Reflecting power - using power you don't have

What do you do when you don’t have the authority to accomplish your goals? To answer that, I’d like to talk today about a concept I called Reflected Power.

What is Reflected Power?

The main idea with Reflected Power is that you use the power of the people above you. You reflect off of their authority. This allows you to proxy the power of the people further up in the organization, to achieve your organizational goals. You are basically using the power you don’t have as if you did have it.

I’m sure a lot of people use this approach, but I never had anybody really articulate it to me. So I had to figure it out myself. So today I hope to go into some detail about how to use Reflected Power.

Direct actions and Influencing Actions

When can use you Reflected Power? First of all, you have to identify that it is a situation that requires it.

Diana Larsen taught me a wonderful way to break this down. I’m definitely paraphrasing, but here is how I remember it:

Can you directly control the situation?

• Then take direct action.

Can you influence the outcome?

• Then take an influencing action.

Is it outside of your influence and control?

• Then don’t worry about it.

Influencing actions are a different class of actions than direct actions. Usually people can influence more than they realize.

Some direct actions might be:

• Create a plan and share it.
• Prioritize the work.
• Ask someone that reports to you to work on something.

Some influencing actions:

• Suggest to someone that they prioritize something.
• Share an observation with someone.
• Ask someone for help.

Influencing actions are actions for things not within your direct control. But they are within someone else’s direct control. Reflected Power is an example of using an influencing action.

So when you see that it is outside your direct authority, but someone in a position of authority could be influenced to lend you their authority, that’s Reflected Power.

How to use Reflected Power

The basic move is just to ask them.

Here are some examples:

• You can ask your manager to kick off the project publicly, so everyone has the organizational context, and your project is “blessed” as a priority.
• You can ask them to give you a temporary role or title.
• You can ask them to show up at a meeting to show it’s important.
• You can ghost write an email for them, and ask them to edit it and send it off.

If you lack the positional authority for something that is important to the organization and your manager, think through some options, and ask them.

Cost of using Reflected Power

The leader you’re reflecting power off of needs to be aligned with you and view this as important.

Ideally, it isn’t a lot of effort, and they will feel good about doing something to help make the situation better.

It does need to be clear that it is a good use of their time. And the greater the amount of work you’re asking of them, the more important it needs to be.

Do be careful not to overuse this. It’s a valuable tool for your toolbox, and something that can make you way more effective. But there is a cost to it.

Hierarchical thinking can limit us

Sometimes we get stuck in hierarchical thinking, and we think of delegation as something that always flows downhill. It can be a useful perspective to imagine the world from your boss’ perspective, or from the CEO’s perspective. Often you’ll notice actions that others can take that will drive the organization to benefits you aren’t able to do directly.

A lot of people either don’t ask their manager for any help. Or, they give their managers problems to solve for them.

In between these two extremes is a lot of room. Reflecting Power is often a lower level of effort from your manager, but allows you to solve a lot of the rest of the problem yourself. This can often be a much better approach.

Can be done with peers

Let’s say you are a head of product and your engineering counterpart is just really stuck in the weeds. They’re dealing with a lot of fires, and haven’t put together the plan for the architectural and technical changes that need to happen over the next year.

I wouldn’t do this unilaterally or in a sneaky way. But let’s say you’ve seen that engineering concerns tend to fall to the wayside and become surprises throughout the year. And you’d like to see a little work done on this.

You can and should talk with the head of engineering about that. One thing you could suggest is that you two do a joint presentation on the high level themes of the year, in a month. And you can work together on that presentation.

This is actually delegating laterally – you’re giving them a lot of work to do. But you’re partnering on it, and you’ve hopefully given a lot of context as to why it’s important and worthwhile.

Other forms of this might be that you’d like some help reinforcing a message to another part of the organization. You can ask that other leader to reflect that to their org.

Can be done with other leaders

Reflecting Power isn’t restricted to your own manager. You can reflect power off of the CEO, or anyone with authority or who has the respect within the organization.

One of the more brilliant examples of this I saw was when Jim Shore came in as a consultant to New Relic. He surveyed the organization and asked the product development org members who they trusted to represent them in a large organizational change. He then brought that group in as the steering group for those organizational changes. He was using reflected power – all of our reputations, in order to make the organizational change more likely to succeed.

Can be done in a networked way

If you’re trying to influence the organization in a particular direction, having a couple of supporters for a direction means it will have a large chance of happening. Let’s say you’re going into a meeting on Friday with a bunch of points of view of the direction forward. If you can talk with a few people ahead of time, and ask them to speak in favor of a particular direction at that meeting, you’ve tilted the outcome significantly.

So you can approach this in a networked way. Perhaps asking your boss to give some valuable context, and asking the Chief Architect to talk about the need for a simple solution. Doing this work ahead of time can result in your driving outcomes even though they are outside your direct control.

Creating space for others to use your power

When you’re in a position of authority, you can also make space for people to use your power. You can even encourage people to delegate work to you. (I’ve used this for equity work in the past)

Explain the types of problems you’d like to see delegated to you, and the ways they can do so. Giving you problems, versus asking to use your authority. Give concrete examples!

Conclusion

So that’s the idea of reflecting power. Let me know what you think!

Podcast on this topic

A podcast version of this post is available on Decoding Leadership:

Thank you

Craig Fecteau suggested this topic, a long while back. Thank you to Diana Larsen for the concept of “influencing action”. Thank you to the unknown person who shared the cover photo on Pixabay