AMA: Shopify Director (Head of) Global GTM & Demand Generation, Tamara Niesen on Influencing without Authority

Escalate. Do not hesitate to escalate. I know this can be uncomfortable, and you don’t want to throw any team members under the bus. Something I learned from one of my...

See response re: becoming more influential for more details. In addition to those hard skills and tactics, I would say the soft skill side of this is crucial: I establish...

Build relationships and build trust- get to know the people you want to influence- we are all human and want to do great work with people we know, like and trust- invest...

Last year I led a mission that was outside of my discipline. The greatest challenge of leading without authority in my career: I was successful because we had alignment ...

There are more of them! Identified stakeholders, approvers, owners need to be clear, and having a consistent framework to work allows for better documentation, tracking, ...

Context: I work in a relatively matrixed organization and see a lot of stakeholders across the organization come together to deliver on a shared goal, mission, or solve a...

Empathy, humility, data that supports greater business goals: Empathy: Giving feedback, especially to those who don’t report to you should be done objectively, but with ...

The [long] answer to this is part art, part science. Whether you are in a product led growth role, or creating demand for a sales led go to market organization, knowing y...

This is a bit tricky, especially if the feedback provider is an exec. One of the tactics that has helped me in the past is to outline what is in scope versus what is not....

Understand how each of you are wired. Personality tests are helpful here, especially as it relates to how someone makes decisions, and how they like to receive or give f...

I am focused on B2B marketing to create, drive and capture demand with the end goal of creating a pipeline for sales teams (well, ultimately to acquire customers!). From...