# The Engineering Leadership Skill No Title Can Give You > [!question] Lingering Questions > - How should performance-review systems credit influence when the formal ladder still rewards title and scope, not persuasive capability? > - Where's the line between "decide and move without full consensus" and steamrolling a legitimate, still-unaddressed objection? > - Does the orientation-before-persuasion sequence hold under real time pressure (incident response, launch-day decisions), or is it a luxury of non-urgent work? > [!tip] Article Ideas > - A "packaged ask" template derived from the article's doc-review contrast example — before/after rewrite of a real stalled request. > [!link] Cross Reference > - [[3. Resources/MOCs/Product & Startup Instincts MOC]] — influence-without-authority as a core operator skill once titles stop mapping to authority > [!quote] Vocabulary > - **influential leadership** — "the ability to move people and work forward when nothing about your role obligates anyone to listen to you" ## Bib - LeadDev, "The engineering leadership skill no title can give you" — https://leaddev.com/leadership/the-engineering-leadership-skill-no-title-can-give-you - Source: [[3. Resources/Readwise/Articles/The engineering leadership skill no title can give you]] ## Author's thesis Influence used to come bundled with rank; as organizations flatten (deliberately, e.g. Anthropic's "member of technical staff" structure) and AI-enabled autonomous work shrinks the natural touchpoints where influence gets built, the ability to move people and work without positional authority becomes the differentiating skill regardless of title. ## Key arguments (≤3) 1. Influence is a sequenced, learnable skill, not a personality trait: orient inward (what do I think/feel) then outward (what is this person actually saying and why) before attempting persuasion — skipping the inward step is blamed for specific bad behaviors (anxious follow-ups, escalating to a manager). 2. Requests should be packaged to minimize the cost of saying yes — anything requiring real time/attention gets deferred to a backlog and loses the attention competition; a single small confirming action (e.g., thumbs-up on a stated future-state) gets answered immediately. 3. When consensus stalls, naming and holding a decision deadline is framed as a "gift" that frees work from any one person's bandwidth, trading total consensus for speed. ## Claim atoms ### Influence is replacing title as leadership currency > [!quote] ID:leaddev-01 > "For a long time, influence came bundled with rank... However, the industry is changing." Framing paragraph after the definition of influential leadership; sets up the whole piece's premise that rank-based influence is decoupling, driven by deliberate flattening and AI-enabled autonomy. ### Orientation must precede persuasion > [!quote] ID:leaddev-02 > "The best first step in influence is not logic. It's understanding the current state." Introduces the two-part orientation (inward, then outward) before any influence tactic; explains the mechanism behind common bad influence moves. ### Small, packaged requests skip the backlog entirely > [!quote] ID:leaddev-03 > "Big or amorphous requests that can't be completed in-the-moment are added to someone's task list or backlog... if your request can be completed quickly, it never enters the task list." Friction-reduction section, illustrated with a "can you review this doc?" vs. packaged-agreement contrast — directly reusable as a request-writing checklist. ## Permanent candidates - **Orientation-before-persuasion** — "I get further trying to influence someone once I've named my own position and genuinely listened for theirs than I ever do by sharpening the argument itself." Strong candidate: testable, distinct from generic "listen more" advice because it specifies a sequence. Promoted below. - Packaged-ask friction reduction — a second, distinct claim (small confirming actions bypass the backlog); candidate for a future note if it earns its own evidence beyond this single source. ## Processing checklist - [ ] Check whether negotiation/persuasion literature backs "logic doesn't move people," or whether that's purely anecdotal in this piece - [ ] Draft a personal "packaged ask" template from the article's before/after example - [x] Connect into the relevant MOC — [[3. Resources/MOCs/Product & Startup Instincts MOC]] ## Links - [[3. Resources/MOCs/Product & Startup Instincts MOC]] — influence-without-authority as an operator skill that matters more as org structures flatten