Influencing peers, handling departures, and developing as a leader

Executive overview

Getting things done alongside peers who have equal power — or more — requires different strategies than managing up or down. Political resistance, unexplained departures, and the challenge of accommodating employees' life circumstances are recurring leadership problems with no clean fixes.

This Q&A episode covers four listener questions on navigating executive-level peer conflict, communicating around staff terminations, managing employees with competing life demands, and building leadership skills as a program manager.

The best influence move is agreeing on how to decide before deciding what to decide.

Influencing a resistant advisory board

• Establish decision criteria before any options are on the table — "decide how to decide" first.
• Being the person who sets the process framework gives you influence even when your idea isn't chosen.
• Reframe difficult colleagues: instead of "they're obstructionist," identify what they're genuinely good at (e.g., spotting what's missing).
• Present a partially refined idea, not a fully polished one — leave room for others to critique, so they feel heard and the core survives.
• Over-refining your proposal makes it fragile; in a politically charged environment, rigidity backfires.
• Decision quality = quality of the choice plus commitment of the people who must execute it.
• Avoid the self-deception trap: it's easy to cast yourself as the good actor and others as the problem. Leadership and Self-Deception (Arbinger Institute) addresses this directly.

Communicating when someone is dismissed

• Legal and HR constraints often prevent leaders from explaining why someone was let go — this is real and common.
• Silence is worse than partial communication: at minimum, acknowledge the person has left.
• Open the floor explicitly: "Joe isn't working with us anymore. There are things I can't go into, but let's talk about the impact."
• Focus the conversation on practical transitions: what work did they own, who handles it now, is a replacement coming?
• People accept extra workload more willingly when they know it's temporary and they have input into the new structure.
• Never hint at whose choice the departure was, or say anything negative about the person.
• The conversation will happen regardless — as a leader, you can choose to be in it or not.

Managing employees with life demands beyond parenting

• The instinct to create special accommodations for parents risks missing everyone else with equally demanding circumstances: illness, caregiving, bereavement, mental health.
• Flexibility is the single highest-leverage thing a manager can offer — it appears consistently across HR research as a retention and motivation driver.
• Autonomy, purpose, and mastery (Daniel Pink's framework) are strong guides for structuring roles that attract and keep people through hard seasons.
• Get to know each person's context individually — ask what they're struggling with, not just what category they belong to.
• Legally, exempt vs. non-exempt status affects what flexibility you can offer; know the rules, then be as creative as possible within them.
• Leaders conflate control with management: giving flexibility doesn't mean losing accountability.

On professional communication about personal conflicts:

• Default to "I'm not available" rather than explaining the reason — most professional contexts don't need the detail.
• Volunteering personal reasons (picking up a child, a family event) can invite discrimination or shape perceptions in ways that are hard to reverse.
• This isn't about hiding life; it's about keeping personal and professional contexts appropriately separate.
• In high-trust relationships or organisations with strong work-life cultures, more openness is fine — read the room.
• Setting boundaries and saying no without justification is a skill, not rudeness.

Developing leadership skills as a program manager

• Start inside your organisation: most mid-to-large firms have leadership development programmes; participate even if imperfect — visibility matters.
• Solicit structured feedback regularly. The three-step model from episode 107 (Tom Henshaw) is a practical starting point.
• A 360-degree assessment — feedback from reports, peers, and managers — surfaces blind spots that self-assessment misses.
• Reading alone isn't enough: pair learning with a method to measure whether it changed anything.
• After any training or book, ask: "What will this look like in practice, and how will I know if it worked?"
• Recommended resource: the "11 crucial books every leader should read" list at coachingforleaders.com/crucial.
• External coaching or peer accountability (e.g., a leadership academy) adds the commitment layer that solo study lacks.