Mike Krupit (guest)
00:00:03.840 - 00:00:08.280
The hard part, you need to invest in these relationships before you need them.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:00:08.280 - 00:00:09.000
Yes. Yeah.

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:00:09.000 - 00:00:43.860
I often liken it to a bank account. If you want to make a withdrawal, you're going to have to make a bunch of deposits. Means you have to care. You have to naturally care.

And look, I. I'm not always good with details, so I write things down. I write everything down, right. If in conversation you tell me you're significant other's name or that your pet recently had a annual checkup to the.

To the vet, I'm going to write it down so I can follow up on it. In fact, when I was married, my wife said, you know, check in with me enough during your workday. I know you're busy, but.

But don't you think about me. So I put it on my calendar to check in with her.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:00:44.100 - 00:01:48.190
Spoken like a true engineer. Hi there and welcome to the Step up podcast. I'm your host, Kent Knievel.

Every week I talk to experts who focus on helping leaders step up their leadership game and leaders telling their stories of growing up through the ran. If you're new to the show, do me a favor and subscribe so you never miss an episode.

One last thing, as a leadership development consultant and executive coach, focus area of mine is supporting newly promoted leaders.

One in three promotions fail because we never teach newly minted VPs how to stop being a director or a newly promoted director how to stop being a manager.

If that's you, or if you support a leader who has been recently promoted, I encourage you to visit my website at Kent Coach Toolkit and download a free copy of the Promoted Leader Toolkit filled with practical advice and tools to help new leaders stick the landing and truly step up to their new leadership level. All right, I've dillied and dallied long enough. On with the show. Welcome, everybody.

Today we are here to talk about leading through influence versus power. And with me for this conversation today is Mike Krupit. He is the CEO of Trajectify. Mike, thank you for coming on today.

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:01:49.070 - 00:01:51.550
Thank you, Ken. I'm looking forward to our conversation.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:01:51.550 - 00:02:05.390
Me as well. Well, so you know, I'm just meeting you too today. And so for the audience who may not know who you are, I'd love for you to start.

Just give us however much you want to get into. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your sort of career arc to today.

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:02:06.350 - 00:03:34.700
Yeah, Happy. So I'm a people person who wasn't destined. Who wasn't originally destined to be a people person.

I was an engineer who is way better with computers than I was with humans. And I started my career in software, ended up at a startup in Silicon Valley and a bunch of startups over 25 years.

And the companies grew, opportunities grew for me and I went from being a chief technical officer to a COO and eventually a CEO, learning along the way that leadership skills are the most transferable skills.

And so it was a journey of about 20 years of getting good with people that after I shut down my a startup I decided that I wanted to get involved into coaching and advisory services and started Trajectify in 2013 predominantly to help those on journeys similar to mine to becoming stronger leaders, but aligning that with the operations and strategy of their business, which was a lot of organizational development as well.

And so we often work with, you know, 10 to 200 person companies who keep hitting, you know, at those age where you're hitting plateaus like the adolescence of an organization, you hit a plateau, you get stuck and we've got to, the next step's a little bit different, so we gotta, we gotta change the organization a bit.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:03:35.260 - 00:04:54.440
I wonder before we kind of get into our topic, if you run into this too, which I've seen.

So my, my personal work experience has been Primarily with Fortune 500 companies, a couple of which in particular were pretty old and you know, 100, 120, 170, you know, years long. Yeah, and size wise. Right, pretty big. And so leaders tend to go through every single stage of leadership in their career. Right.

They, you know, they start as supervising individual contributors. Now they're managing supervisors of individual contributors.

And where I'm going, I'm sure you know where I'm going with this, which is in the startup and tech world you're the CEO of five people and then you're suddenly the CEO of 300 people. That, that CEO role of five people probably looked very similar to being a supervisor of individual contributors with some strategic oversight.

