Influencing Without Authority: The Human Factor of Silo Leadership | Ep. 85 ft. David Fung

Josh Seldin: M welcome everyone to Leadership and Corporation Quarters podcast, the interview series where leaders come to share their perspectives on different leadership topics. I'm Josh Selden and today's guest is David Fung. David Fung is a former senior director at Salesforce with a 20 year tech career leading sales engineering teams across North America and earning three President's club awards. After realizing his greatest impact came from helping leaders think clearly and stay grounded under pressure, he founded Coachful Coaching, a, uh, boutique firm supporting high performers across North America. An ICF ACC coach certified in Leadership Circle Profile and EQI 2.0, he blends real leadership experience with evidence based tools to help clients navigate transitions, rebuild confidence and strengthen influence. He also hosts the Coachful Coaching Leadership podcast where he explores clarity, resilience and modern leadership. A personal wake up call during a health reset deepened his commitment to alignment, A perspective he now brings to helping leaders bring joy to your hustle. Welcome, David.

David Fung: Thanks, Josh. Thank you very much for that introduction. And hello everyone.

Josh Seldin: It's great to have you here. And I know we were talking a little bit before, but our topic today will be how you influence without authority and kind of build those bridges between different organizations, which I think will touch a lot of people that listen to this today.

David Fung: Okay, where do we want to start? The uh, carrot or the stick?

Josh Seldin: Let's start with the carrot.

David Fung: Okay. The stick is easier, right?

Josh Seldin: Yeah, we'll do a stick.

David Fung: No, I'm being facetious there. Influence with the stick. It works temporarily, but it rarely creates an environment that allows for free thinking and people taking initiative. But yes, you need to wield that stick sometimes too. Or take the carrot and bash them over the head too.

Josh Seldin: That's right. Both can work.

David Fung: Both can work. Both can work. But look, Josh, thanks for the introduction there. So I've been in tech for 23 years, most recently at Salesforce as a senior director there. And I, uh, led teams. I had leaders reporting to me as well as individual contributors. Just a privilege I had too, in the last probably decade. I was at Salesforce for 15 years. Over 10 years, I basically built teams. This is the heyday of SaaS software. Uh, it was basically, hey, here's a quota of headcount we need to build. And I was hiring three, four, five people every quarter. Opened up a Boston office, New York City office, Chicago, Dallas, Texas, San Francisco, just building teams in multiple offices as well. And Toronto, obviously, where I'm from. And so that's like the, the credentials I bring to the job. But as in the job function I was in it was sales engineering. And for those in the tech world, that basically means in tech we are working alongside account, uh, executives, salesperson, they're smart enough to put together a quote, do the contracts and such. Most of them don't know the technology as well. So you need to find someone who can bridge that gap between business and technology. And that's where sales engineering is. Where you get people who are nerds at heart, but they can speak sales and they can speak business. And that's the job I had for the last 23 years. So a little bit of context there, but yes, a, uh, lot of my job was influencing, uh, influencing hard headed, uh, a type, hard charging individuals who wanted to get things done yesterday. I'll pause there. That's a nice, uh, brief introduction into the world I came from. But where should we go from here, Josh?

Josh Seldin: I think it's a great intro and what I've found is as you move up in companies especially, my background in school was engineering. And I remember my professor always said, enjoy the start of your career because that's when you actually get your hands on executional work. And then the higher up you go, the more that you lead people, the more that you have to influence. And so I believe that is true from what I've seen in my years with the company that I'm with. So knowing that, knowing your introduction, as people get into the position where they are less the executors and more now the leaders and the influencers, how do they influence other people to help prioritize the work that you need from them? When you're not their leader, you're not the one that can say, hey, this is your priority. It's a, this is the overall priority I think, for all of us. How do we weave this into your day to day efforts as well?

David Fung: Yeah, and that's certainly true. Like what you said, the higher up you get, more of your job is about influence. But also higher up you get more. Like I was a second line leader, if that tells you anything, is the higher up you get, you spend more of your day influencing people that don't report to you.

Josh Seldin: Yes.

David Fung: And I could say probably half my time in a typical week was spent influencing people. And so what does it mean to influence people? I actually just 8 months ago I decided to leave tech and become an executive coach. That's something I've been working towards for a number of years. But the reason why is because I love studying human behavior. I love looking at patterns and understanding patterns in human behavior. And when I looked at some of the psychology behind influence that has been done over a number of decades. It comes down to three things that are easy in concept but hard to do. And influence is, uh, a combination of credibility with the other person, the connection you have with the person, and what relevance you have to that person right now. And let me break it down. What credibility means is, does the person you're talking to so say, I'm trying to build a relationship with you? People talk about that a lot. Build a relationship. But what are the components of a relationship? First of all, does Josh trust me? Fundamentally, we know what's trust. You know, when you see it, you know it's art.

