In June, Pollen and Bush Foundation hosted more than 120 leaders to ask questions, spark discussion, and take action to shape what the future of leadership looks like in our communities. By narrowing in on how female leaders use and experience influence, our breakfast series, Work Redux, featured twelve leaders from diverse sectors and backgrounds to share inspiration, heartbreak, and real-world lessons about wielding influence. 

We hope these narratives will challenge your conversations to imagine what the future of work will look like. We know leadership must look gender-equal. But what microactions can we take to build and redesign the workplace to better support an increasingly female point of view? 

Thank you to the more than 300 leaders who have participated in the Work Redux series. It is our hope to continue these conversations and move toward action. Stay tuned for updates about future gatherings. 

Leadership is a verb. Leadership is something you do. You can actually lead from a whole lot of different positions and in a whole lot of different ways. Sometimes it’s easier to lead when people don’t notice that you’re the one in power. Calling a meeting is a huge way to exert influence. If you care about what is going on in a meeting, volunteer to write it up. It’s your chance to shape the narrative. There are a lot of different ways to tell a story, and it can have a lot of influence on how people think about what happened and what’s next.

I recently started teaching at Saint Mary’s where I got my master’s degree in arts and cultural management. I’ve taught two courses and I think I’m suffering from imposter syndrome, where I go into the class and I think I’m a fake. I’m not a curator. I’m not an arts organization director. I’ve had a very unconventional path. While I have education behind me, I didn’t study art history. I’ve started my own arts organizations and formed my taste in art curating through travel and experiences. I feel like these students are all looking at me and judging everything I tell them. It’s a struggle for me. In that way I feel [my background] isn’t validated, but I should embrace the fact that it is just as valid to have forged your own path and found your own experiences.

A few years ago a friend of mine had been approached by a publisher to create a proposal for a book that was about building a leadership pipeline in the field of nonprofits and philanthropy. We got over the idea that you needed permission from someone else to tell a story, so we self-published our book. We did a tour around the country. We put together all the advice both of us had gotten over our careers about what it takes to really build a living and a life in the nonprofit sector. We all have influence in our words. The question is: Are you going to share?

We as women don’t necessarily count our marbles. We don’t show off what we’ve done. But we need to do that and be proud of our accomplishments. Even today, with all this wisdom I have, I still have to remind myself of that. Recently the Rotary put out a call for a new person to be on its board of directors. I thought, “Well, I could do that.” I looked at that application over and over again and said, “Oh, I’m just not qualified for this. I can’t do it.” Finally I was sitting in my office and I said, “Screw it.”  I filled out the application.  As I was filling out that application, it gave me the opportunity to once again count my marbles. Not only did I get the position, I was invited on the board chair’s management team. Take a risk and be confident in your risk.

I was the director of galleries and exhibitions at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. I was teaching art, and I was doing everything a curator and art historian should do. But I was looking for something that would be more meaningful to me. The Minnesota Museum of American Art really hit rock bottom during the recession in 2009. They needed someone to come in and resurrect the art museum. I just started calling people and said, “I have a vision for what you can do. What do you think?” I had never been a director of a museum before, or done anything that you’re supposed to do as a director of an art museum. I just knew about art. They hired me and most people thought I was crazy for taking this job, but I stuck with it. It was a big risk, but I’m still here. Five years later, we have more than six employees, offices, a gallery and a project space in downtown St. Paul. The message here is you’ve got to take these risks. Find out what you want to do and go after it, no matter if you feel you know how to do it or not.

Our name is our influence and the tradition we find ourselves in. They say your good name is your influence. That influence I believe comes through us, and we don’t necessarily have to name ourselves to be part of that influence. We can name those who influenced us as well, and that’s culturally bound.

A Poem by Heid Erdrich:

Influence

Influence, confluence, fluidity–
The flow of ideas –teacher and mentor–
The fluid nature of creative collaboration-performance in community–
Resisting my own influence –I’ve been water–
Not knowing who stirred the surface, but seeing the ripples on the pond–
Resisting my own influence-I’ve been water–
The source unseen, but we sense the energy of the spring.
Resisting my own influence-I’ve been water–
No more powerful force than the constant wash on rock:
The rock of the image of Native Women,
The rock of history that does not begin with statehood,
The rock of story whose ending can always be re-written.
Accepting my own influence I see solitary moments, pools where the flow slows:
Her sense of self cracked open and she’ll never see the river without
knowing it as an indigenous place again, without greeting a relative.
Accepting my influence I see solitary moments, pools where the flow slows:
But I will not give for instances, instances flow on and around me.
Why did I ever resist the notion of my influence?
How is it we forget this primary fact of indigenous womanhood:
We are water, we keep and carry water.
We mean to touch others in all things.

I found myself at the bottom of the food chain [in high school], but that gave me a lot of power and influence because I got to spend a lot of time with myself and learned about who I was as a person. I got a chance to recognize other people’s voices and recognize other people who were invisible in the room.   Influence is grounded in knowing who you are, those experiences that made you who you are and being comfortable saying that’s just who I am. The first person you will influence is yourself. Being comfortable and learning about yourself is the greatest influence you can have on others. 

There are institutional limitations to power and influence, but by no means should a job title ever limit how you approach what you think you can accomplish. I think you seek out who you want to work with, seek out how you want to do that work and make it happen. I became the executive assistant to the chief executive officer of Sun Country Airlines. I think my only experience was that I had been on an airplane. I’ve heard a lot about fake it until you make it. I changed the script on that a bit: Do what you know until you know more. Make friends. Ask questions. I wanted a job to get free tickets to go see my mother-in-law, but I ended up getting an experience that I think was better than an M.B.A. 

I think the greatest gift I learned from being a consultant is about asking questions. I’ve worked with these Fortune 500 leaders, primarily males who are in high, high places. As a consultant I helped them become curious, ask questions and tap into areas that they didn’t know they didn’t know. A really well positioned question can influence the whole direction of a meeting. Sometimes it’s how you ask that question, or the kind of question you ask. What can you be curious about in terms of the things you’re doing right now, and what questions you could ask? How are you going to find out the answers to the questions that you have? Use questions and you can have influence.

If you lead for any period of time somebody is going to tell they’re pregnant or that they’re getting married. But they’re also going to tell you that they have cancer, or that their father died. My way of being influential is to keep of box of Kleenexes in the office. Be the kind of person people want to come to and ask, “How am I going to talk to my boss about this?” There are plenty of bosses in the buildings where you work who will not be empathetic and who will not be understanding. Be the go-to person inside your building who will listen to people’s stories, and respond with empathy. You’ll be surprised what a rewarding and influential role that is.

I think my blog work and styling influences people because in this ever-changing fashion world I stay true to myself. I don’t follow trends or dress like the quintessential “it” girl. I think people relate to me because they can find something in my personality or work that reflects something in them. Being unique is attractive. Being different is advantageous. Influence is about relationships. It’s about allowing people to see themselves in you.

Your power and influence can be subtle, but still control things. Even back in college professors would say things in certain ways. If you repeat the same thing back to them, you get more from them. So you learn the language; you learn the culture. You learn subtle influences of talking to men who really have no interest in what you’re promoting, and to say it in such a way that they see the boon in it. But it’s also the things you do on a day-to-day basis with the people who are not the power brokers. Power behind the scenes is more powerful than being up front. You learn to control things by being behind the scenes and really noting the people that you work with. That means speaking to every single person in that building and knowing their name, or getting on Facebook and sending them birthday messages. Use your power subtly, but use your power for good.