And then, you know, my experience in talking with and coaching some folks in the tech world has been, and, and entrepreneurs not even in the tech world, even in some manufacturing spaces they miss a lot of these leadership levels where one learns how to lead bit by bit throughout their career. I guess I'm just curious what your observations.

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:04:54.680 - 00:05:09.640
That is very common. It certainly happened to me.

I was at a company, I joined, I was number 40, I was head of technology, two years later I was CEO of a 700 person company. You know, that's not a lot of time for growth.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:05:09.880 - 00:05:10.360
Yeah.

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:05:11.160 - 00:05:21.480
And so you do learn a little, you know, A lot of trial by fire, obviously, but the, I guess the best way to frame that is it's what keeps me in business.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:05:21.960 - 00:05:24.080
Yeah, yeah, sure.

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:05:24.080 - 00:05:51.730
I mean, it's, it's hard. It's really hard.

And there are, you know, there are a lot of people out there who don't have, who haven't, you know, followed the corporate, you know, process, the corporate structure of where you go to learn and grow. My sister did. Right. It was interesting, the difference between my sister and I.

She, she took a job with IBM right out of college and recently retired there after 35 years.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:05:51.730 - 00:05:52.370
Amazing.

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:05:52.610 - 00:07:27.640
I went to Silicon Valley and did a startup and had four jobs in my first 10 years of my career. We couldn't be any more, any more different, but, but it, you know, it's interesting. We picked up a lot of the same skills along the way.

It's just that the journey was different. And I do some coaching of corporate executives today, hear advisory work with them and.

Which works really well because we focus on the emotions behind what drives us as opposed to the technical work, because every company is different and every role is different. So what do you do if you have a CFO and a CTO of two Fortune 500 companies in a room?

We talk about emotions and that's not very common in the corporate world. And so that space to be vulnerable kind of gives us access to a lot of, a lot of ways to help one another anyhow.

But they struggle with the same things just on a different timeframe. Right. So heard from a corporate CTO who's been in their. No, no, they want to be a cto. They've been reporting to the CTO for many years.

They've been in the same organization for 23 years. And they're just saying that there's a ceiling, there's a reason why they can't become cto. Should they be looking for another role elsewhere?

So, like some of the, you know, the growth questions that corporate, you know, leaders ask themselves are some of the similar challenges that entrepreneurs that are growing businesses face in their own careers. Like, am I the right person in the right seat?

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:07:27.640 - 00:09:02.390
Yeah, well, seeing is on balance, a lot. I'm going to ask you one more curiosity, getting the better of me question before we get into our topic here.

Because arguably, on balance, I think I'm probably working more with corporate folks, you know, traditional career paths. You're working with a lot of startup folks. Less traditional, I guess, if we have to call one one thing and the other the other thing.

Here's a question that is kind of hitting me is I feel like where corporate leaders start their learning is a lot of the basics of management, right? Just getting work done, giving feedback.

And I'm wondering if on the flip side, in sort of this tech startup world, because they're probably, you know, a startup founder is probably getting a whole lot more in depth on finance and how money, you know, how money works and it, you know, how to get investors, you know.

So I'm wondering if in your experience, they're starting from a place of, of strength when it comes to describing vision, mission and then having to learn these basics later when something's hitting them, you know, when they're hitting a wall, versus I feel like we, we get there in a slightly different, we get to probably the same destination in a slightly different way on the corporate side, where I feel like we are having to teach more vision, mission, understanding the numbers later in career, almost.

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:09:02.470 - 00:11:34.040
Yeah, there's a. And I think in large part that's the case. It's true.

I also think though, that the universe in which you're operating is more confined and you have more control over the universe. So corporate executive may end up, their boss, may get, may get replaced with someone else. They have no say in that.

They end up going from a good boss to a bad boss or vice versa. And they just, they have to relearn stuff because they've got a different boss with different strengths and different perspectives.

In a small environment, you have a little bit more control. And the advantage there is you get to practice things in a more controlled environment.

