Leading when you’re not the one in the room
Your job happens in places and spaces you never see
Your work is discussed in meetings you don’t attend. Your decisions are interpreted by people who weren’t in the conversation. Your intent is relayed second hand. Your priorities are weighed against competing agendas you weren’t present to hear. Your name comes up in rooms you didn’t even know existed. And yet you’re still accountable for the outcomes.
It’s disorientating when you first realise this. Not because you feel like you lack influence, but because you realise your influence has started to behave differently. It becomes indirect, distributed, filtered through other people’s language, confidence, memory, and political instincts.
This is the part of senior leadership no one warns you about. Your leadership has to travel without you. The real question then becomes:
How far does it travel?
How accurately does it travel?
How consistently does it travel?
In what condition does it arrive?
For product and transformation leaders whose work cuts across functions, incentives, and power structures, this dynamic isn’t a side effect of the role. It is the role.
The reality of your leadership travelling without you
At senior levels, your leadership is no longer defined by what you say or do in the moment. It’s defined by:
How people talk about you,
How they interpret your decisions,
How they represent your work,
How they advocate for (or against) your priorities,
How they explain your intent to others, and
How they carry your message into rooms you’ll never enter.
This is the invisible layer of leadership. The part no one teaches you, but everyone experiences.
Your influence becomes distributed, and distributed influence requires a different kind of leadership muscle.
Why this hits product and transformation leaders hardest
Your work is inherently cross functional. Your success depends on alignment across technology, operations, finance, risk, legal, customer, strategy, executive leadership, and more.
You’re constantly navigating competing incentives and fragmented ownership. You’re often the one introducing change, challenging assumptions, or pushing for decisions that cut across silos.
This means your work is discussed in:
Steering committees,
Portfolio reviews,
Executive stand ups,
Risk forums,
Budget cycles,
Offsites, and
Corridor conversations.
And you’re not in most of those rooms. So the question becomes: what version of you is being represented when you’re not there?
The leadership gap: when your intent doesn’t travel well
High performing leaders often assume their work speaks for itself. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t. It’s all in how you set it up. What travels is:
The clarity of your framing,
The consistency of your message,
The confidence others have in your,
The relationships you’ve built,
The emotional tone you set,
The way people feel after working with you, and
The narrative others construct about your leadership.
When these elements are weak or inconsistent, you experience:
Misinterpretation,
Misalignment,
Decisions made without your context,
Priorities reshuffled without your input,
Escalations you didn’t expect,
Surprises you shouldn’t have received, and
A sense of being “out of the loop.”
This isn’t a capability issue. It’s a leadership transmission issue.
The leaders who thrive in rooms they’re not in do three things exceptionally well
They create clarity that survives retelling
Your message must be:
Simple,
Repeatable,
Durable,
Hard to distort, and
Easy to advocate for.
If your framing requires you to be present to explain it, it won’t survive the room. High impact leaders use:
Clean problem statements,
Sharp trade offs,
Clear priorities,
Explicit constraints, and
Memorable language.
Clarity is a form of insurance.
They build advocates, not dependencies
You can’t be in every room. But your advocates can be. Your advocates are not your cheerleaders. But rather, they are:
Executives who trust your judgment,
Peers who respect your thinking,
Stakeholders who understand your intent,
Team members who can articulate your strategy, and
Leaders who feel safe representing your work.
Advocacy is earned through:
Consistency,
Credibility,
Calmness,
Integrity, and
Relationship equity.
Advocates extend your influence.
They manage their leadership narrative intentionally
Every senior leader has a narrative. A shorthand story people tell about them. For example:
“She’s strategic and steady,”
“He’s great under pressure,”
“She always brings clarity,”
“He’s strong on execution but weak on alignment.”
“She’s brilliant but hard to read,” or
“He’s reliable but not strategic.”
These narratives shape how your work is interpreted when you’re not there. High impact leaders shape their narrative consciously, not reactively.
The three levers of leading when you’re not in the room
Message transmission
Your message must be clear, concise, contextualised, and repeatable. Ask yourself:
“If someone repeated this in a meeting, would it land the way I intend?”
“What would get lost in translation?”
“What would get distorted?”
If your message can’t travel, your leadership can’t scale.
Relationship infrastructure
Influence is relational, not positional. You need:
Peers who trust you,
Executives who respect you,
Stakeholders who feel seen by you, and
Teams who feel empowered by you.
Relationships are the channels through which your leadership travels.
Emotional signature
People don’t just carry your message. They carry your energy. Your emotional signature is:
How people feel after interacting with you,
How they describe you to others,
How they interpret your intent, and
How they represent your leadership tone.
If your emotional signature is calm, grounded, clear, fair, and strategic then your leadership travels well. If it’s rushed, defensive, overwhelmed, ambiguous, and reactive then your leadership gets distorted.
The cost of not leading beyond the room
When your leadership doesn’t travel well, you experience:
Decisions made without your input,
Priorities shifting unexpectedly,
Misalignment that feels personal,
Escalations that shouldn’t exist,
Teams confused about direction,
Peers bypassing you, and
Executives questioning your readiness.
This is not a performance issue. It’s a visibility and interpretation issue.
The opportunity is leading at enterprise altitude
When your leadership travels well, you experience:
Faster alignment,
Fewer escalations,
More strategic opportunities,
Greater trust from executives,
Stronger cross functional influence,
A reputation for leadership maturity, and
A sense of ease instead of constant vigilance.
This is the shift from functional leadership to enterprise leadership.
If you’re feeling the friction of not being in the room, you’re not alone
Every senior leader reaches this point. Sometimes many times over. It’s not a sign you’re failing. It’s a sign your role has expanded.
You’re no longer leading through presence. You’re leading through interpretation, narrative, and influence at scale. And that’s a skill you can strengthen.
If you want your leadership to travel further, faster, and more accurately, let’s work on this together. Here are three ways:
Influencing for Impact: This practical 2-day workshop is for you if you want to influence a decision maker, influence a change in customer or colleague behaviour, or influence someone to buy something from you,
Executive and Leadership Team Coaching: Work directly with Lai-Ling to problem solve for your specific situation in a confidential setting. This is for you if you want to develop and execute on a game plan that is 100% tailored to you, or
Leadership Development: Invest in the product and transformation leaders in your company with leadership development that is customised for their role. This is for you if you want your people to learn about people and politics.