Who's the Most Influential Person on Your Team? This 1 Question Will Tell You
Posted Aug 20, 2023
Once, many years ago, my parents and I watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding together. We never were a family that was big into movie nights, and I don't remember how we ended up choosing that particular movie. But to this day, I clearly remember my mother laughing hysterically at one particular line.
The main character, Toula, is upset about some decision her traditional father has made regarding her life. As a man, he insists, he is "head of the house" and gets to make the call. Toula goes crying to her mother, who responds reassuringly: "Don't you worry, I'm going to talk to him ... The man is the head, but the woman is the neck, and she can turn the head any way she wants."
My mother cackled about that line for days. My father mostly looked uncomfortable.
This story still makes me smile, but why am I sharing it in a column for entrepreneurs? Because the movie's metaphor of the head and the neck illustrates an essential business truth -- the person whom the org chart says is the most influential is often very different from the person who actually holds the most sway in real life.
Who actually knows what's going on around here?
How to tell who is the head and who is the neck in a group isn't just handy for planning an overly large wedding. It's important if you want to know who is the right person to talk to make a sale, get your idea heard, smooth over a misunderstanding, or find out what's going on behind closed doors.
You can't always find who actually wields the most influence in a workplace by looking at the org chart. That will tell who is the head, but not who is the neck. So, how do you pinpoint the member of any given team with the most influence? On Quartz recently, Bill Schaninger, Bryan Hancock, and Emily Field, the authors of a new book on middle management titled Power to the Middle, offer a suggestion.
"Identifying these high-value positions can be done through a survey with one single question: 'Who do you turn to when you want to find out what's going on around here?' Inevitably, the same names will turn up on many of the surveys," the three authors write in an excerpt from the book.
Putting informal influence to use
It's one simple question, but it reliably reveals the person with the everyday influence, they insist. And that's valuable in at least three ways. First, if you want an idea to spread, these informal influencers can act like megaphones, broadcasting your message.
"When these people talk, other employees listen. They play a vital role that senior leaders can nurture by deliberately feeding them information that will find its way into conversations," the authors write. There's no reason you can't use these megaphones to spread messages from outside the organization, too.
For leaders, finding out who has real influence not only helps you amplify your messages, but can also potentially flag up underutilized talent. If there is a big gap between how much influence someone really has and what their job title suggests they should have, you may want to think about finding ways to nurture their career aspirations so they can maximize their talents (and will want to stick around).
Finally, if you know someone who has great persuasion and networking skills, you may be able to pair them up with top performers who are less socially savvy to multiply the impact of both parties. A shy but extremely talented engineer or designer might be more likely to get their transformative ideas implemented if they work closely with one of your team's top influencers, for example.
The full excerpt on Quartz offers a lot more on identifying and nurturing middle management talent, but just figuring out who is actually wielding the influence in an organization seems like an excellent place to start. You don't want to spend too much time and energy addressing the head when it's ultimately the neck who is calling the shots.