Power can make people listen. Influence makes people choose to listen. 

Not surprisingly, power can be attractive because people often associate it with autonomy, access, and the ability to get things done. Having power means not only having a seat at the table, but also having some authority over what happens there.

Influence is different. It is the ability to shape thinking, decisions, and action without relying solely on authority. It is about building trust, sharing ownership, and having the ability to move people to action. 

Understanding the limits of authority

My career has spanned the interconnected ecosystem of sustainability, climate, inclusion, and related fields. Within the business community (and even society more broadly), these fields are often still treated as niche areas of expertise. Connecting their inputs and outcomes to business strategy and value creation requires thoughtful knowledge-sharing and awareness-building.  

Even when I held a seat at the proverbial table, power and authority brought more accountability for actions, investments, and outcomes — especially when they fell short. But credibility, evidence, conviction, and relationships were what enabled me to influence which actions and investments were adopted.

At the leadership level, so many conflicting priorities often mean that tough decisions need to be made collectively. A role’s place in the hierarchy or within a particular P&L might confer additional authority, but influence is what allows a leader to move people and shape what happens at the table. 

Perhaps one of leadership’s hardest realities is that we are accountable for outcomes we do not fully control. Not having full dominion of your function can be deeply frustrating and even derailing, creating a sense that you lack agency, recognition, or control. Even more difficult is the need to rely on someone else’s command of the topic, commitment to the work, and willingness to advocate boldly when you are not in the room. 

I completely understand these feelings. I have had them. But they cannot become an excuse for why specific agendas are not advancing. They may be a factor, but they are also a reason to push harder. 

We still have the ability to persuade through clearly-defined outcomes, a well-grounded perspective, and compelling evidence. Doing so requires knowing your audience, understanding the right levers to pull and when, and being intellectually grounded in how the work creates value. 

Power is the capacity to direct outcomes; influence is the capacity to shape them. Both need to be activated. 

The dichotomy of control

For me, the need for control was always the real agitator — not simply the tension between power and influence. I spent too much time and emotional energy on items outside of my control: all aspects of our initiatives, how they were perceived, etc. 

That remained a central challenge until my professional coach and friend enlightened me to Stoicism, and one of its central tenets in particular: the dichotomy of control. 

At its simplest, Stoicism holds that some things are within our control, and some things are not; wisdom is knowing the difference and directing our energy accordingly.

For my own mental stability, I had begun to focus fiercely on what was within my control — particularly my judgments, choices, actions, responses, attitudes, and how I responded to feedback. I could not lead effectively if I was consumed by things outside of my control, such as other people’s behavior, opinions, decisions, or agreements. 

Power says: I need to control the outcome.

Stoicism says: The outcome isn’t entirely mine to control.

Influence says: I can shape the conditions around the outcome.

Both power and influence have an appropriate place in the successful operation of any venture. Perhaps the most crucial mark of an effective, competent leader is the ability to recognize when to rely on each one depending on the circumstances, time constraints, and people involved. 

The strongest leaders don’t default to power or influence; they develop the discernment to know when to command, when to persuade, and how to distinguish between what they can shape and what they must accept.

If there’s one lesson every social impact leader needs to internalize, it’s this: the meeting is not where you get buy-in. It’s where buy-in gets confirmed.

I spend quite a bit of time counseling individuals — either one-on-one or in workshops — on how to create sustainable, business-aligned social impact programs. It was the work I built at Verizon and the legacy I left behind after 10 years as the company’s chief corporate social responsibility officer.  

During my many counseling sessions, I’ve observed that some social impact leaders operate under a persistent myth that good ideas sell themselves. Walk into the boardroom with a compelling case for equity, sustainability, or community investment, present it well, and the room will nod along. 

Anyone who has actually tried this knows better. 

By the time an idea is formally presented, the decision-makers in the room should already understand it, have had a chance to react to it privately, and have had their concerns addressed. If you’re using the meeting itself to persuade people for the first time, you’ve already lost significant ground — and possibly the whole initiative.

The truth is that influence inside an organization is built long before anyone steps into a meeting room. It is built by investing in relationships, learning the language of the business, and equipping your team to operate as true partners across all levels of the organization.

Walk the halls 

One of my signature approaches to building influences is what I refer to as “walking the halls.”