Josh Seldin: Yeah.

David Fung: You feel it. You trust me. And part of why you trust me is, for instance, if you're looking for someone who's talking about leadership, well, look at my credentials. Look at what I've done. Listen to how I talk. That's all the subconscious signals that build trust with other people. The other thing is, am I just talking to Josh, or am I going to spend time connecting with Josh? Fundamentally, when we were in the green room, like, that's not fake. That's really who I am. I'd love to learn about who you are, what you're doing, how. How's Memorial Day going? I offer up what's happening in my life. That is how I build connection. So do you understand me? Because fundamentally, if I'm gonna work with you, Josh, you need to know that I have your best interests at heart. So there's trust, there's connection, and then finally, there's relevance. If I'm trying to get you to do something right now, finally, I want you to do something, what are you gonna ask? You're gonna ask at the back of your mind, dave, what's in it for me? What's in it for me? So how do I make sure it's relevant now? So those are the three things that I've kind of scoped it down from all the psychology. Influence is credibility, connection, relevance.

Josh Seldin: And it's so important, especially, and we'll start with kind of the relationship building that you said to touch the first two points, it is so critical to do those that I'd say personal fact finding. In the beginning, like you mentioned, as we talked about who we are in Memorial Day and all that, it's really that separation between having transactional conversations. And more than that, if I'm just like, hey, David, I need this from you, and then you do it, then I'm like, all right, what's the difference between Us interacting and me going to a fast, uh, food restaurant and just ordering my food and getting what I want. It's taking that extra step to really get to know you and have that investment. Me investing in that personal piggy bank there. So we're building some kind of substance before we jump into the work.

David Fung: Yeah. And I don't fault the fact that most relationships you will have in your career will be transactional. You work in a big company. I worked in a 80,000 person company in the past. The fact that I still have little more than a handful of relationships there, um, people that we keep coming back to, it's deeper connections I have with them. But most of the people I worked with were transactional and that's okay. But the people I needed to influence, I say we weren't necessarily best friends, but what I ensured that was the piece around. Do I understand them? One of the first things when I'm getting to know someone, let's just say, hey, Josh, you're the head of customer success and I leave sales engineering. One of the things I look for opportunities is to understand what are the problems you're facing. And I'm looking for even it's just some investment that I can make in helping you with that problem. It's two things. Number one, I'm building trust with you. But number two is you can see me in action in how I think and how I work. But also, here's the sneaky thing. In some ways, I get to learn your business much better as well. And you can feel if I helped you do something, I helped you fix a problem, I helped you with a problem, wouldn't you feel like that connection, oh, shoot, this guy, actually, he knows

Josh Seldin: something and it helps build that trust. You talked.

David Fung: Yeah, it, it, it builds trust as well. And it builds trust for what's relevant right now for you. And so, yeah, a lot of that groundwork needs to be laid now. Uh, one executive I was coaching, or actually it was a middle manager who was looking to get into the exec ranks. They asked me, so suffice to say they were very much down to the transactional business person. And the reason why I started working with this individual was the feedback they got from their bosses was, hey, if you want to move up, you've got to build relationships across the business. And their first question to me in our first few sessions was, Dave, why? Why? And uh, it was surprising, obviously. Why? You're going to have to work with them, you're going to have to influence them in order to get things done. And this is an area that's lacking for people in leadership positions today. They look at their leadership as, okay, I have a team. I get things done with my team. It's not possible. You work in a bigger world. And so, yeah, look, influence. You need to have more of that. Flatter. Organizations are on the way, if not already. So that's the time we live in.

Josh Seldin: It is. And so many to. Your example with the person that you're coaching is so many people latch on to either their title or their ego. And I don't know if obviously this relates to the person directly, but a lot of times they'll think even if they are somebody who's maybe a level above the person they're trying to influence, they go, I'm a director, I'm a senior director, and you're a senior manager. Of course you have to listen to me. Of course I'm bigger than you. And your title doesn't necessarily mean you don't need to influence. There's that human factor that people still need to have. Because again, if you come to me and you're like, josh, I need you to go do this, and I'm a level above you, so you have to listen to me. I'm like, here's my work plan. And what you're asking me for is not on my work plan. And so while I appreciate the fact that you are higher than me in the hierarchy, I'm not necessarily going to go do what you're just telling me to go do. And that's where I think a lot of times the power of influence is important. But a lot of leaders don't think that. They just think, here I am, you're just going to do what I say.

