Building influence at work

Try to recall few situations from your career. If you’ve worked in a large company for more than a few years, you likely know someone who seemed to have high level of influence despite not having an impressive job title, right?

People counted on for their opinion before making a decision. Their feedback carried weight in architecture reviews. Managers frequently asked for their input before requirements were finalized. During difficult situations, executives wanted them in the room, even if they weren’t responsible for the system that had failed. Their words mattered a lot.

Officially, they weren’t in charge. In practice, they changed outcomes.

That difference is worth paying attention to. Influence is one of the least understood parts of professional growth. Many people assume it comes from confidence, communication skills or political maneuvering. Others don’t agree, believing that “good work speaks for itself.”

The people who become influential actually usually spend surprisingly little time trying to appear influential. Instead, they develop habits that make other people’s decisions easier and projects safer. Over time, colleagues begin relying on their words almost without noticing.

Career advice often focuses on visible achievements. Promotions, presentations, certifications, awards. Those milestones matter, but they don’t explain why two equally capable professionals can end up with completely different careers.

The answer is often hidden in interactions that never appear on a performance review.

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.

¹Warren Buffett

One engineer consistently explains technical trade-offs without making non-technical colleagues feel lost. Another quietly follows through on every commitment, even when nobody checks.

I’ve noticed that the professionals who become so-called trusted advisors rarely have one defining achievement, one breaking moment. Instead, people accumulate dozens of positive experiences working with them. Each successful interaction lowers a small amount of uncertainty. Eventually, colleagues stop evaluating whether to trust them. Trust becomes the default.

That is probably the simplest way to think about influence. It is accumulated confidence.

In early career stage technical ability is usually enough to make the difference. You solve harder problems, deliver faster, make fewer mistakes and naturally become more valuable. That’s clear Then something changes.

Projects become larger. Teams become more specialized. Decisions start involving legal, security, finance, operations, marketing and customer support at the same time. Suddenly, the hardest part of the job is no longer technical.

Imagine an experienced software architect proposing a migration to a new platform. The technical design is excellent, but the discussion never moves forward because operations worry about support, finance questions the investment, compliance identifies regulatory concerns and product managers fear delaying important releases.

The architecture isn’t the problem. Alignment is.

This is where many technically brilliant professionals become frustrated. They continue improving their technical skills while the organization increasingly rewards people who can connect different perspectives.

That doesn’t mean expertise becomes less valuable. It means expertise alone becomes insufficient.

The professionals with the greatest influence usually learn a second skill alongside their primary discipline. They become translators.

They translate engineering into business outcomes. They translate customer problems into technical priorities. They translate executive goals into practical decisions for delivery teams.

One of the biggest misconceptions about influence is that it depends on being visible.

Visibility certainly helps. If nobody knows you exist, your opportunities will probably remain limited. But visibility and credibility are not the same thing.

Think about how important decisions actually happen. A leadership meeting finishes. People leave the room.

Later that afternoon someone says:

“Before we decide, let’s ask Anna what she thinks.”

Or:

“I’d like Daniel to review this first.”

Or:

“Has the platform team looked at this yet?”

The individuals being mentioned are not influencing the conversation because they are present.

They are influencing it because someone else trusts their judgment enough to introduce it into the discussion. That kind of reputation cannot be built through self-promotion. It grows through repeated experience.

LinkedIn’s 2025 Workplace Learning Report found that organizations increasingly identify adaptability, communication and collaborative problem-solving among the capabilities most needed as work continues to evolve with AI and changing business demands.²

There is a noticeable shift that happens as people become more influential.

Their questions change.

Junior professionals often ask:

• How do we implement this?
• Which technology should we use?
• Who is responsible?

Those questions are necessary.

Influential professionals tend to add another layer:

• What problem are we actually trying to solve?
• Who else will this decision affect?
• What becomes difficult six months from now?
• Which assumption are we making without realizing it?
• What happens if this succeeds faster than expected?

Those questions don’t necessarily produce immediate answers.

They produce better discussions. That matters because organizations rarely struggle with ideas. They struggle with unintended consequences.

I’ve seen projects fail because everyone optimized their own part while nobody looked at the whole system. Engineering reduced infrastructure costs. Finance reduced operational spending. Product accelerated delivery.

Individually, every decision looked reasonable. Collectively, they increased customer complaints and technical debt. Influential people develop a habit of seeing those connections earlier than others.

Many careers contain a surprising contradiction.

The people everyone describes as “brilliant” are not always the people everyone wants on important projects. Being impressive attracts attention. Being reliable attracts responsibility.

There is a difference.

The strongest professionals I’ve worked with were rarely the loudest voices during meetings. They didn’t need to demonstrate expertise in every discussion. Instead, they listened carefully, contributed when they had something meaningful to add and consistently delivered what they promised afterwards.

Over time, something interesting happened. Managers stopped worrying about them. Colleagues stopped double-checking their work. Stakeholders stopped asking for constant updates. Trust reduced oversight. That creates something valuable inside organizations. Capacity.

Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2025 reported that only 21% of employees worldwide are engaged at work, while managers continue to account for a substantial share of team engagement differences.³

People who consistently create clarity, stability and confidence make everyone around them more effective. They reduce the mental effort required to collaborate. In complex organizations, that becomes a competitive advantage.

Sources

1. Forbes, “The Three Essential Warren Buffett Quotes To Live By” ↩︎
2. LinkedIn, “The rise of career champions” ↩︎
3. Gallup, “state-of-the-global-workplace” ↩︎