The foundation of influence is your network of relationships in the organization. Effective influence  is best when your relationships are both focused and wide.

Wide influence covers a larger group at a less personal level. While you have relationships and reputation in that group, you may not have a known track record or tight connections. For influencing organizations, that means that you’ve got contacts, conversations, and awareness across the org chart. Wide influence also gives you the awareness to make multi-disciplinary connections, a key source for innovation.

Focused influence is narrower, concentrated relationships with key individuals. That might be in the executive suite, or in marketing,  in R&D or in all three. Focused influence is something that happens more in small groups and especially one-on-one. It takes time to cultivate. It grows from shared experiences, shared successes (ands sometimes shared failures), and shared values and vision. That doesn’t mean that people in your focused influence core always agree with you. But they do know and respect you. Make sure you respect them too, because this kind of confidence is easy to lose if you take them for granted.

Combining both wide and focused influence gives you the breadth to know how your influence efforts relate to the rest of the organization combined with the deep foundation of trust and support that helps you move forwards.

As you move forwards, you can build the track record and one-on-one with individuals in your wide network that shifts them to your focused core of colleagues. That gives you the opportunity to expand the size of your T, both in depth and in breadth. In turn, a bigger T gives you a stronger platform for affecting decisions and outcomes in the organization.

This T-Shaped approach operates at many different scales - you might be operating across the entire org chart, with depth in one key business area. Or you might be working with a small group, like a committee, and have depth with one or two key people.

Either way, the T-Shaped approach can help us build the base for future influence efforts.

Takeaway

Ask yourself: Do I have wider or more focused influence relationships right now? If you have a wider base, take time to cultivate more one-on-one relationships. And if you’re already tight with key players, but don’t know what’s happening on the next floor, take a walk, and start to make connections across the organization.