Most leaders focus on motivating their teams.
They spend time building trust, giving feedback, developing individuals, all essential parts of great leadership.
But here’s the thing most people miss: the real leverage in leadership often comes from influencing up.
If you can’t influence the people who make decisions, control budgets, or set direction, your impact will always be limited.
That’s why influencing up in leadership is one of the most important and most overlooked skills for any leader who wants to be truly strategic.
The missing piece in leadership growth
I’ve coached brilliant leaders who care deeply about their teams, deliver strong results, and have game-changing ideas, but those ideas die two levels up because they don’t know how to land their message.
They think influence is about saying the right thing or being persuasive in the moment.
It’s not.
Influence starts long before the conversation.
It’s about clarity, confidence, and timing.
1. Clarity
You have to know what you stand for and what outcome you want.
If you’re not crystal clear, the person above you won’t be either.Senior stakeholders don’t have time to decode half-formed ideas or emotional arguments.
They respond to clarity, a clear message, a clear purpose, and a clear link to the bigger picture.
Ask yourself: Can I express my point in one clear sentence?
If not, you’re not ready yet.
2. Confidence
Confidence isn’t volume or force.
It’s grounded presence.
It’s being able to hold your point calmly even when challenged.
When you doubt yourself, you dilute your message.
When you seek approval, you give away your authority.
Confidence means trusting your own thinking and owning your perspective, even when others don’t immediately agree.
3. Timing
Sometimes the message is right, but the moment is wrong.
Strategic leaders know when to speak, when to wait, and when to build momentum behind the scenes.
Influence happens through timing, knowing when your audience is most open, most focused, and most likely to listen.
Influence is not manipulation
Influencing up isn’t about playing politics or managing impressions.
It’s not about flattery or control.
True influence is about connection and credibility.
It’s the ability to communicate your ideas in a way that aligns with the bigger vision and earns trust in the process.
When you master that, you stop being someone with good ideas and start being someone whose voice shapes decisions.
The mark of a strategic leader
The best strategic leaders influence in every direction, down, across, and up.
They know how to motivate teams, collaborate with peers, and gain buy-in from senior leaders.
Because real leadership isn’t about control.
It’s about awareness, knowing who’s in the room, what matters to them, and how to meet them where they are.
And when you can do that, your ideas don’t die in meetings.
They move.
That’s the power of influencing up in leadership. It’s how you shift from managing tasks to shaping strategy.
I explore this in depth inside my Strategic Leader and Emerging Leader Programmes, where I help you build the awareness, communication, and influence skills to lead from calm, clarity, and confidence.
