Influence is how work gets done. It’s not a soft skill; it’s a core leadership capability that at MSCI enables leaders to mobilize talent and resources, build commitment and drive progress and innovation around what matters most. Growing your influencing skills can amplify your impact, allowing ideas, decisions and intent to travel beyond individual effort. When leaders do this well, strategic priorities align and decisions move faster.
At senior levels, influence shows up most clearly in two ways:
Engaging senior leaders with clear, executive-ready thinking that enables sound decisions
Building partnerships direct and bringing together diverse teams to deliver outcomes no single group can achieve alone.
It doesn’t happen by chance. Leaders who do it well are remarkably consistent in how they approach it. The same patterns emerge in what they do before the conversation, how they show up and how they navigate the moments that test influence most.
One of the strongest signals of influence is the quality of preparation brought to the conversation. Effective preparation starts with understanding the audience, providing strategic context and reducing complexity. Focusing less on detail and more on what truly matters to the people being influenced. That means being clear on their priorities, the pressures or constraints they are operating under and how they prefer to engage.
Some audiences want headlines and outcomes first; others want a clear line of reasoning. Effective influencers shape their message accordingly: they lead with the business case, limit themselves to a small number of core points and stay disciplined about clarity and conciseness. They prepare what they can control - pre-reads, a concise structure and a point of view grounded in what matters most to the audience. They anticipate likely questions and are ready to answer them honestly; when they do not know, they say so and commit to coming back. This level of preparation builds credibility, shows respect for time, and creates the conditions for productive dialogue.
Top Tip: Prepare for the audience. The most effective preparation is understanding what matters to the audience, anchoring the strategic context and shaping a focused message around that.
Effective leaders are deliberate about how they enter conversations. They approach influence as a dialogue rather than a one-way presentation. They are confident in their thinking, while remaining open to having it shaped. They listen carefully, especially when they encounter resistance and stay curious about what might be driving it. Confidence comes not only from preparation, but from staying grounded, open-minded and willing to co-create.
Progress is often incremental. Leaders may not leave a conversation with full agreement, but they can leave with greater clarity or a more robust relationship. Approached this way, discussions build momentum, and influence becomes a natural outcome of how leaders show up.
Top Tip: Let go of the need to be right in order to be effective. Influence increases when leaders stay open, curious and willing to have their thinking shaped. Progress comes from dialogue, not from defending a position.
Challenging conversations are inevitable. Direct questions or intensity in the moment aren’t personal; they are signals of engagement. What distinguishes effective leaders is how they respond under pressure. They stay anchored to the shared goal, listen carefully to understand what is driving resistance and regulate their own reactions so the discussion does not escalate. In the moment, this often means slowing things down: pausing to de-escalate, taking a break if needed and resisting the urge to be defensive or appeasing.
Strong influencers clarify and reframe what they are hearing, check understanding and surface underlying concerns. When they need to shift someone’s perspective, they do so deliberately—by linking the change to clear benefits for the firm, introducing genuinely new information or proposing a trial rather than a permanent commitment. Used thoughtfully, these moments do more than resolve issues; they strengthen trust and move decisions forward.
Top Tip: When tension rises, focus first on de-escalation and understanding. Clarity and progress follow calm; they rarely come from pushing harder in the moment.
Influence is not about persuasion for its own sake. It’s about providing the clarity, context and connection that allow work to move forward in a complex, interconnected organization. At MSCI, leaders who amplify their impact through others are deliberate in how they prepare, disciplined in how they engage and thoughtful in how they navigate moments of challenge. Practiced well, influence sharpens focus on what matters most, strengthens trust, and turns strategic intent into collective action.
If you’d like to build more influence, here are some great tips taken from a recent development session with some of our senior leaders at MSCI.
What would more influence help you with most:
Gaining executive support for your initiatives
Accessing resources – people or budget
Driving participation in your initiatives