One of the most interesting perspectives of growing older is looking back and recognizing those times in your life when you seized opportunities and those times when you let opportunities pass you by. And what I am realizing is that most of those opportunities come because of this whole idea called influence.

A dictionary definition of the word influence says: the capacity or power of persons or things to be a compelling force on/or produce effects on the actions, behavior, opinions of others. And if you read and study to topic of leadership with any depth, you will find that through it all there is a fundamental idea that was expressed best by John Maxwell several years ago when he wrote that the definition of leadership is influence…nothing more nothing less.

So the question is not “am I a leader?. The real question is “do I have influence”. And in that context I began to look at the reality of influence. Here are some of my takeaways…

1. Everybody has it. When you really reflect on what you’re day looks like, it is full of opportunities for influence… Mom’s and dad’s influence their kids, grandparents influence grandkids, workers influence coworkers, bosses influence employees, students influence other students and educators influence students. But even on a smaller scale we influence people that serve us at restaurants, people that we do business with and sometimes just random strangers that enter into our daily space for just a brief period of time that might be a simple as a seat beside us on an airplane. Bottom line, we all have influence…everyday…everywhere we go. Some short term, some long term. One of my favorite examples of influence is a group of friends who make a regular journey to the country of Myanmar to work with orphanages. From the moment they step off of the plane there is a mutual love and respect and opportunity to impact kids half way across the globe. Influence has no geographic barriers. The question is not “do I have influence”, the question is “how am I leveraging my influence?”
2. It’s like muscle. While I consider myself the world’s least competent expert on the shaping of muscle, there is something I learned a long time ago about it….use it or lose it. There’s a word that applies to unused muscle that is “atrophy”. And it basically means muscle that doesn’t get used will eventually decline in effectiveness. Influence that doesn’t get used will lose it’s effectiveness. You may be given the opportunity to work with a group of kids or you may be given a position of authority in your job, but influence grows in direct proportion to how you exercise those opportunities.
3. It’s about others. There’s a difference in influence and fame. You can be famous because of what you have done for yourself. You only become influential by what you do for others. I recently crossed paths with a local weatherman in an elevator. And while he has a face that would be recognized by most in our city, I reflected on those evenings when storms have passed through our area and we were glued to his maps and capable insight into how to keep our home safe. He was famous, but also influential because of how he had served me and my family and our safety. We aren’t given influence to absorb. We are given influence to serve others.
4. It’s an offense for defense. You are either influencing or being influenced. And certainly while there are some positive influencers that you can learn and gain wisdom from, we live and work in places that have dark influences. There’s an old adage that says ‘the best defense is a good offense”. Influence seizes opportunities to help improve people and environments that need to move forward in a positive direction. In many relationships it is ongoing conversations that spark progress and movement. The drift is always backward. Influence provides a vehicle for us to create forward motion.
5. It’s our legacy. It just strikes me that we won’t be held accountable in the end for people we never met, places we never went or opportunities we never had. But legacies are birthed out of how we touched a life, served in an organization or a community or how we seized opportunities that came our way. Positions show up in our resumes. Influence shows up in our biographies. In the end, we will be remembered by who and what we influenced. I hope your family ranks high in that circle, but I am also confident we haven’t been placed in strategic roles in our careers to just make a name for ourselves. We have been given influence to exercise it and make an impact on the good of people, the organizations and the communities that we are connected to.

Leadership is influence and we owe it to ourselves and the people that we work and live with to recognize it, learn more effective ways to leverage it and find ways to multiply it every day.