How different can a leader be and still have influence?

Organisations often say they want leaders who think differently, challenge established ways of working and bring new ideas.

But difference creates an interesting dilemma.

A leader can bring exactly the challenge an organisation needs, but if their ideas aren’t accepted or people stop listening to them, how much influence can they really have?

At the other extreme, a leader can become highly accepted and influential by learning how things work and what will land. But if they adapt too much to the existing system, they may end up reinforcing the very patterns the organisation needs to change.

Somewhere between the two is what my colleague Sonia Tallarida and I describe as leading at the edge.

It is the ability to bring difference while building and retaining enough acceptance for that difference to have influence.

Difference and acceptance

One way we make sense of this is through a framework we call the Gravity Map.

It has two axes:

• Difference: how much change they bring.
• Acceptance: how much of it the system takes up.

Together, these create four different relationships between a leader and the organisational system.

Someone can become absorbed, where their difference becomes hidden as they adapt to the system.

They can become settled or sustaining, highly accepted and effective within the existing system, but bringing relatively little difference to it.

They can be ejected, bringing difference without acceptance. Their ideas may not be taken up, regardless of their content, and relationships can begin to fracture around them.

Or they can operate at the edge, bringing difference while retaining enough acceptance for the organisation to engage with it.

These aren’t four types of people. They describe the relationship between a person and a system at a particular point in time.

Someone at the edge in one organisation may be comfortably within the norm in another. People can also move between the zones as they change, the organisation changes, or the way they work with the organisation changes.

Difference isn’t enough

It can be tempting to think that organisations evolve because courageous people challenge the status quo.

Challenge matters, but challenge alone doesn’t necessarily create change.

Someone can see what needs to change and be willing to say what others aren’t saying. But if people stop listening to them, their ability to influence becomes limited.

The opposite can happen too. Someone can become very good at navigating the organisation. They understand how things work, what will land and how to gain acceptance. But if gaining that acceptance means hiding or letting go of the difference they once brought, the organisation loses something too.

At the edge, the leader is doing both: bringing something different and maintaining enough acceptance for the system to engage with it.

Acceptance doesn’t mean everyone agrees with them or that what they’re proposing feels comfortable. Trust, credibility and relationships can help a leader maintain acceptance even when they are challenging established thinking.

Leading at the edge therefore requires more than having the courage to speak up. It requires the ability to work with the system you are trying to influence.

Changing the temperature

One way to think about leading at the edge is as adjusting the temperature in a room.

• If the temperature isn’t right and you simply put on another jumper, you’ve adapted yourself to the environment. The room hasn’t changed.
• At the other extreme, turning the thermostat up dramatically may cause people to react to the sudden discomfort rather than engage with the change.
• Leading at the edge is about being able to shift the temperature while paying attention to how the room is responding.

This isn’t about making change less ambitious or keeping everyone comfortable. Organisations sometimes need significant change, and discomfort can be part of it.

It is about how you create movement.

A leader working at the edge may need to translate an unfamiliar idea into language the organisation can hear. They may need to build relationships and alliances that give an idea greater credibility, or judge when to push and when to give people time to adjust.

They can also learn to read resistance differently. Resistance isn’t necessarily evidence that the idea is wrong, or that the organisation is simply resistant to change. It can tell us something about where the system’s edge currently is and what may be needed to move it.

Be careful what you develop out of people

The Gravity Map also raises an important question about leadership development.

When someone operates differently from established leaders, it is easy to focus on what they need to change.

Be more diplomatic. Develop more executive presence. Be more decisive. Manage stakeholders better.

Some of that feedback may be useful. Bringing difference doesn’t excuse poor judgement or ineffective behaviour.

But we also need to ask:

Are we helping this person become more effective at bringing what the organisation needs, or are we teaching them to become more like the organisation we already have?

If development increases someone’s acceptance by removing the very difference the organisation needs, we may simply be moving them away from the edge.

Development might instead help them become more skillful at working with their difference. This could include learning to read the system, build alliances, translate their ideas, pace challenge and understand when to push and when to wait.

The aim isn’t to help them fit better. It is to help them have greater influence without losing what they uniquely bring.

The organisation has a role, too

There is a danger in making leading at the edge entirely the individual’s responsibility.

If an organisation says it wants more innovation or candour, but people lose acceptance whenever they challenge established thinking, better influencing skills will only take them so far.

The organisation also affects where the edge sits and who is able to work there.

Senior leaders can sponsor people whose ideas may initially be unfamiliar. Managers can create space for challenge rather than rewarding only those who work comfortably within existing norms. HR and Talent professionals can notice when someone is repeatedly labelled as difficult or “not ready”, and consider whether they are seeing a capability problem, or someone operating near an organisational edge.

Some of these people may not be the obvious candidates on a succession plan. They may not even have a formal leadership title.

But they may already be doing important leadership work.

In the next article, we’ll explore how to recognise these leaders in waiting, and what we can do to help them thrive.

This article is part 3 of a series reflecting our conversation at the recent Melbourne Talent Meetup , written by Sonia Tallarida and Megumi Miki . Please follow/connect/like/comment if you’d like to see the next few articles which will expand this thinking further.