Scaling Your Impact as a Leader

The Network Effect of a Good Leader

A friend, who is a Sr. Director at a Fortune 500 told me one day, “I always seem to be accumulating people I have to talk to, my 1:1s always keep increasing, I keep adding mentees to my calendar..”

I thought about this, and came to formalize a framework I subconsciously was deploying to solve this for myself. I told him..

“You don’t need more you-s, you need to empower the more senior mentees in your network to become mentors of the more junior ones. You free up your own time, your senior mentees get a growth opportunity and junior ones get a fresh perspective”.

This very simple idea is applicable across the entirety of our networks as a leader - not just mentees. Say, a manager M has a network of Direct reports (D), Partners (P), XFN connections (X), Leadership relationships (L). It is natural to start with direct edges to these stakeholders. Direct edges can manifest themselves as 1:1s, being the PoC for important items these people bring to the table, being the decision maker about those initiatives, being the driver of next steps etc.

The Fallacy Now, the more M’s influence grows the more edges M will stack up. It won’t be long before M is peanut buttering their time across these multitude of efforts. Overtime, their Direct Reports (Ds) will feel isolated and less empowered to make decisions and take big leaps, and M will run into doing everything themselves, all the time AND being very subpar at it because they are spread too thin!

The Fix Phew that felt exhausting. Intentional leaders scale themselves and their teams by creating network effects. For instance, they give context, and empower their direct reports to take on part of their responsibilities in managing other junior reports, brokering partnerships, fostering leadership connections, and building XFN relationships. This frees up M’s time to grow other parts of their network, and have impact in areas underserved currently. But more importantly, it gives M’s team a chance to grow, feel empowered and trusted by their leader!

So, it’s always worth asking yourself “Am I creating the best network effect I can?”