So you're, so, you may not have the benefit of time and you may not have the benefit of resources, good mentors, good coaches, good role models, what have you. But you do get the benefit of control. And so yeah, they, they, they understand business really well and they ultimately make really good leaders.

But the management stuff, they figure out fast. So my first management job, I was an engineer working for Silicon Valley startup. My boss had 40 direct reports. We grew pretty quickly.

We had 40 direct reports. He calls me into his office, hey, Mike, you're my only engineer that has a little bit of people skills. I'd like to tier the organization.

Will you be a manager? So I went home, thought about it, came back, said fine, way out of my comfort zone. And for the next two years, I was the worst manager possible.

I had no training, I had no role model, no coach, no mentor. He wasn't that great of a mentor. He wasn't that great of a role model. And so I went from A five star engineer to a three star, a three star manager.

And it was humbling, but it really prepared me for that next startup. I went to where I went in it at the director level. It was a small, it was a very young organization, very small that ended up growing quickly.

I was higher number two and within two years we were 200 people and had taken the company public.

And so, so for, for me, that ability to make every mistake in the book for two years set me up to really thrive at the, at the next opportunity I had.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:11:35.800 - 00:12:11.810
And I mean I, I think just to kind of put a button on this, right, I think in, in both cases, at some point, if not at every point, in, in leadership, right, learning how to influence people, whether that is in order to get your employees all sort of rowing in the same direction or whether that is for approval on a project or finding investors, right. I think at some point in the leadership career we bump into having to learn how to influence without authority. Influence, you know, versus power.

So what, what has brought this, you know, to mind for you recently?

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:12:14.050 - 00:14:12.710
I certainly see it in the work I do with executives, but I felt it myself in my own career in startups and I see it in my teams where the leaders are complaining. Nobody has accountability. It's like, well, we haven't necessarily empowered accountability. So yeah, I'll break out into another story.

So this was where I was promoted from CTO to COO at this high growth startup and a business development group got moved underneath me. They previously had reported to the CEO. The CEO needed to narrow their focus.

And so the director of this, of this group comes to me on my first day in the new role they previously were my peer and says to me, look, Mike, our CEO, I used to be able to go to him and tug on his elbow to get other departments to do things for me. Can I count on your continued support in that?

Which was a little bit of a loaded question because he used to be my peer and he used to bully me through our CEO, through our boss, because he never learned to lead with influence. And so I said, no, that's not how my group works. My team collaborates.

You build relationships with your peers and you influence them to get what you need done. And he quit the next day. He quit the next day because he only knew how to lead with power, with authority, not with influence.

I would have given them the chance to figure it out. I wasn't ready to fire him. I was just changing the culture of how I work.

And my CEO, who was the founder of the company might have just resorted to authority to help out this leader because it was the fastest way for him to get things done. It doesn't. You know, he was also half my. The CEO.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:14:12.710 - 00:14:24.630
Yeah. When. And he's got, like you said, he needed to narrow his focus. Right. He's got a million things to focus on.

So it's, it's easier if he's, if someone's coming to him for support. It's just easier for him to throw down the edict and move along.

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:14:25.270 - 00:14:57.440
Yeah, exactly. And, and when I, when I made it clear I.

That's not how I was going to work, that my team has a good relationship and they work together, he just didn't want to work that way. And so we see that very often where people just try to take the quickest path possible and believe that's authority.

The problem is that that only works for so long before you wear it all out. So.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:14:59.360 - 00:15:15.800
Sounds like, you know, not only did you have to learn this lesson and you manage people maybe through this, but perhaps you. You're still working through this with people you coach today. So where are people coming to you?

Kind of where you're noticing this is something that they need to work on and where do you usually start?

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:15:17.080 - 00:17:42.400
So it'll, it'll start with. Well, it, the, the trigger will be someone coming to me saying, hey, we don't have enough accountability in this organization or we aren't aligned.

That's often a complaint, a very, A very, you know, poorly constrained, you know, complaint that. Because we're not quite sure what that means. And so we really look at the interactions between people.