Walking the halls means proactively building one-on-one relationships with key decision-makers — not only when you need something from them, but continuously, as a discipline. It might mean stopping by someone’s office, grabbing fifteen minutes on their calendar, or catching them after another meeting to talk through an emerging idea before it’s fully formed. 

These informal conversations do two things extraordinarily well: they surface objections early, when they’re still cheap to address, and they give decision-makers a sense of ownership and input into the final proposal.

The insights gathered from hall walking are not a side benefit of relationship-building; they are the mechanism through which influence is created. 

A finance leader might tell you, informally, that your proposal will get killed unless it’s tied to a specific cost-saving metric. A sales leader might mention that a similar initiative failed two years ago for reasons no one wrote down. 

Armed with that intelligence, you can revise your pitch, pre-address objections, and walk into the formal meeting with something that already has quiet support. The meeting becomes an opportunity to ratify the work that has already been done — not a high-stakes persuasion event with an uncertain outcome.

And critically, walking the halls doesn’t stop once buy-in is secured. Continuing to invest in relationships after a decision is made is what protects an initiative from quietly losing priority, being weakened by budget cuts, or being deprioritized when the next crisis hits. Ongoing relationship maintenance is what turns a one-time win into sustained organizational support.

Speak the language of the business

Social impact leaders often walk into rooms fluent in mission and impact metrics, but far less fluent in how their company actually generates revenue. This is a critical gap. 

If you can’t explain how your organization makes money — its margins, its growth levers, its competitive pressures — you’ll struggle to position social impact as a driver of business value rather than a cost center or a nice-to-have.

The social impact leaders who wield real power are the ones who show up as business leaders first. They can speak candidly about P&L, customer acquisition, brand risk and reputation, and talent retention — and then connect social impact strategy directly to those outcomes. 

This doesn’t require abandoning the mission or diluting its ambitions, but it means translating it into a language the business already understands. When leaders can see how social impact contributes to the outcomes for which they are accountable, the work no longer survives on goodwill.

Build a team that can influence

None of these approaches can scale, however, if the work rests on one leader’s shoulders. 

Social impact functions should be staffed with the same strategic rigor as any other business unit. That means hiring not only for passion or subject-matter expertise, but for capabilities like strategy, financial acumen, program management, marketing, and cross-functional collaboration. 

It also means helping team members understand how the business operates and training them to build relationships across finance, legal, sales, human resources, communications, and other functions, with the goal of creating advocates and allies embedded throughout the organization, not just at the top.

At Verizon, I was notorious for conducting deep quarterly operational reviews with my team in which we examined every aspect of our strategy: what was working, what wasn’t, what we were learning, and how our programs were serving both external and internal clients. 

This preparation, in turn, equipped team members to walk their own halls. It gave them the confidence and business literacy to sit across from a CFO or a regional VP and speak credibly about both impact outcomes and business fundamentals. When an entire team can operate this way, influence no longer depends on a single leader or relationship and becomes woven into the fabric of how the function works.

Power and influence aren’t won in a single pitch. They are built through sustained investment, sharp business fluency, and a team capable of operating as genuine partners across the organization. 

Walk the halls before the meeting. Walk them after. And build a team that can do the same.

Throughout my career as a human resources executive and, most recently, as chief diversity officer for a Fortune 100 company, I learned one truth that shaped every initiative I ever led: If you cannot influence, you cannot create change.

It sounds simple, but it’s a lesson that took years to fully understand. Influence isn’t about authority, title, or having the final say in a meeting — it’s the ability to shift perspectives, help people see what they hadn’t seen before, and move organizations toward outcomes that matter. 

In the diversity, equity, and inclusion space, that work is especially imperative. For too long, DEI was treated as a “nice-to-have” — a feel-good moral imperative rather than a bona fide competitive advantage for the business. My job was to help companies understand that the embrace of diverse perspectives can help them outperform their peers in innovation, problem-solving, and market responsiveness. 

But, as I learned, you don’t get people to that conclusion by lecturing them. Effective influence means meeting people where they are and helping them arrive at the insight themselves.

