The transition to senior leadership demands that your greatest wins come from influencing peers, partners, and stakeholders who do not report to you.
You cannot command them, and you should not resort to political games. You need an approach built on genuine leverage. I call this Co-Elevation.
Co-Elevation is the art of making the success of your peer contingent upon the success of your initiative; and doing so transparently, through shared purpose.
Influence is Architecture, Not Arm-Twisting:
1. Map the Incentives, Not the Titles: As I learned firsthand, stop looking at the org chart. Look at the P&L. What are your peer VPs measured on? Your goal is to show how your project accelerates their key metric.
2. Find the Shared Cathedral: Use the Stonecutter Principle. Your project is the wall. What is the larger corporate vision (the cathedral) that both your wall and their wall are building together? Always frame your ask within that grand, shared vision.
3. Trade Resources, Not Favours: Influence built on personal favours is weak. Influence built on institutional trading is strong. Be explicit: "If your team delivers on Milestone A, my team will allocate our data scientists to solve Challenge B for you, which I know is a priority for your quarter."
This creates genuine accountability, not forced compliance. When you focus on lifting the entire system, or co-elevating, you build a reputation as a leader who connects disparate parts to achieve the strategic whole.
Download The Executive Presence Blueprint, your step-by-step guide to mastering the architecture of influence and gravitas.
Former senior leader in a FTSE100 organisation, now executive coach specialising in leadership transformation through NLP, hypnosis, and state management. I believe my clients are already resourceful—my job is to help them access it.
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