Because leading with influence is solely about investing in relationships. The number one way to gain influence is to build rapport with people. It's not just true with peers. It's also how we manage up.

It's also how we help our boss get their job done. Or as a, as a manager or leader, how we work with our team to influence them if we choose not to use authority.

But that's a difficult situation because you always have authority when you're the boss. But, but how do you manage your boss when you have no authority? How do you manage your peers when you have no authority?

And so it's really about investing in relationships. And that's, that's ultimately when I see those relationships don't exist. That's where we start.

I don't tell people, here's a formula for how to make it work. I just give them one step, one step at a time.

And so for Example it might be, why don't you do a one on one with your peer once a week or every other week? I don't have the time. My calendar's too busy. I said half hour every other week then just to check in. Right.

Give each other feedback, raise issues for one another. And in today's day and age of distributed teams or hyper teams and chat communications, Microsoft Teams slack.

We've stopped doing a lot of these one on ones that were almost hard to avoid when everybody worked in the same building in the same facility. So we've gotten into really sloppy habits. We haven't invested in relationships. And then we wonder why we're not in alignment.

And so leading with influence, the investment is time with people building rapport. So that's often where we start. Yeah.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:17:42.720 - 00:18:27.560
Couple observations of mine on that. This is a terrible saying.

I just haven't come up with a better one that I've used with people throughout the years, which is just like no one is paid to take a bullet for a person they don't like other than the Secret Service. Right. So I was like, like if you have, if you don't, if you've never asked a peer, how was your weekend?

If you have zero idea about their life outside of work, how are you expecting to show up in a peer meeting with a proposal that some, if not all the people around that table are going to need to either buy into or action upon? Like, how, how are you? How could you even expect to get a yes percent? Yeah.

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:18:27.560 - 00:18:35.840
And so the hard part, you need to invest in these relationships before you need them.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:18:35.840 - 00:18:36.600
Yes. Yeah.

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:18:36.600 - 00:18:38.560
I often liken it to a bank account.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:18:39.040 - 00:18:39.440
Yeah.

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:18:39.440 - 00:18:51.370
If you want to make a withdrawal, you're going to have to make a bunch of deposits. And it means you have to care. You have to naturally care. And look, I, I'm not always good with details. So I write things down.

I write everything down.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:18:51.530 - 00:18:51.850
Right.

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:18:51.850 - 00:19:17.430
If, if in conversation you tell me your significant other's name or that your pet recently had a annual checkup to the, to the vet, I'm gonna write it down so I can follow up on it. In fact, when I was, when I was, was married, I was. My wife said, you don't check in with me enough during your workday. I know you're busy, but.

But don't you think about me. So I put it on my calendar to check in with her.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:19:18.150 - 00:19:19.590
Spoke up like a true engineer.

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:19:20.150 - 00:19:23.350
But. But because you care.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:19:23.750 - 00:19:24.070
Right.

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:19:24.070 - 00:19:55.910
It's important enough to write it down. Right. It's important enough to remind yourself yeah, that's what I, it lasted for 20 more years after that. Yeah.

But the point is that you're right that these people aren't going to do anything for you if they don't think you care. And there's a, there's a. Oh, which Roosevelt? Franklin or Teddy? One of the Roosevelt said. I think it was Teddy Roosevelt.

People don't care what you think until they think that you care. Yeah, yeah. Well, and that's the start to a relationship is, Is caring.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:19:55.910 - 00:21:09.650
Yeah. I think, you know, we, we also fight against a traditional, which I think is. Is changing.

However, to your point, this move to more virtual, more hybrid, less time together, I think is pushing against it unintentionally. But there used to be the. I know when I first started working, like the conventional wisdom was, you know, leave your personal life at the door. Right.

It has no business here. And I feel like in my. Once I, very early in my career I had the pleasure of joining a leadership development firm.