David Fung: Yeah. Uh, the difference there. And we started off this podcast talking about, hey, do you want to talk about the carrot or the stick? That's the stick you're talking about. Uh, the power hierarchy. I'm your boss. But here's the thing. I would leave with the people who are listening right now. Do you want the people you work with to do just enough for what you need, or do you want those people to run through walls and work all night if they have to, in order to get the things done that you need? Which one would you choose? If you choose the first one, fine. But I rather work with people who are willing to run through walls for me. And that doesn't happen when you treat the relationship transactionally. That happens when you build that connection with them, build that trust and worry about what matters to them now?

Josh Seldin: Yeah. It's that passion that you inspire in them to have them get that energy to run through those walls. And I agree. Because then you start getting into these situations where they're going to do just enough. You may get into the micromanagement realm then, because they may be doing just enough and you want them to do more. Or God forbid somebody wants to go on vacation, you or I want to go on vacation, and our team is just going to do enough to get by if that. Where if you've got a team full of people willing to run through walls for you, you can take a nice calm vacation and not to worry about anything because you have a team that you've inspired and influenced in a very positive way that will just take off.

David Fung: Yeah. And you're building that leadership and political capital with people. Because there will be times when you're going to have to ask for a lot more of the team than you're consciously even wanting to. But you have to. The classic, hey, I know it's a holiday weekend, a weekend, but something just happened. I need a volunteer to help. Please. Amazingly, there's usually at least one person who is willing to help. But it's not just because if they're checked out, you're not getting anyone.

Josh Seldin: Exactly. And it gets to the point too, where I think explaining the why behind things is so important. But when you do all of this influence and you build all this trust, then a lot of times you don't even have to explain the why. We should anyway. But somebody may just say, dave asked me to go do it and I trust this guy and I will run through walls for him. So he's got it. I know it's Memorial Day, but I'll go in for a couple hours and do what he needs. Instead of you trying to set the stage and really ask and beg people to go do that.

David Fung: Yeah. You just triggered a thought. Is that. It's amazing that. And I've worked with a number of people of higher titles too. And you would think their journey through their lives. I guess it was all transactional. But they reached a certain point in their career. They hit a pretty high level. And, uh, what they were used to was people just smaller teams. They were just do everything for them. But they're at this higher level and they're wondering why isn't Josh running through walls for me? He's just doing enough. And it's plainly obvious to me as I'm looking from the outside. That's because you don't Have a relationship, Josh. Uh, why do I need to do that? I'm the boss. That's your problem. And that's your problem. Commanding control. Josh is not going to run through walls. And by the way, this whole circular thought is, oh, then I'll just find someone who will. Like, okay, good luck. Go find someone who will. By the way, if you don't build a relationship with them, guess what? We're not going to run through walls for you either. No, they treat humans as expendable and relationships as transactional. But, yeah, this whole thing around influence, there's a lot. When I was looking out there, I was thinking about teaching a course around this, and I'm looking, I'm like, man, there's a lot out there. A lot of stuff. It's a lot of stuff. But here's what I would say to that. You can take courses and get frameworks, but there's nothing like practice. There's nothing like actually putting some of these things into practice and being open to failing. It's okay. Get to know Josh. Like, it's okay to get to know Josh.

Josh Seldin: Yeah, nice guy.

David Fung: Yeah. Yeah, nice guy. Why is he doing this job and what's in it for him? What gets him going? So, yeah, all fun and games, my friend.

Josh Seldin: It is. So, actually, you just triggered something in my mind too with that last comment you made. So when we talk about what's in it for them, how do other people who have to influence those who are not within their organization, not within their hierarchy, influence others when there's nothing that I'd say obviously or apparently isn't it for them? Because a lot of times in a healthy culture, I've got a vision, ideally, that everybody is aligned to. And then I have all these different silos of organizations that all have their own portion that build towards that vision. But I may need something from engineering and I'm in, say, operations, and what I need from them does not directly align with their work that they need to go do to achieve the vision, but I need their help to achieve mine. I'd say on the surface, there's nothing in it for them because they're going beyond their work plan to help me, but I don't have anything going back. How do people approach those situations to either dive deeper and find what is in it for them or really influence in a way that's effective?

