This episode is about how to build influence in your new job, and this episode goes hand in hand with the previous 2.  I’m going to introduce you to a tool I created for myself about a decade ago in my corporate career. I call this tool 'Influence Radar' and I’m going to explain what it is and how it works - and pretty soon it’ll become obvious where the ‘radar’ name comes from. 

Here’s what’s waiting for you inside this episode

I'm going to introduce you Influence Radar, a simple but powerful tool that you can start using today to structure your approach to building a powerful network of support and influence in your new corporate role.

I created it because I knew it was important to build influence but I didn’t know where to start.  I knew it would take time and effort and without some kind of framework or tool I’d quickly lose track of what I was trying to do and it would get left behind.

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Transcript

 Her Career, Her Life podcast.
Season 1 Episode 8
How to build a powerful support network in your new job

Hello I’m Elise Finn and welcome to episode 8 of the first season in Her Career, Her Life - the podcast that helps professional women create a career and life they love.

This is a new podcast and I’m designing it in ‘seasons’ with each season focusing on solving a particular challenge in our career or life.  I dig into this challenge over several episodes and in this first season I’m focusing on the challenges and opportunities of starting a new corporate job. 

This is episode 8 and it goes hand in hand with the previous 2 episodes 6 and 7 where we’re talking about how to build influence in your new job. 

If you haven’t already listened to episodes 6 and 7 I strongly recommend that you go back and listen to them first, before diving into this episode.  They contain some really important foundational work on how to tackle the challenge of building influence, starting with what it is and how to start doing it well.

In this episode I’m going to introduce you to a tool I created for myself about a decade ago in my corporate career - I call this tool Influence Radar and I’m going to explain what it is and how it works - and pretty soon it’ll become obvious where the ‘radar’ name comes from.

Influence Radar is a simple but powerful tool that you can start using today to structure your approach to building a powerful network of support and influence in your new corporate role.

I created it because I knew it was important to build influence but I didn’t know where to start.  I knew it would take time and effort and without some kind of framework or tool I’d quickly lose track of what I was trying to do and it would get left behind.

So, over a period of a few months I designed what is now Influence Rada.  I know this approach works because I used it constantly over the years and I’ve developed and iterated it into quite a powerful tool. So I’m delighted to share the ‘light weight’ version of Influence Radar with you today - so you can take advantage of the experience I’ve built up and can jump straight into mapping your network using Influence Radar.

This way you know you have something you can use that works and has stood the test of time with me.  

So before I dive in I’d really like you to stop here and go to my website and download the Influence Radar guide that I’ve produced for you to use for free and as a companion to this episode.

It will be a lot more valuable for you to listen to this episode with the guide in front of you - so this isn’t the best episode for you to listen to if you’re multitasking - if you’re walking the dog, or at the gym or on your commute and you can’t access the guide, wait until you can before you continue listening.

So hit pause now and download my Influence Radar guide at www.elisefinn.com/podcast/episode8

And if this all sounds too complicated let me reassure you that this work is so worth it!
I made a lot of mistakes early in my career in failing to build influence ahead of when I suddenly knew I needed it.  Influence takes time to build and as I said in the previous episode you need to invest in the time up front in order to benefit from it - or as I like to say - build the well before you get thirsty.

My career really began to accelerate when I recognised the importance of - and started to invest time in building influence.  When you have a broad and deep network of support in your business and industry everything is easier and more fun.

This is a really practical and hands on exercise.  Before I jump into the details of Influence Radar let’s just check:
Have you listened to the previous 2 episodes?
Have you downloaded the Influence Radar guide?