And you know, in my early days there being what we do and what the researched reasons were and immediately seeing, you know, the advice of take, you know, take all your, you know, take your peers to coffee one by one, learn about their lives. I was like, this seems to be against. Right. The conventional wisdom. But then it's bearing out more and more. Right. These days too.

And yet to your point, there's this sort of virtual hybrid environment that is pushing against. And the one thought I have.

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:21:12.610 - 00:21:12.930
As.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:21:12.930 - 00:22:11.050
Another reason for it, not even just to.

A reason to build relationships, not even just because it will help you gain more influence and get things done, but also just like the call to either get on the phone or virtually face to face or literally face to face, get off of the written word.

It is so much easier to be unintentionally, maybe, maybe sometimes intentionally short and thoughtless and quick responses and moving along with your lives. You know, people are willing to.

And if anything, if the way that comment culture in the social media will highlight for you, there are a lot of things people will do and say when it's not live into your face where they have to maybe slow down and recognize that they are humaning right now.

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:22:11.610 - 00:22:59.650
Yeah, but what I think, you know, we're kind of drifting off topic here, but, but I think this is a helpful observation is that, you know, we are losing the ability in this distributed world to manage difficult situations, difficult conversations or conflict because we, excuse me, because we don't have this rapport, because we haven't been able to invest in these relationships. In turn, we're willing to be less vulnerable and we are just unwinding all of the basic building blocks of people working together.

And work is becoming a very, it has the potential to become purely transactional.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:22:59.650 - 00:23:00.210
Yeah.

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:23:01.170 - 00:23:06.450
In which case, I don't know, are you managing people? Are you managing outcomes or outputs?

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:23:07.230 - 00:23:07.390
Right.

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:23:07.390 - 00:24:47.520
And so I think that's, that's a bigger topic for, for a, a panel of, of, of macroeconomists, economists.

But the, the whole fact is that we're losing a lot of the basic skills that it takes and we're excusing them by saying by spending, you know, by spending little bits of time together or by thinking a slack message is as impactful as a meal together when it's not. And when you think about it, the best way to build a relationship or reinforce a relationship is a meal out.

When I was in the office with 700 of my team members, we had a company cafeteria. We all ate together.

I would then take people out periodically for one on one lunches or small group lunches, or have people over for bagels in the morning or stay late in the evening and grab a bottle of wine or a beer with a team. And it's very difficult to do that now and culturally if we are living in a world where people are not willing to be vulnerable.

And we are creating more separation between work and life in part because work began to intrude on life. So we put up some, potentially we put up some barriers, some, some, some boundaries.

The fact is that we're, we're, we're not making, we're no longer making the investments that make us good managers and good leaders or give us influence within an organization because we have deep relationships.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:24:47.520 - 00:25:05.370
Yeah. Well, and, and in this, I think, I think what you were saying too, right. Is we sent work home. Right. And now it's in your home. Right.

So it really is, it's literally intruding on your, you know, your home life, so to speak.

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:25:05.850 - 00:25:06.330
Yeah,.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:25:09.770 - 00:25:19.380
There was something and, but then it, I, it came and then it went, but I think there's like, there's a whole book. If not, I don't know if it was a book or just a saying of like, never eat alone. Right.

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:25:19.700 - 00:25:21.860
That I'm in cynic.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:25:21.860 - 00:25:26.060
Yeah, there it is. Yeah. Well, how did I. Yeah, yeah.

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:25:26.060 - 00:26:18.630
And it's like leaders should never eat alone. And, and I, I, I had a, one of the people who helped me along my leadership journey was a VP of HR who worked for me and she was a great coach.

I had an Executive coach, but they're not in the trenches with you. And my head of HR was in the trenches with me and had a lot of work.

We had recently been bought by a private company who was, in a sense, trying to shut us down, to absorb our work into the mothership so that they could close down our enterprise. And so I was under a lot of stress.

