The real reason why influence matters more than capability for women in leadership

Why does leadership get harder as you become more senior?
Why isn’t experience enough anymore? And why does influence start to matter more than capability at this level?

In this episode, Liz Boswell explores how trust is shaped through everyday behaviour rather than titles or expertise. 

Drawing on a real senior leadership example, she looks at how small moments (like how you listen, pause, respond, and follow up)  compound over time and quietly shape reputation.

This is a calm, mentoring-style conversation about the difference between people pleasing and being someone people can work with. 

We compare how trust functions like a long-term investment, and how senior leaders often underestimate the impact of the basics.

This episode is for you if you're figuring out how to be authentic in a more senior position.

Preparing for Partnership?

If you are a senior woman in professional services navigating the transition to partner-level responsibility, learn more about private leadership transition coaching here 

https://www.boldmovescoach.co.uk/leadership-transitions

Making Bold Moves is a podcast for people who are capable, thoughtful, and quietly questioning how they’re showing up at work and in life.

I’m Liz Boswell. I work with leaders and professionals who don’t need more advice, but do need space to think clearly, especially when the pressure is on.

Each episode is a calm, mentoring-style conversation grounded in real client moments. We look at the stories people carry, the behaviours those stories create, and the small, practical shifts that change how things land day to day.

You’ll hear honest reflections, psychologically precise questions, and simple actions you can try immediately, without overhauling your life or becoming someone else.

If you’re stepping into more responsibility, more visibility, or simply feeling the weight of decisions that matter, this podcast is here to help you slow things down, think more clearly, and move forward in a way that feels grounded and real.

A quiet companion for people who want to make better moves, not louder ones.

Transcript

Hello and welcome back to Making Bold Moves the podcast for bold leaders. I'm your host Liz Boswell and today we are going for bold move number 3 which is all about building relationships at work.

If you are joining me while you are in the kitchen making the evening meal or out walking the dog, then you are so welcome so glad you are here. 

Let's slow down the thinking a little bit and think about those relationships that we build at senior level.

Let me start with a question that comes up a lot in my mentoring with female leaders.

Does it actually matter if no one likes you at work?

Especially when you’re senior.

Especially when you’re capable.

Especially when you’re getting results.

Because somewhere along the way, a lot of people decide the answer is no.

They tell themselves,

“I’m not here to be liked.”

“I’m not here to make friends.”

“I’m not a people pleaser.”

And that’s OK, for a while. The problem is it mixes up two very different things.

There is a difference between being a people pleaser

and being someone people can work with.

A people pleaser avoids discomfort.

They smooth things over, seek approval and change their thinking based on what they think will make people happy.

This is more about whether people feel understood, respected, and taken seriously by you.

Because at senior level, relationships aren’t about being liked or about how good you are, they are about how people feel when they work with you.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth.

You can be brilliant at your job and still be hard to work with.

You can be decisive, experienced, confident and still slowly damage your reputation without realising it.

It’s not huge blunders that cause the damage, more like small behaviours that get magnified the more senior you become.

Earlier in your career, capability is easy to spot. At senior level, people don’t experience you through your CV.

They experience you through every day moments.

How you listen

How you respond under pressure

Whether you move quickly on your collaborate with the team

Whether you leave space for input or close the door once you’ve made a decision.

Those moments tell people whether it’s worth speaking to you.

And if it doesn’t feel worth it, they stop.

Years ago I worked with a Managing Director who genuinely believed he was a good listener.

In meetings, he would let people speak, nodding and say, “I hear what you’re saying.”

And then he would immediately follow it with,

“But…” and tell them they were wrong and his idea was much better.

From his point of view, he was being efficient.

From everyone else’s point of view, the only word that landed was “but”.

What they heard was dismissal. Over time, people stopped challenging him.

Stopped offering ideas early, stopped flagging risks.

Not because they didn’t care but because they didn’t feel heard and there was no point.

What damaged his reputation wasn’t a big decision or a dramatic failure, it was the accumulation of small moments.

At senior level, those behaviours are magnified.

So the point I want to make here is there is a misunderstanding about how trust actually works.

Trust isn’t built in big moments, It’s not built in speeches or strategy days or the occasional “good conversation”.

It’s built the same way wealth is built, through regular, small deposits over time.

How you listen when you’re busy.

How you respond when you disagree.

Whether you acknowledge something and then move on too quickly.

Whether you come back to a point later.

Those moments compound.

And so do the withdrawals.

This is why relationships at senior level aren’t about effort in the way people often imagine.

You don’t need to become friends with everyone.

You don’t need to overshare.

You don’t need to perform warmth.

You need consistency.

Because people aren’t judging you on isolated moments.

They’re forming a pattern.

A pattern of how it feels to work with you.

And once that pattern is set, it’s surprisingly hard to shift.

There’s a quote by Maya Angelou that gets shared a lot.

People will forget what you said.

They will forget what you did.

But they will never forget how you made them feel.

At senior level, this matters more than ever.

People may not remember the detail of your decisions.

They may not remember the exact words you used.

But they will remember whether they felt dismissed.

Whether they felt rushed.

Whether they felt respected enough to speak.

That feeling travels.

Quietly.

Informally.

Reliably.

This is why the small things are not small.

A pause instead of a quick response.

A question instead of a rebuttal.

A follow-up instead of a move on.

Those are deposits.

And over time, they build something far more valuable than being liked.

They build credibility that holds under pressure.

Influence that doesn’t need to be forced.

Trust that compounds even when you’re not in the room.

So if you take one thing from this episode, let it be this.

Relationships aren’t a soft skill you add on later.

They’re a long-term investment in how your leadership actually works.

You don’t need to change who you are.

You need to pay attention to how you land.

Because at senior level, people aren’t watching for perfection.

They’re watching for patterns.

And those patterns are built one small behaviour at a time.

If this has shifted how you’re thinking, let it settle.

This isn’t about doing everything differently tomorrow.

It’s about noticing where a small change, repeated consistently, would make your leadership easier to work with over time.

If you want to explore this further, you’ll find more thinking and resources over on the Bold Moves website.

For now, remember this.

Titles might open doors.

But it’s how you make people feel that decides whether they walk through them with you.

That’s all for now, see you in the next episode.