Week 2

Evidence round

4 to 5 of you, 60 seconds each: your none-percentage and the one cut you decided to make.

Your numbers go on the board next to last week's room average.

No artifact means not done.

What question did the pre-read leave you with?

One question each, 30 seconds.

If three of you are stuck on the same thing, we slow down there. Silence means we move fast.

Being right stops working, so trade

• You read French and Raven: expert power wins a code review, it does not move four teams.
• The sign you run on expert power alone: people comply in the meeting, then stall after it.
• Which power did you use the last time you needed another team?
• The other half is exchange. People move for recognition, information, help with their own goals, less risk.
• Name the currency of the one person you most need to move. If you cannot, you have not paid attention to them yet.

Source: French and Raven; Cohen and Bradford, influence without authority

One law, both tracks

Whether you lead a team of reports or lead technical direction without reports, this law is your job description.

The IC track IS this law: scope grows through influence, not headcount.

For EMs: a title buys compliance. Compliance is not followership.

Source: Tanya Reilly, Staff pillars

Five squads, no orders

Five squads at Breadfast, including Shopping, Growth, and CX. No squad reported to another.

Formal authority never moved work across a squad boundary. What moved it was never the org chart.

Debrief: the missing names

3 to 4 pairs share one gap: someone who should follow you but does not.

Keep your map. This week's take-home starts from it.

Teach-back

One pair, 8 minutes, both speak: the framework, an owned story, and where the law breaks.

Then 7 minutes of structured discussion. Roles: one challenger, one connector, one summarizer.

Safety is built in small moments

You read Project Aristotle. Skip the definition.

The micro-moments that build or destroy it: how you answer the first question in a design review, how you react to a rollback, who speaks after the senior person speaks.

What happened the last time someone on your team said "I do not know"?

Source: Google Project Aristotle

Feedback is influence, not management

SBI and Radical Candor are in your pre-read. Tonight we use them, we do not re-explain them.

Who in this room owes someone feedback that is more than two weeks old?

Source: Kim Scott, Radical Candor

Win the person before the ask

Whether you lead a team of reports or lead technical direction without reports, the order is the same.

ICs win the skeptical senior on the other team before the RFC goes out. EMs win the person before the hard performance conversation.

Connection is the deposit. Influence is the withdrawal.

The 1:1 that changed a struggling engineer's path

A struggling engineer, months of slow output, and one conversation that finally asked about their goals instead of their tickets.

What changed things was connection, not a better plan.

Same law on the IC track: the skeptical senior you win before the RFC goes out.

Debrief: connection carries feedback

Two or three of you share what was hard, not the feedback itself.

If you could not fill three lines about their goals, look again at how your feedback reads.

Feedback travels over the connection you built, or it does not travel.

Conflict runs on interests, not positions

• A position is what they ask for. An interest is what they actually need.
• Positions collide. Interests usually leave room for a deal.
• IC: architecture disputes with no authority over the other side. EM: conflict between people on your team.

Source: interest-based negotiation (facilitator to confirm attribution)

After the decision: disagree and commit

Argue hard before the decision lands. Once it lands, support it fully.

This is a separate move: what you do after the decision, not during the argument.

Take-home: the influence map

Map your current team plus 2 adjacent stakeholders. Mark who follows you voluntarily and who follows by role. Pick the one broken relationship and write a 5-line diagnosis of the missing connection.

Counts as done: the map (Canva frame or photo) plus the 5 lines, submitted by Thursday 6pm.

Before next week

Read the one-pagers for the Law of Empowerment and the Law of Buy-In. Arrive with one question.

Tonight you earned the follow. Next Friday: can you hand over the thing only you understand?