I was traveling to New York a lot from Philadelphia, and I came in and I just decompressed by myself over lunch at my desk with the door closed, and she came in and says, you can't do that. He says, you come in with a smile and you eat in the cafeteria.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:26:19.990 - 00:27:57.090
Well, she was right. It's interesting because my very first leadership opportunity was. And this was like pre ubiquitous webinar technology. Right.

My first team I led was distributed, and so it was phones or in the office. Right. Two of my 12 direct reports were in the office with me. The others were anywhere but.

And so I. I've had a lot of opinions on how to lead, you know, a virtual team, so to speak, since earlier, you know, earlier in my career. And I. I tended to build. I tended to be really intentional, especially when. Because I think the one thing that's.

That from an engagement perspective, I know we're maybe drifting a bit from peers and whatnot, but, um, some of the hardest teams is when there's, like, one person who's virtual or two people who are virtual.

And, you know, I. I know at least one team I was on wasn't leading, but I was surprised that we, you know, it was a small enough team where we probably, for the sake of this person, everybody should have taken our team meetings from our own desks to, like, even the playing field for this one person, because we got to bump into each other all the time, all day long. And, you know, I was really shocked at kind of the pushback I had against that idea.

And so I made a very intentional choice to reach out to this teammate. I had just joined the team, and I was like, hey, I get to bump into everybody.

Can we just, like, schedule a bump in, you know, weekly or every other week? You and I are just going to grab, you know, have coffee virtually every Thursday or whatever. Every other Thursday?

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:27:57.090 - 00:27:57.530
Yes.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:27:58.510 - 00:28:21.470
And the relationship that I ended up building with that person, I haven't worked with her in eight years, probably, but, you know, we still probably talk at least once a year. And, you know, the trust that's built, the. You know, sometimes she sends people my way, hey, you should talk to my guy Kent about That, Right. And,.

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:28:23.390 - 00:29:16.640
And, and what, what's, what worked about that was you were intentional about it.

You realized that you needed to invest differently with them being distributed, being remote than with the team whom you may have more serendipitous collisions with. And so, so intentionality is really important.

And that's one of the things I work with an organization like get those one on one scheduled and pull them off, or if you have to pull them off, if there's some crisis, make sure they're rescheduled, be prepared for it, have an agenda for it. And, and, and so when we, when you know, these are the ways that we make investments into these relationships.

So when we need, we can make withdrawals, whether we need a favor, whether we need to confront about something, whether we need to align on something.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:29:17.260 - 00:29:17.500
Right.

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:29:17.820 - 00:29:24.220
We now have that, that, that capital, so to speak, with which to, with which to exchange.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:29:24.220 - 00:30:09.580
Sometimes I get a little pushback on this and it could be because my approach with people may be a bit too not prescriptive, but like I tend to do relationship mapping with people, like, let's talk about all the people around you where either you're getting their inputs or they're getting your outputs.

You know, let's, let's map out who all these people or even teams are and let's talk about how strong the relationships are and put a plan together to strengthen these relationships. Right.

And it could be that I take such a workbook, you know, like clinical, maybe you might even call it, kind of approach to it, where sometimes I get the pushback of like this feels like you're teaching me how to manipulate people. Right. Like, do you get that a little bit?

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:30:11.030 - 00:30:14.870
Yes. Because sometimes, especially when we're coaching or mentoring.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:30:15.030 - 00:30:15.350
Right.

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:30:15.350 - 00:30:47.310
We need to be a little bit autocratic if someone doesn't naturally doesn't have the natural strengths to do this on their own. And so yeah, you need to, you need to prescribe it.

But we do have to work on the, the, the concept that, the perception that it's, that it's not manipulative. Right. This is life. We do this in life all the time. Yeah, right.

If you want good service from your server in the restaurant, you're nice to your server.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:30:47.710 - 00:30:55.310
Yeah. Or, or like which, which neighbor are you going to be more likely to lend your lawnmower to?

The one you talk to every day or the one you've never met?

