Influence and Creating a Culture of Worthiness By Bryan C. Taylor 

Exerting Organizational and Personal Influence

Influence is a tricky thing! In today’s world of social media, we all have at least a passing familiarity with the term “influencer.” If you have teenagers, the term may immediately evoke a sense of dread about what role model impacts your child’s life!

Social media trends make prominent how susceptible people are to the power of persuasion. As always, companies leverage the power of influence through social media to create demand, drive purchasing decisions, and impact consumer behavior. Whatever the latest trend, the power of influence surrounds us.

However, we often ignore the power of influence inside our organizations. As leaders, we have positional power, which immediately affords us visibility and influence. By developing personal relationships and shared experiences, we also build the capacity to influence those around us. Awareness of the ability to impact others through the power of influence is an essential element of emotional intelligence. When we accept this responsibility, we can leverage our influence to drive positive change inside our organization.

Organizational and Personal Worthiness

I believe faith-based leaders have a unique opportunity. They can utilize their influential power to enhance the “worthiness” of their organizations. We might define worthiness as possessing the qualities of faithfulness, knowledge, dependability, perseverance, and meticulous stewardship. These qualities allow donors to connect to your organization more deeply. That is Organizational Worthiness.

Donors long to connect to something greater than themselves. You can draw them into a meaningful partnership by offering a worthy pursuit. You want donors to believe in your organizational vision and mission. You want them to see that your organization is faithful and dependable and will carefully steward their gifts. That is organizational worthiness. As you partner with donors, you want to persevere as a trusted advisor. You want to exceed a donor’s expectations and merit their confidence as they consider the stewardship of their resources. That is personal worthiness.

Two Areas of Influence for Worthiness

A leader can utilize his or her influence to enhance organizational and personal worthiness in many ways. I want to focus on two areas where a leader’s influence can have an outsized organizational impact.

(1) Create a Culture of Donor Centricity

A nonprofit leader can leverage his or her influence to promote a donor-centric culture. This may be the most impactful area on which leaders can focus! We often focus on our organization, its vision and mission, and what it can accomplish. Those are important issues. They point to worthiness. However, we can easily overlook a key point: the donor is the hero of the funding story! God uses people to found organizations, fund his plans, and forward his purposes. It is easy to get so focused on organizational development that we forget this fundamental truth.

Recognizing this truth, leaders can use their influence to prioritize the centricity of donors in the funding process. What are individual donors passionate about? How can our organization come alongside donors to help steward the assets God has entrusted them with? As organizational leaders, our position allows us to influence how donors are treated and perceived.

If we believe the donor is essential as a child of God and how God has chosen to implement his plans here on earth, our actions and beliefs will impact those around us. We must inherently value people over objectives. This can be difficult for task-oriented leaders focused on getting things done. To see my organization flourish, I must first focus on building relational capital to achieve that objective.

(2) Commit to Personal Growth and Skill Development

A second way leaders can influence organizational worthiness is to commit to personal growth and skill development. As leaders, it is easy to become intellectually dry and organizationally stable. Consistently working to improve our intrapersonal and leadership skills demonstrates the value of these pursuits to those around us.

Just as they might follow a social media influencer, others in our organization watch us to see what we are doing. Suppose I am reading new things, participating in continuing education activities, and actively seeking to hone my leadership skills. In that case, my team members will likely observe me in these endeavors.

Finally, by modeling the importance of personal growth to those around me, I can spur them on to grow as individuals and in their unique roles. This growth is associated with personal worthiness, which can help build external trust in the organization as donors and constituents recognize the enthusiasm and dedication of our team members.

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Bryan C. Taylor, CFA, is the principal of Cornerstone Management, Inc., and the firm’s Chief Executive and Investment Officer. He provides direction and investment expertise to more than 80 Christian nonprofit institutions and is a frequent writer and speaker on investment management and the economy for the Christian nonprofit community. This post is a blog adaptation of his article in the Fall issue of Outcomes Magazine.

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