OK - let’s get going :-)

Influence Radar isn’t an academic or theoretical model.  It’s real, hands on and simple.
It’s helped me in so many different ways - including:
It’s provided a practical framework that I’ve used to build my network over time - just in the usual course of my career, I’ve returned to it every couple of months to map key stakeholders, identify risks and chart my progress in terms of building my network.  It’s often said that your network is your net worth and I’ve seen this to be true at several points in my career.
Influence Radar can also be used for a specific project or launch to help you see, who, beyond the usual project team, you need to engage in support of your project.  It can help you get a good feel for the level of support your project might have, ahead of when you need to rely on it being there - kind of like an early warning signal that you can use to guide, what and who you need to focus on. 
It can help you when you’re completely new to a role and/ or a company.  When everything and everyone is so new to you, it’s very hard to know where to start, and with so much to learn it’s tempting to limit your horizons to those immediately and obviously available to you.  This is a problem because it becomes a habit.  We tend to always gravitate to people we know and like - reaching out to grow our network isn’t always top of our list - and unless we have a tool like Influence Radar it can seem too hard or get lost in the busyness of life.  So as we move through the ‘honeymoon’ period in our new role and we get really busy with our new job it’s very easy for our network to become limited to those people we met in the early days - and even to contract, and not expand, as time moves on.  
So the simple approach I use in the Influence Radar will help you overcome these pitfalls and start to build a robust approach to building your sphere of influence and support.
I’m going to assume that you have the Influence Radar guide in front of you as I go through the rest of this episode so if you haven’t already hit pause here and go and download the guide at www.elisefinn.com/podcast/episode8
You don’t need to build your radar in Powerpoint or any other system - old fashioned pen and paper as a good starting point.  You can get more sophisticated once the model is familiar to you and if you want to dig deeper.  So begin with just grab a large piece of plain paper and some different coloured pens.
You’ll see from the diagrams in the guide that in building your Influence Radar you’re looking to create something that looks like a dart board - or radar - with 3 concentric circles increasing in size from the centre.  These circles are dissected from the outer circle to the inner circle turning your dart board into ‘pizza slices’.  
Each pizza slice represents what I call sectors and the first job you have in building your radar is to identify these sectors.  These sectors are there to make sure that your radar is as broad as it can be - and include all the category of departments, groups or teams within your new world - both inside and outside of your new company that you think could impact you, your team and the projects or products you care about.
So start by listing all of your sectors.  The obvious ones to include are all the functions and departments within your company - HR, IT, Legal, Customer Services, Finance, Marketing, Sales, Product groups etc.  Look at your company org chart as a place to start.  Don’t leave any departments out - the aim at this point is to make your network as broad as possible.
Then consider sectors that might be outside of your organisation but whom you still want to include because they have an impact on your future success and the impact your team can deliver.  Consider industry bodies, customers, suppliers and add sectors to your radar as you go along. 
Now you should have your radar divided into a number of ‘slices’ and labelled to denote your sectors.
Now you can start to populate your radar with people.
Start at the inner circle - your bullseye. 
In your bullseye you want to write the names of people who have the greatest potential impact (or influence) on you and your team.  You should have a name for every sector you’ve already identified.  These names become your key points of influence for each of those sectors.
Once you have your Influencers identified move onto the second ring in your radar - I call these your ‘sponsors’.  These are the people who have power and or authority within that sector but may not be involved in regular engagement with you and your team.  Work your way through the sectors until you have the name of the sponsors for each of them.  Don’t worry if you don’t know these people yet - just work on identifying the names.
Then move onto the outer ring, I call these the ‘outliers’.  These are people are not involved at all in your usual course of work, but they are significant individuals in the sector in which they sit. 
Look at the spread of individuals across your Radar sectors.  Do you have any gaps in sectors for each of the rings of your radar?  Make it your business to go and find out the names of people who would fit into each of the categories of your radar.
I constructed this radar using 3 circles based on my experience of working in large, global organisations where there are many layers of people within each sector.  If you work in a smaller or simpler organisation you may only need 2 circles and not 3.  If that’s the case go ahead and use 2 circles - the radar approach still works.
Some sectors will be much more important to you then others.  For example, working in Marketing, my relationships with sales was much more important to me than for example HR and I would have multiple people in each of the circles for sales - if this is the case then consider further dividing your radar for those sectors that really matter.  For example if Sales is a sector that’s important to you consider dividing it up in the way the sales teams are organised - by geography, by product etc.
Once you’re happy you have the right spread of people on your radar colour code them. 
·        Red – known to be passive or active resistors or critics
·        Amber – unknown to be either resistors, critics or supporters
·        Green – known to be passive or active supporters
When you’re new in a role most of the people on your radar might be amber - but consider the following:
Are there people carrying negative ‘baggage’ in terms of their perception of your department or team?
 Is there anyone who also applied for the job you’re now in?
These and other factors might impact the colour coding of the people in your radar even if you’re yet to meet them.  Once you have the colour coding done (I just use different highlight pens to do this) you can move on to create your engagement plan. 
Before you move on do yourself a favour.  Book a regular time slot in your diary for working on your Influence Radar plan.  This isn’t a once off task and to be really effective you need to dedicate time to it regularly.  When you’re new to a role or a company it’s even more critical to do this - I would recommend an hour a week in this case.
Take a look at your radar and start to create a plan of activity that will help move your radar forward - your ideal radar is well populated with green names in every sector!
Work to fill gaps in sectors and rings where you don’t have anyone already named.  Ask people, do your research, look at your internal information such as intranet directories and org charts.
Look at the colour coding and think about
Who is Green - or already a positive supporter -  and can help you to convert someone who is an Amber or Red?  Making these connections is important.
Who is Red and has influence over others on your radar?  This is an obvious risk and it’s a mistake I made early on in my career - I would avoid those people that I knew where red on my radar as I would always avoid confrontation.  But it is critically important that you have a plan for how to (gradually) turn reds to ambers otherwise this will have an impact on your success at some point in the future.
Who is Green and holds wide influence across the business that could create a ripple effect?  I call these people catalysts.  They can exist at any level of seniority and they use their own (significant) sphere of influence to make things happen.  They’re well informed and have their ‘finger on the pulse’, all good reasons to make sure they’re someone you can count on as green in your Influence Radar.
How many Greens do you have in your Outliers ring?  These people create groundswell within a large organisation so whilst they may not be close to your main job role they are definitly worth you building a relationship with.

