But it is also important to practice self-care and things that help you overcome imposter syndrome in conjunction with others. Teaming up to experience good feelings can help you overcome imposter syndrome. The last common challenge is ineffective communication because communication is key in order for you to use your influence. So you have a vision you have a network and you need to communicate it effectively. And if at some point you are not being effective you need to rephrase and reframe the way in which you are communicating. Be open and be honest. This means that you need to be clear on the expectations of your setting and do not assume that other people is understanding what you are communicating. I think this might be obvious but I think it's important to highlight. In any communication it's important to listen to others. Make sure that you understand others and whenever they are expressing frustrations or whenever you are living with a difficult conversation make sure that you listen and calm and being respectful and attentive to their needs. And the last part of a common challenge that I have seen is ineffective communication because we don't use the non-verbal channels. So nowadays it is even more difficult because we are not using a web camera or maybe because we are not in a face-to-face environment. So non-verbal channels body language and facial expressions are critical and important for us to understand and to communicate. So make sure that you use these non-verbal channels effectively. And with this we are reaching the conclusion. I want to leave you some of the books that I've checked in the past to understand a little bit more about living without authority. These four books are key and important on everything that I have said so far through this session. So I think it was important to acknowledge this and to invite you to read further, to research and to let me know how this session is important for you. If this session was effective if this is something that you find useful in your day-to-day work tell me about it. I want to hear about you via LinkedIn, via my webpage and with that I want to thank you for your time and invite you to stay tuned for future sessions. Thank you. Bye-bye.