David Fung: Yeah, the thing where I would challenge that statement on is there, uh, is always some shared commonality if you're all at the same company or even in different companies. There is probably some shared common goal or common purpose or common meaning that you derive. You need to find that point of leverage. A lot of times if you're in the same company, and I get it, you work in a big fortune 500 and such. I'm sure the CEO has a goal that everyone is delivering on. In my world, before, it was around AI agents and everyone was striving towards that, and there was something around that. How each department did it was different and how we achieved those goals. But there was a common goal, and it was tying it back to that common goal and how we were going to approach it. So that's where I would invite people to challenge themselves on, is look for what that common goal is. That common goal might not even be as far as the CEO. It might be as close as someone. Someone you have in common, someone they need to work with and someone you work with in common. And there's some common goal there. But apart from that, it's also helping them understand by helping you how it helps them too. There's the common goal, but also what's in it for them. I think there is always something in it for the other person. Yeah. Does it help you? If you're asking engineering, okay, yeah. Uh, does it help you deliver software faster or whatever? Maybe not. But this is. By you doing this, you might actually help with some other aspect of engineering job. That's part of being a leader, though, is finding those points of leverage. That's what the best negotiators are able to do. Oh, how are they able to negotiate with some of the diplomacy and such? Like, how are they able to do this? They find points of leverage, and it's not a bad thing. And so that's one of the things I would say there's always something in common or something that's in it for them, and you gotta find what that is. And yeah, it takes work. Yeah. There's a lot more carrot being used here than stick.

Josh Seldin: Exactly. And I have to imagine, uh, there's some idea of reciprocity in there as well. If we do everything we talked before and we build that trust and we have this relationship, even if we say, hey, part of being leader, we're all one team, I'm going to look at the big picture and not just my little silo work plan, I think that's helpful. But also, if I know, Dave, you're asking me for this and I'm going to go out of my way with something that isn't directly on my plan for the week. I know that you would do the same for me. And if I need something from you that seems like a similar situation next week, I know you'll do it because we built that relationship and built that trust.

David Fung: Yeah. And, uh, the best leaders I've worked with, again, we're peers. It was about like, hey, our metrics were different, how we achieved things were different, but it was like, hey, there's this target. And, uh, I needed something from them, and I helped them understand this is how this is related to you. And I also extend the olive branch there as well. As you said, sometimes I help people first without the masking. I, uh, do that sparingly. But there are people where, again, finding that point of connection and relevance right now before I actually need it. So hopefully you built that foundation before you go up for that ask.

Josh Seldin: Yeah. Start building the foundation before you start asking everybody for favors. So on that topic, though, how would people. And I think you brought up a good example. When you're peers with somebody and you need to influence them and they're in a different organization to help you with something and they agree to it, and then they don't follow through, how do you handle accountability when you really have no ownership over. I'd say holding them directly accountable from a hierarchy side. How do you handle accountability when you're dealing with a peer that didn't deliver?

David Fung: Yeah, it's not that much different if they reported to me, it's very much, hey, when we talked last time, this is what you agreed to. It's about integrity. That's why I lean on. And quite frankly, if they don't have the integrity, I probably shouldn't be working with them anymore. But I lean on the integrity. Hey, the last time we talked, Josh, we spoke about doing this, and, uh, you mentioned that you would be able to deliver this by last Friday. It's Wednesday now. And I'm curious, are you stuck somewhere? Anything I can help with? And you say, dave, I haven't gotten to it. And I would say, hey, Josh, like, I get it, and sorry to hear that. But when we agreed to last Friday, actually, this is really impacting what I'm doing right now. This is where I try to maneuver and say, josh, is there some way we can get this done by tomorrow? Because this is how it's impacting me, and this is what's going to happen. And you appeal to that person's integrity. And if they just say, oh, sorry, I don't have the time, I'm like, honestly, Josh, I'll be very Honest with them, Josh. I'm a little bit disappointed, honestly. Like, we agreed to this, and I was depending on you there, and you're like, I didn't have time. I'm like, okay, next time, would you mind telling me earlier if you're not able to get to it? Because this impacted me and my team a lot. And so I'd be very polite about it, but firm about it. Integrity really matters because part of influence is that trust. You just broke my trust here, and I'm giving you an out. I'm, um, giving you an opportunity, and what are you going to do with it there? So that's a little bit of role play there. Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah.

