Influence and Command

Mastering the Balance: Leveraging Influence and Command for Impactful Leadership

Directors must be good at influence, since as your team grows bigger and your impact grows larger, command is no longer scalable. This is because a pure-command management style breaks down in two ways - firstly, a director’s scope is beyond that of his team, but instead that of a company. A director who solely relies on command chain to drive impact is just a glorified senior manager. Therefore, for the director to succeed, there will inevitably be people that you will need to direct that you have no command over. Secondly, command is expensive both in the usage of the director’s time as well as team morale costs, and it is impossible to drive a large number of people with command alone over the long run.

That being said, command, when used right, is very powerful, and there are times when command is not only optimal, but necessary to hit your goal.

Why is this the case? At the heart of it, it’s due to how these methods drive direction.

Command is direct power, often prescriptive, and as a result, scales poorly as the number of people grow. Additionally, command tends to be a goodwill-destroying action, and with repeated use it not only becomes less effective, but over time will erode your intended culture. However, command is very efficient when the number of people you need to direct is small, since there’s less “fixed costs” with using it. I.e. command looks like an operations company - the fixed costs are relatively low, but the variable costs are quite high and grows over time.

Influence, on the other hand, is soft power. It’s rarely prescriptive, but is highly scalable due to its softness. Additionally, when used correctly, it can be a goodwill-building action, and can help entrench the culture that you are building on your team. However, influence takes time to build, and it is a thing that you will need to intentionally invest in to be able to use at a high level of efficiency. I.e. influence looks like a software company - the fixed costs are very high, but the variable costs are very low, and can shrink over time.

To decide when to use command versus influence, the context matters a lot. The three questions to consider are:

1. What are you trying to direct? Command tends to work better for tactical, adhoc directives, and when you haven’t used command to direct recently. Pushing a larger, strategic initiative via command alone rarely ever works.

2. How much influence do you have today, and do you have a way to grow it? Due to the high fixed cost of influence, if you are not effective enough today, this might not even be a choice. Understanding how to evaluate your influence and being intentional about growing it will make this a more powerful lever.

3. Do you have the right environment for influence to be effective? While command works in all conditions, influence relies on a healthy environment and culture. If you do not have these in the moment, influence may not work. However, using command in these environments can create a death spiral for the culture of the team.

Overall, the top directors (and top managers aspiring to be directors) want to be very intentional with growing influence, and when they are choosing to use influence versus command. For directors this is one of the most important skills they have - a director with no influence is a useless director after all.

How Command and Influence Works