6 Ways to Influence and Lead from Second Chair (or Below)

Many of us serve in roles where we are not commander in chief, but lieutenants, captains, or even sergeants in terms of where we serve on the hierarchy of the organization chart. If you find yourself in such a role, I want to provide you some wisdom through six influence tactics to help you succeed in leading from second chair (or third, fourth, or fifth).

Here are 6 Ways You Can Better Lead and Influence from Second Chair

How To Overcome the Fear Gap

For any organization to move forward, they must possess a clear and clarified vision. Even though many organizations do have a clear vision, they fail to reach it. Why?

It’s what I call The Fear Gap.

The distance between the you-are-here point and the vision of where-you-should-be point is what I call The Fear Gap. The farther the vision is from the current status quo, the more room there is for fear to enter and cause us to retreat from accomplishing the vision. We have the potential to interject our personal and organizational fears into this gap, which leads to action paralysis.

What Causes This Fear?

A large part of avoiding or overcoming The Fear Gap is knowing what triggers this response with us.

Anxiety and Influence: How To Maintain Healthy Influence in Times of Heavy Stress

One of the things that robs us from healthy influence is worry, fear and anxiety. In fact, these often don’t decrease our influence but actually cause us to seek to influence others in unhealthy ways in order to bring quick alleviation to our anxiety.

Anxiety causes us to take the short-term look rather than seeking the best long-term solution. Our primary concern becomes, "Get this feeling of pressure off of me." We then tend to push for whatever we think will make us feel better the fastest, rather than asking, "What is the best long-term solution for this problem?"

We all worry. We all have fears. We all have anxiety. It is simply part of being human. But how we handle our anxiety is what sets apart leaders from those who capitulate to the stress.

Raising Up Leaders Part Two

In this series, let's take a look at the obstacles to raising up leaders, and how we can overcome them. We’ll also include some practical ways you can coach and inspire future leaders. 

Good leaders lead.
Great leaders raise up other leaders. 


A large part of a leader’s job is developing the leadership and influence potential of the people on their team.

Show Your Anxiety Who's Boss

Anxiety affects 18% of the US population – about 40 million people. Many people experience worry and anxiety so often that they no longer recognize it. Everyone worries to some extent. Worry is okay when it opens up your mind to exploring new avenues of solution or when it causes you to drive on the right side of the road (for your protection). But it’s when worry moves into anxiety leading to a physical and emotional toll on you work performance and mood, that's when it’s time to take action.

Build Your Resilience: Become Teflon – No More Sticking

Whether we're dealing with a personal or professional relationship, it remains the same... sometimes relationships just go bad.  But it’s important not to cling to the past. Don’t let it stick to you and weigh you down when making decisions. Here are six simple steps to moving past a bad relationship and getting into some good ones.

How to Manage Uncertainty

The degree of your influence is directly affected by how uncertain you are and how you express that uncertainty. When you doubt your facts, second guess your observations of the influencee, or are fraught with indecision, your influence potential goes down considerable.

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