Pre-read 3: The Law of Influence
Leadership is influence. Nothing more, nothing less. A title makes people comply. Influence makes them follow.
The standard first: influence without authority
Cohen and Bradford wrote the standard book on this. It starts from a simple fact of work life: most of the people you need something from do not report to you. Their model is based on exchange. Everyone at work values certain things: recognition, resources, information, help with their own goals, less risk. Influence means offering something the other person actually values. To do that, you must know what they value. And to know that, you must pay attention to them as a person with goals, not as a blocker with a job title.
French and Raven give the career view. They list the types of power a person can have. Two of them matter here. Positional power means "you must, because I am the boss." Expert power means "you should, because I am right." Both stop working at some point. The type that lasts is referent power: people follow you because of who you are to them, and because following you went well before. A senior engineer's career is largely a slow move from expert power to referent power.
The Staff engineer world makes it concrete. Tanya Reilly's Staff pillars (big-picture thinking, execution, and leveling up others) and every published Staff+ career ladder describe scope that grows through influence, not through headcount. Nobody gives a Staff engineer an org. They collect followers over time.
The law behind the standard
Maxwell's definition of leadership is one word: influence. He lists common myths about leadership, and two of them run most tech companies. The management myth: having reports means you are leading. (It only means you have reports.) The knowledge myth: being right means you are leading. (Being right is useful, but it is not influence.) If people only move when you use your title or prove you are right, you are not leading yet.
On your track
- IC (Staff/Principal): the Staff track IS this law. Getting four teams to adopt an API standard, with zero authority over any of them, is a pure influence problem. It is also the actual job.
- Lead/EM: a title makes people comply. It does not make them follow. A team that does what you say and nothing more is telling you that your influence is empty.
The story: the staff engineer pattern
People like Jeff Dean steer companies with zero direct reports. Whole technical directions at Google moved because engineers trusted his judgment enough to follow it by choice. No org chart explains that power. The Staff+ role exists across the industry because companies learned that their most important leaders are not always managers.
Before the session
Come with one question this reading left you with. Starting points:
- Who follows you when you have no authority to make them? Who should, but does not?
- Think of the one person you most need to move. What do you have that they actually value (in the Cohen and Bradford sense)?