Josh Seldin: And I think it's important. You brought up a good point there, that communication is so important when it comes to things like that. Because, yes, they may be doing something for you that's out of the ordinary for them, and everybody gets busy. Different emergencies seem to pop up all the time. But if you ask them for something on Friday and they commit to it, now, like you said, we're talking about ethics and integrity, and then it's Monday, and you realize, I don't see a path to getting to this. This thing came up. This thing came up. Rather than just being silent about it till Wednesday and you approaching somebody and asking, I would assume it would be on me to then go, hey, Dave, I'm running into this. Here's my barrier, because you already, on Wednesday, you said, hey, how can I help? What's going on? I would come to you and appeal to you to see if I can get help, to then help you, to say, I've got all these competing priorities going on. I'm, um, finding it difficult to focus on what you asked me for. Maybe you can help prioritize things. Maybe you can help knock down barriers. Maybe you know somebody else who can help with what's kind of holding me up on my end. That's then stopping me from doing yours. But all of that is about communicating early and not waiting for you now to approach me few days later. And then that's when I dropped the bomb on you to say, hey, sorry I didn't get to it.

David Fung: Yeah. Story of our lives. Working in a larger organization or smaller organizations, and that happens everywhere. People drop the ball sometimes, like, for valid reasons, like, literally, I was traveling. I'm a different time zone. I'm so messed up right now. I am sorry. That's good, too. That's still integrity. I am sorry. I forgot. That's integrity. But it's oh, I got busy. And like, good God, that pisses me off. Oh, yeah.

Josh Seldin: It gets back to that feeling that we talked about where, if I can see that you do feel bad about letting me down, I still see that integrity and that ethical approach there. But if you just don't care, you're like, oh, I know this was important to you and you told me why, but sorry, didn't make my list. That just doesn't feel good.

David Fung: Yeah. But all circles back to influencing others when you don't have authority over them. Or you can be an individual contributor. And you work with a lot of people, other managers too, across other departments. Departments. You don't report to them, they don't report to you. It is goes back to the fundamentals, Credibility, can I trust you? Connection. Do you understand me? And what, what matters to me? And relevance. Like, why does this matter to me now? And so it all comes back to that as we talk about all these situations.

Josh Seldin: Yeah. So that's been great. As we kind of circle back to the beginning with those three points before we wrap up, are there any other final thoughts or approaches that you want to share with everybody?

David Fung: No, I think that's fundamentally what it is. Humility goes a long way. Humility, integrity, go a long way. Transparency goes a long way. Humility, transparency, integrity, those are all fundamental things to building trust with people and building relationships. The thing I would leave with the listeners here is that everything I just said, integrity, transparency and all that, how you do it, matters the most. So being transparent, being direct, does not mean you slap people over the head using the stick or using the character, hit someone over the head. It costs you nothing to be respectful. It costs nothing to be respectful, but it will cost you relationships if you assume the worst in other people every time.

Josh Seldin: Yes, that's so true. And it always gets back to how people will always remember how you make them feel. And so that is back down to the human factor. Make sure we respect and appreciate the human factor that everybody brings.

David Fung: Look, our careers are long and I've had people who I reported to and they reported to me or we became peers and whatnot. So you never know. You never absolutely never know. We've had changing of roles many times in our careers.

Josh Seldin: Yes. It is a very small, big world out there.

David Fung: It's a small, big world. It's a small, big world for sure. Yes.

Josh Seldin: So great. Thank you very much. I want to remind everybody this has been David Fung. You can definitely catch him on his own podcast, Coachful Coaching Leadership Podcast. I uh, would encourage you especially. I'm assuming you'll enjoy everything that you've heard so far here. Go check that out and see what he has to bring on the other side of the microphone as the host of that podcast there. And you can check out his, uh, coachful coaching business that he has. If you need any help there, you can, like, follow and subscribe to the podcast found on all podcast platforms to my Instagram, YouTube and TikTok at leading quarters. And you can email me with any questions or ideas you may have for future episodes. Or if you want to get in touch with David, you can email me. I'll get you all involved@leadingquartersmail.com I'll have all of David's information in the, uh, posting for the podcast and in the description of all the podcast episodes that we have there, so you can contact him that way as well. David, I truly appreciate everything you brought here. I think this is something, again, that hits home to a lot of people, and as they continue moving up, as we talked, it will continue hitting home to them. And so this definitely has opened my eyes and hopefully opened their eyes as well, to how you can effectively influence others and really build those relationships and get back down to the foundation and fundamentals. So thank you so much for that.

David Fung: All right, thank you for having me today, Josh, and thanks, everyone for listening.

Josh Seldin: Sam,