đ Hi, this is Ryan with another post for my newsletter. I write about software engineering, big tech/startups and career growth. If you find the post helpful, please share it with your friends and coworkers. Enjoy!
As engineers grow more senior, they tend to have more impact by influencing others. You can achieve more through collaboration than you can alone.
Many companies hide engineering levels and titles. To influence others, youâll need to rely on more than just your place in the hierarchy. All influence without authority is based on one simple concept:
Dale Carnegie: âThe only way on earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get itâ
It sounds simple but thereâs a lot to it in practice. Hereâs a breakdown of how it applies when getting other teams to prioritize your projects.
Understanding What Others Want
The most straightforward way to understand what others want is to learn what their teamâs goals are. You can find this in their teamâs plan doc. In it, you should see the motivation behind their roadmap or the metrics they are trying to move.
This is one of the fastest ways to understand what they want. A side benefit is that you can influence whole teams rather than just individuals through these motives. Learning these should be sufficient for getting most of your projects prioritized.
In some cases, itâs helpful to also understand the motives of individuals. Every person is different so itâs hard to generalize but here are some examples:
Personal Interest & Learning - some people pick up projects because they are interested or want to learn new skills
Career Growth - some people are eager to take on opportunities that will advance their careers
Making Life Easier - some people want to save time or prevent annoying breakages (e.g. one of the motivations for this project was the high maintenance cost of the old pipeline)
Showing Them How To Get It
To get another team to prioritize your project, you need to explain how it will help them get what they want. Here are two tactics that have worked well for me:
Convincing with data - Show them how your project will move metrics they care about. Queries showing how big the opportunity is can go a long way.
Establishing credibility - Your past results, domain expertise, or relationships with the other team should give them some reason to work with you. Credibility makes it a lot easier to influence others.
Convincing with data is my personal favorite since data speaks for itself. If someone comes to me with proof that their project will achieve my teamâs goals, Iâll prioritize it even if I just met them.
Always Look for âWin-Winsâ
Some think this advice is manipulative. However, focusing on helping people get what they want is mutually beneficial. Youâre just explaining the benefits of your suggestions in terms of what they care about.
That is also why it isnât always possible to influence others. If thereâs nothing in your project that they want, then you wonât be able to sell it no matter how good you are.
When influencing others, remember to be tactful. If you upset people while trying to convince them they wonât work with you (even if youâre right):
Samuel Butler: âA man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion stillâ
If youâd like to learn more about influence, you can start by reading âHow to Win Friends and Influence Peopleâ by Dale Carnegie. However, an even better place to learn is through experience. Try speaking about your projects in terms of what others want and see how they respond.
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Thanks for reading,
Ryan Peterman
Influence can be seen as the result of trust your team has towards you. This trust is not built through some secret, 5-step framework but by the compounding result of small actions you bake into your process.
Listen to people, help them, and work towards mutual instead of personal goals, such as a successful release, a new feature, or a refactoring.
Great stuff, Ryan! đ
what tool do you use to draw the diagrams?