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:30:56.350 - 00:32:25.610
Exactly. So, you know, it's the manipulative is a emotional word that doesn't capture the essence in what we're doing. Which is building relationships, right?

And in the office, maybe we have to build our relationships more with more intentionality because we've got so many things distracting us. We're pulled in so many ways.

Our time is sliced into such small slivers or small segments or in the case of being remote, nobody's ever talking to me. So I've just kind of heads down, always getting my deep work done and nobody bothers me. These are all bad habits, right?

These are all these roles work against us, building good relationships. And a lot of times, even with leaders who have the authority and the power to use if they choose to, and many of them do, sadly.

Fact is, if you want to retain employees, they've got to think that you care. They've got to know that you care. You've got to exhibit a willingness to invest in them. And so you just. It's part of the job.

It comes when you move from an individual contributor to a manager or a leader. You know, the ability to influence is a very important skill even if you're not in management.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:32:26.730 - 00:32:27.130
Right.

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:32:27.210 - 00:32:42.090
It is a tremendous skill to be able to, to know how to influence. And it is not something that only certain people can do because they're extroverted or have charisma, you know, or appear to have charisma.

This is something that everybody can do.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:32:42.090 - 00:33:16.720
Yeah, I. Part of the, part of, part of what helps people influence is earning the benefit of the doubt from those around you, right?

You still have to explain why or you still have to maybe lay a story out around like, here's what I'd like, here's why I want it, here's how it helps us all, or what have you. But it's a much steeper hill to climb if you don't have that sort of benefit of the doubt already. Right.

If you haven't built the relationships, it's not to say everyone is going to give you an instant yes to everything, right?

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:33:17.200 - 00:34:27.380
But you're going to have a. They're going to listen and you're going to have a respectful conversation and they're going to put the time and the thought into it for you.

And so, you know, example in one of my organizations, the. Who was it? The customer service needed something from quality assurance. Quality assurance was way behind because the engineers were way behind.

Customer service said, well, you're going to deploy this. As soon as it's tested, you're going to deploy it. And we're not trained and we need, if we need more time from you to train.

And quality assurance said, can't help you.

Head of customer service goes to the head of QA and says, look, if I give you two or three people for the month who can help you with your testing, can you give us this great idea? And yes, it worked. And yes, they did. That was classic influence from the head of customer service.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:34:29.780 - 00:34:53.379
Well, before I give us a violent shove into our advice column, because we, you know, I feel like we've taken some interesting twists and turns around, probably even just like the. The current state of maybe what makes influence more challenging in 2026.

Was there anything else you were hoping to cover around influence versus power before we start to wind down?

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:34:55.779 - 00:35:10.530
No, I think, you know, I think we covered the important parts, right? The important parts are that. But our fades really quickly.

Influence lasts a long time, but you got to invest in it in advance, and 80% of it is rapport.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:35:11.890 - 00:35:55.010
Well, so I do a lot of my writing around talking about internal promotions, which don't tend to get as much support as external hires do. Right. We. We promote someone and then we say, you know, the people and the products. You're going to be great. Best of luck to you.

And so I ask all my guests to come with a couple pieces of advice. Right. One is, which is where we'll start, which is for those leaders who are looking for their next promotion.

They want to keep growing in their career. They'd like to, you know, prepare themselves or be, you know, qualified for that next promotion.

What's one piece of advice you have for them to help them, you know, achieve that aspiration.

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:35:59.730 - 00:37:15.280
Other than have rapport? Right. As we've just been talking about, I think there's a. Maybe the word I'm looking for is authenticity. Right?

Focus on authenticity, which might be a combination of visibility and vulnerability to put yourself out there in a way that really reflects who you are a lot. Which is. Which is.

Which is opposite of the way some people are wired and maybe some corporations encourage, because we feel like we have to be on our best behavior. We have to be portraying a character, playing a role that is idealistic in order to get this promotion.

