I their lead style/I your lead style
Managing a Influence-led employee when you lead with Influence
Everyone loves this pairing and nothing ships from it without help. Two Influence-led people generate warmth, ideas, and mutual admiration; the structure has to come from somewhere else, and as the manager, that somewhere is you.
What this pairing does well
- Morale around you two is a genuine asset; teams borrow it
- Brainstorms are abundant. Capture is the only missing part
- Neither of you lets a relationship stay broken overnight
Where it breaks
- Meetings run long and end warm with no owner and no date
- Neither wants to deliver the hard message, so it goes undelivered
- Optimistic estimates stack on optimistic estimates
The practices that fix it
- End every conversation by writing the single next step and its owner. No exceptions, including for yourself
- Borrow a C or S colleague as the delivery check on anything with a deadline
- Make 'what is off track' the first agenda item while energy is high, not the last while everyone wants lunch
- Halve their estimate or double the buffer, silently, every time
The dynamic in one paragraph
Two energizers. Meetings are fun and long, and follow-through is the casualty. Assign a single owner and one written next step at the end of every conversation, or bring the structure in from outside the pair.
Guess less. Measure both of you.
The onboarding track measures DISC, Big Five, a 16-type code, and the Enneagram, then combines them into one profile.