As you’re building your radar plan think of your sphere of influence like a safety net - the more diverse and numerous your cross connections are, the stronger it will be and the better it will serve you when you need it.

I hope that you’re able to create your own Influence Radar - and that it serves you as well as it’s served me over the years.

The final thing I will say about building influence takes us back to the core message in my last episode on building influence.

Real influence comes from solid relationships, not from hierarchy or control.  So in reaching out to the people on your radar never forget that they are people and not colour coded names on a diagram.

Seek to get to know them.  To understand their challenges.  To help them to solve their problems.
Always seek to add value rather than expecting something from them.

This is the basis of building influence - your radar will just help you navigate your terrain it won’t and can’t build the relationships for you - you need to do that!


I’m going to leave this quote from Steven Covey - the author of the famous book ‘How to win friends and influence people’ -  Seek first to understand and then to be understood. 
I’d love to know how you get on with Influence Radar and if you have any questions you can email me or message me on LinkedIn.  Swipe the artwork on your podcast player to find the notes.

Finally, if you’re getting value from this podcast please leave a review on itunes, subscribe to the podcast and share it with a friend.  This is a new podcast so the most important thing you can do is leave a review in itunes and as a thank you I’m going to be giving away a free 30 minute coaching session to someone who leaves a review every week for the first season ….  

As we approach the end of this first season I’m already planning topics for the second one - if you have any challenges or questions you’d like me to cover I’d love to hear from you at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

In the next episode I’m going to talk about how we can find happiness in our work.  I hope you’ll join me for that episode and in the meantime thank you for listening, don’t forget to leave your review in itunes and then get out there and create a career and life that you’re going to love.