But the better we get to know you and the more we get to like you that we get brought into your world, the more likely you are to not only get that promotion, but go into it with, with a lot of support, encouragement.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:37:16.480 - 00:37:34.560
So for those leaders who did just land that promotion, right? So they, they've. They've, you know, they're in maybe week, one month, one of hitting that new level. What's. What's your advice?

To them on how to sort of leave that old role behind the fastest and truly step into this next journey.

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:37:35.600 - 00:38:16.220
Yeah. So, I mean, clearly, you know, as someone who does some coaching, I'll, you know, I talk about, you know, getting stuck in your comfort zone.

But the way we want to frame it more is about fear. We all have limiting beliefs that we struggle with every now and then. And in a change like that, there's a lot of limiting beliefs.

Will I be able to do this? Is there certain elements of this? I don't know. Right. The team, is it new to me? The subject matter or the outputs, Is it new to me? So there's a.

We can't really stop the fear, but we cannot focus on it.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:38:16.300 - 00:38:16.700
Right.

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:38:16.700 - 00:38:58.740
It's just about what's my next step and what's the step after that. Once I take that step, don't look too far out into the future. Come in knowing that you got the role for a reason and that you can do this.

And just because you're not feeling it at the moment and you're afraid that there might be some things you're missing doesn't mean that that's the outcome. In fact, more often than not, almost always, that is not the outcome. Right. Our fears are things that have not happened and probably will not happen.

So it's to come in and be confident, to take that next step and then the one step after that and not to dwell on the fears or limiting beliefs that you might be feeling.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:39:00.590 - 00:40:11.510
You said something in there that I want to sort of zero in on, too, which is, you know, have the faith.

You went through whatever needed to be, you know, whatever decision making needed to be gone through for someone to say, yes, you're ready, and here's your promotion. So. Right. Don't forget that, you know, someone, if not a group of people, had faith in you that you can do it.

And especially when it's internal, internal promotions. Right. We know that you weren't at that level. Right.

If we needed, you know, if we didn't have faith in you, trust in you, belief that you can learn what needs to be learned in a reasonable enough time, we would have hired someone laterally, you know, from the outside. So I think, you know, the other thing I see, you know, when you said, like, have faith in.

Maybe that might not have been your exact words, but it kind of reminds me that some leaders who have been promoted are trying to prove so hard that they don't ask for help either. Right. That they're. They're trying to prove that you made the right. You know, I'm going to prove that you made the right choice in promoting me.

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:40:12.630 - 00:40:16.390
But you know, basically the proof was when they said yes. When you got the role.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:40:16.390 - 00:40:31.760
Yeah. Yeah. Well, Mike, this has been fun.

So for audience members who are either looking for some more or to get them trajectify in their life or a little more mic group, you know, how do they find you? Where, where, where do they come looking and for what?

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:40:32.800 - 00:40:57.160
There is a website trajectify T R A J E c dash t dash I F y dot com but I also. And there's a resources page in there with all of our, all of our content in my writings, but mostly just go to LinkedIn.

Mike Croupit Care u p I t and connect with me. Connect with me on LinkedIn.

Send me a message telling me you heard me here and you know, talk about what's, you know, what limiting beliefs you might be struggling with.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:40:57.160 - 00:41:02.120
Nice. Well, I'll make sure I get all that in the show notes and everything too. So, Mike, thanks for coming on today. This was fun.

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:41:02.840 - 00:41:04.160
Hey, Kent. I really enjoyed it.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:41:04.160 - 00:41:05.080
All right, take it easy.

Mike Krupit (guest)
00:41:05.720 - 00:41:06.360
Goodbye.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:41:08.920 - 00:41:30.860
That brings us to the end of our episode. Thank you for listening. I'd encourage you to head on over to my website, Kent Coach and start a conversation with me there.

Or check out my promoted leader toolkit at. Kent Co toolkit. Before you go on with your day, please take a moment to leave a rating and a review.

Wherever you listen to podcasts, click the five stars. That helps put this podcast in front of more ears. Till next time, take it easy.