Looking back, I see three levers I’ve returned to again and again:

1. Emotion: Understanding what moves people in order to better connect abstract ideas to their own lives and values.
2. Data: Grounding conversations in evidence, then humanizing the numbers with stories.
3. Relationships: Doing the work to build relationships before a critical decision is on the table and then using that rapport to help leaders respond thoughtfully rather than reactively.

Understanding what moves people

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that effective influence starts with understanding what keeps people up at night. Everyone has priorities, fears, and pressures that drive their decisions. If you want to move someone, you have to first understand what moves them.

Early in my tenure as a CDO, I met with a leader who worked in mergers and acquisitions. He was polite but skeptical. He didn’t see what diversity, equity, and inclusion had to do with his work, which was deals, numbers, and integration plans.

While he finished a phone call, I looked around his office. On his desk sat a photo of his wife, his daughter, and a young man I assumed was his daughter’s fiancé. When he hung up, I asked about the picture. His face lit up as he told me about his daughter’s engagement, about how excited the family was.

I asked him a simple question: “What do you know about your future in-laws? Their faith? Their political views? Their beliefs about the things that matter most to you and your wife?”

He paused.

“Your grandchildren are going to grow up in a household that might be very different from how you raised your daughter,” I continued. “Before you bring someone into your family, you want to understand who they are.”

Then I brought it back to M&A: “It’s the same when we bring a company into our family. Before we close a deal, we need to know who we’re really acquiring. Are there lawsuits or class actions? Cultural issues that could become our problems? Diversity, equity and inclusion due diligence isn’t separate from the deal, it is the deal.”

He got it. In that moment, the abstract became personal, and suddenly it mattered in the decisions he was responsible for. 

That’s the power of emotion as a lever of influence — of understanding another person’s perspective well enough to connect what matters to you to what already matters to them.

Let the data speak

Emotion can open doors, but the evidence is what allows an idea to withstand scrutiny. When I sit down with senior leaders, I begin with the data, allowing the numbers to tell the story first. Data is objective; it doesn’t have an agenda, it simply reveals what is.

But data alone isn’t enough — numbers on a slide can feel distant, even cold. They can help describe what is happening, but can’t help senior leaders understand how it feels to the people experiencing it. 

That’s why, after presenting the data, I bring the human element in: stories from employees, perspectives from the front lines, voices that put a face to the statistics. Only then do I move on to solutions.

This sequence matters: data, human storytelling, then recommendations. It’s a structure that respects leaders’ analytical instincts while also engaging their empathy. It leads them to conclusions they feel ownership over, rather than conclusions that feel imposed.

Build trust over time

Although empathy and evidence are powerful tools, true influence depends upon trust. The most consequential conversations I have with leaders rarely begin in the moment when a major decision has to be made. Far more often, they are enabled by an existing relationship that has been fostered over time: listening without judgement, offering honest counsel, and repeatedly demonstrating care for the success of the organization.

It is trust that enables leaders to come to me with questions that they might otherwise be reluctant to ask publicly. During the height of the MeToo movement, a male leader came to me privately and told me he was considering stepping back from mentoring women because he was afraid of being falsely accused of misconduct.

I understood his fear, which was real and being echoed in conversations across corporate America. But I also knew that stepping back would be a mistake for him, for the women he mentored, and for the organization.

I told him that the risk he feared was statistically unlikely, but the risk of abandoning mentorship was certain: Talented women would lose access to guidance, sponsorship, and opportunity. I encouraged him to take sensible precautions, meet in open spaces, keep communication professional, but not to let fear stop him from doing something critically important.

He listened. He kept mentoring. And years later, several of the women he championed have moved into leadership roles.

That conversation happened because we had built trust over time. That trust gave us room to discuss fears, assumptions, and disagreements candidly, and it allowed me to challenge someone’s thinking without making that person feel dismissed or condemned.

Influence isn’t a soft skill — it’s a strategic capability. Building and wielding it requires patience, preparation, and genuine curiosity about the people you’re trying to reach. It’s the difference between ideas that stay on whiteboards and ideas that change organizations.

So invest in it. Study the people around you with genuine curiosity. Listen closely enough to understand their priorities. Build relationships before you need to draw on them. And never underestimate the power of meeting someone exactly where they are and walking with them toward where they need to be.

That’s influence. And it’s the most important currency you’ll ever earn.