“How do I get more influence at work without playing politics?”
This is one question I hear often from clients navigating their leadership challenges. It's a good question, especially for people who have done the work, built the expertise, and still find themselves wondering why some people seem to get more authority, more trust, and more room to move. I was one of those people often left wondering why I was not more influential than some of my peers.
This is what I now know for sure: Influence is often misunderstood.
Many professionals think influence comes from having the right title, being in the right meetings, managing a bigger team, or being louder in the room.
But in my experience, influence grows when people trust your judgment.
And trust in your judgment is built slowly, through how you work, how you communicate, how you recover from mistakes, and how much emotional load you remove from the people around you.
Yes, you read correctly. Emotional load. That part matters more than most people realise.
A senior leader does not only delegate work. They delegate worry.
When my manager, my board, or a client said, “I don’t need to worry about this because Renata has it covered,” that's when I knew my influence had already started to grow.
Here are 6 ways to expand your influence, especially if you are an experienced professional wanting to be seen as more senior, more strategic, and more trusted.
1. Become known for delivering
Influence rarely comes from tenure alone.
You may have been in your organisation for ten years. You may have deep technical expertise. You may know the history, the systems, and the stakeholders.
But influence grows when people associate you with outcomes.
That means you become known as someone who can take ownership of a problem and move it forward.
Not perfectly. But reliably.
This is where many professionals underestimate themselves. They think their work speaks for itself. It usually doesn’t.
You need to make the value of your work visible.
That does not mean self-promotion in a loud or awkward way. It means helping people understand what changed because of your contribution.
Instead of saying:
“I managed the stakeholder process.”
Say:
“I brought together competing stakeholder views, reduced the approval timeline, and helped the team move from disagreement to decision.”
That is influence language.
If you're a client, you have seen this in detail inside my client platform. The way we tell stories about our work is crucial to our ability to influence. It connects your work to business outcomes, risk reduction, decision-making, momentum, and trust.
2. Reduce the stress around you
This is one of the most underrated ways to build influence.
Senior people are usually carrying too much. Too many decisions. Too many risks. Too many people needing something from them.
The professionals who become influential are often the ones who reduce noise rather than add to it.
They don’t hide problems. They don’t pretend everything is fine. But they bring structure.
They say:
“Here is the issue.”
“Here are the options.”
“Here is my recommendation.”
“Here is where I need your input.”
That kind of communication is incredibly valuable.
Many professionals bring their manager a problem and wait for the manager to solve it. Influential professionals bring the problem, the context, and a path forward.
This is especially important if you are trying to be seen as ready for a more senior role.
At senior levels, your job is not only to do the work. It is to absorb ambiguity, make sense of complexity, and help others move through it.
3. Earn autonomy before you ask for it
A common frustration I hear from clients is:
“I want more autonomy, but my manager keeps checking everything.”
Sometimes that is a management issue. But sometimes it is a trust issue.
Autonomy is usually earned in small moments before it is formally granted.
You earn it when you:
- Follow through.
- Communicate early.
- Flag risks before they become crises.
- Take responsibility instead of explaining things away.
- Earn it when people see that you know which decisions you can make independently and which ones need escalation.
That last point is important.
Autonomy does not mean disappearing and surprising people later.
It means knowing how to operate with judgment.
The person who says, “I’ve handled this, and here is what I considered,” builds more trust than the person who says nothing until the deadline has passed.
4. Be easy to back
Yes, influence is about competence. But it's also about character.
What I mean by that is that people are more likely to give you opportunities, recommend you, sponsor you, and bring you into important conversations when they feel safe backing you.
That means they trust both your work and your behaviour.
They know you won’t embarrass them.
They know you won’t blame others when something goes wrong.
They know you won’t take all the credit when things go well.
They know you will represent the team, the organisation, and yourself well.
This is where humility becomes a career advantage.
Not the kind of humility that makes you invisible. I am not suggesting you downplay your achievements!
I mean the kind of humility that allows you to say:
“I learned something from that.”
“The team made this possible.”
“I should have handled that differently.”
“Here is what I will do next time.”
Those statements build credibility.
They make you more relatable, which is way better than being more impressive. A lot of people forget that, and that's when telling your story becomes icky. It's when your story is not relatable enough.
Being relatable also shows maturity. And maturity is one of the quiet signals people look for when deciding who gets more influence.
5. Build influence by giving it away
One of the biggest mistakes I see ambitious professionals make is holding too tightly to their own authority.
They finally get trusted with something important, and then they become the bottleneck.
They keep all the decisions. They review every detail. They don’t let others grow.
That may feel safe in the short term, but it limits your influence.
If you want to be seen as more senior, you need to show that your impact can scale through others.
This means developing people.
It means delegating with clarity.
It means letting others take the lead, while you create the conditions for them to succeed.
A good question to ask yourself is:
“Who is getting better because they work with me?”
That question matters.
Leaders who expand the capability of others become more valuable than leaders who simply protect their own patch.
6. Keep proving you can be trusted
Influence is not a one-time achievement.
You don’t earn it once and keep it forever.
You have to keep demonstrating judgment, consistency, and self-awareness.
This is especially true when you move into a new role or organisation. Many experienced professionals assume their past achievements will automatically transfer into credibility.
They don’t.
Your track record gets you in the room.
Your behaviour in the room builds your influence.
That means staying curious, asking better questions, learning the new context, and resisting the temptation to say, “At my last organisation, we did it this way.”
There is nothing wrong with bringing your experience. That is why they hired you.
But influence grows faster when people feel that you are paying attention to the environment you are in now, not just relying on what worked before.
The career lesson
If you want more influence, start by asking:
Where can I reduce worry for someone else?
That question will change how you show up.
It will improve how you communicate.
It will help you position your work more strategically.
And it will make you easier to trust with more responsibility.
Influence does not always begin with a promotion.
Sometimes it begins with a sentence:
“I’ve thought this through. Here is what I recommend.”
That is often the moment people start seeing you differently.
And in a competitive job market, or inside a complex organisation, being seen as someone with sound judgment may be one of the most valuable career assets you can build.
And if you need help with this, I can help
You can book a one-on-one consultation with me anytime through my website. And if you would like to work with me during your transition, over a period of three or six months, you can book an introductory meeting to discuss what support would be right for you.
Book a 1h Consultation with Renata AUD400 (Approx. US290)
When My Clients Love an Episode, I Know I Nailed It
Episode 334 - Executive headhunter Gerard Miles explains how search firms identify, assess, and approach candidates, and what experienced professionals can do to become more visible, relevant, and memorable to the recruiters who matter.
All the clients I have seen since the episode went live have told me it was a huge eye-opener. Just as I thought, this episode is worth listening to.
Time Out:
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- We went to Manchester for a few days, and I had a lot of fun. It's a very artistic city and a very lively musical scene. It made me want to watch the Billie Eilish concert movie, directed by James Cameron and filmed in Manchester. It's on my list.
- On our way to Manchester, we stopped at Chatsworth, where they filmed Pride and Prejudice, the movie - it's Pemberley, Mr Darcy's estate. Andre got tired of me re-enacting the film and singing the theme song again and again :)
- You can follow along by following my Stories on Instagram :)
Thank you for reading this newsletter. I hope you found it useful. Reach out if you need help with your career.
Otherwise, I'll see you next week
RB
