Most of the leaders I work with in matrix organisations can draw their formal reporting line from memory. Far fewer can draw the map of relationships that actually gets decisions made across it. The org chart tells you who reports to whom on paper. It says nothing about the dotted line manager three time zones away whose sign off you also need, the peer in another function who can quietly stall your proposal without ever saying no to your face, or the person two levels down whose word carries more weight with the steering group than yours does.
I usually reach for this tool with a client at a specific moment: a decision they know is right is stalling anyway, or a change is meeting resistance they cannot quite locate or name. In a single reporting line, you can often push through on authority alone. In a matrix, that lever barely exists, so influence has to be built and read deliberately.
An influence map is a simple, hand drawn tool for doing exactly that. It sits inside the Influence capability of the INSC Framework I use throughout my work on matrix leadership, and I use some version of it with almost every client who is trying to move an idea, a change, or a decision through a network of people who do not report to them.
This post sets out what the map shows, how to read it, and how to build and use your own, one step at a time.
Why a map, and not just a stakeholder list
Stakeholder grids that plot people by power and interest are a familiar starting point in strategic planning, and they earn their place. But they tend to flatten a relationship down to two numbers. They rarely show direction (who is influencing whom), rarely show strength (how much sway one person actually has over another), and almost never show the quality of the relationship itself.
Research into how work really happens inside organisations backs this up. The people who study informal networks have found for years that the pattern of who actually talks to whom, and who people turn to for advice or support, often looks nothing like the formal structure, and matters more to getting things done. Other research on how effective leaders build networks draws a useful distinction between networking to do your current job well, networking for your own development, and networking strategically to shape outcomes that reach beyond your formal remit. That third, strategic kind of networking is most of what a matrix role actually demands, since so much of the work runs sideways and diagonally rather than up and down a single line.
An influence map is a way of making that network visible on paper, so you can work on it deliberately rather than leaving it to instinct.
What the diagram shows
Here is a worked example from my own practice, drawn the way I ask clients to draw theirs: quickly, by hand, and without worrying about tidiness.
Five things are encoded in the drawing, and each one is doing real work:
- Closeness to you. How near a person sits to your own circle in the middle reflects how much contact you have with them. People you speak with often sit close in. People you rarely reach sit out towards the edge.
- Size of the circle. A bigger circle means more influence over the particular challenge you are mapping. The same person might be drawn small on one map and large on another, because influence is relative to the issue at hand, not a fixed trait of the person.
- Shade of the circle. This is your honest read of the quality of the relationship: green for good, orange for unsure or untested, red for poor. It is your perception on the day you draw it, not a permanent verdict.
- Direction of the line. An arrow shows who you believe is influencing whom on this issue. Lines often run both ways between two people, which is worth noticing in itself.
- Thickness of the line. A thicker line means more influence passing along that connection. A thin line between two well connected people can matter more than a thick line between two peripheral ones.
I also add one further, lighter layer: a small coloured dot suggesting my best guess at each person’s likely behavioural style, using a broad framework such as MBTI, DISC or Insights Discovery as a loose reference point. I want to be honest about what this is and is not. It is an impression, not an assessment, and I hold it loosely. Its only job is to prompt a useful question later: given how this person seems to prefer taking in information and making decisions, how might I need to adapt the way I bring something to them?
Building your own map, step by step
Step 1: name the challenge. Write down, in a sentence, the specific thing you are trying to influence. A map drawn for “get budget approval for the platform migration” will look different from one drawn for “build support for a new operating model”, even if many of the same names appear on both.
Step 2: list the players. Before you draw anything, write down everyone who has a bearing on this challenge. Include people above you, below you, in other functions, and outside the organisation entirely if they are relevant.
Step 3: draw the map. I ask clients to work on landscape paper, ideally A3, with their own name in a fairly tight circle in the middle. Then, for each person on your list:
- Place them by contact. More frequent contact sits closer to your own circle; occasional or indirect contact sits further out.
- Draw their circle sized by influence on this particular challenge, not by seniority or by how much you personally like them.
- Shade the circle red, orange or green, based honestly on how you currently experience the relationship.
- Draw the influence lines between people, choosing direction and thickness as described above. Do not worry about getting this perfectly right. A first attempt that is roughly true is more useful than a polished one that hides your real uncertainty.
- If it is useful, add the light behavioural style dot described earlier, as a prompt rather than a label.
Where this goes wrong
I see the same three mistakes often enough that they are worth naming directly.
The first is mapping only upwards. Leaders under pressure default to plotting the people above them, whose sign-off they need, and leave out peers and juniors whose informal influence is doing at least as much work. In a matrix this is the costliest version of the mistake, because so much of your real leverage sits sideways, not above you.
The second is treating a red circle as someone to avoid. A poor relationship with someone who has genuine influence over your challenge is usually a reason to prioritise that conversation, not postpone it. The map is telling you where the risk sits, not where to withdraw.
The third is drawing the map once and filing it away. A map is a snapshot of your perception on one day. In a matrix especially, where reorganisations, new programmes and shifting priorities move influence around constantly, a map that is six months old is often quietly wrong.
Reflecting before you act
Once the map exists, resist the urge to jump straight into action. I ask clients to sit with it and answer three questions.
Who is missing? A first draft almost always leaves someone out, often someone whose influence is real but informal.
Where is the informal influencing happening? Look for the quiet lines: the person two colleagues both mention in passing, the assistant who controls a calendar, the retired leader people still ring for advice.
Who influences the influencers, beyond the people you already know? This is usually the most valuable question on the page, because it points you towards people you have not yet met but should.
From map to action plan
A map that stays on the wall changes nothing. The point of drawing it is to turn it into a small number of deliberate conversations, in a deliberate order, so I ask clients to work through each key person in turn rather than the whole map at once.
Start with who genuinely needs to be spoken to, and in what sequence. In a matrix, sequence matters more than people expect: a word from the right peer before you approach a senior sponsor can change how that later conversation goes entirely. For each person, I push clients to state the person’s issues and concerns in that person’s own language, not the version that is convenient to their own case, and to be equally honest about what that person is actually trying to achieve. The useful question that follows is whether there is a genuine way to support what they want while still reaching your own goal. Where I see leaders struggle most is in the last piece: reading how their own style differs from the other person’s, and adjusting how they bring the conversation accordingly, rather than delivering the same pitch to everyone on the map regardless of how it lands.
Then move from planning into action: have the conversations, in the order you decided, rather than letting the plan sit unused. After some time has passed, come back to the map itself. Relationships shift, influence moves, and a map drawn six months ago will usually need redrawing rather than simply updating in your head.
A closing thought
The influence map will not make a difficult relationship easy, and it will not replace the harder work of the conversations themselves. What it does is make your own assumptions visible, including the ones you did not know you were making, so you can test them rather than act on them unexamined. In a matrix, where so much of what you need runs through people who do not report to you, that visibility is often the difference between an idea that moves and one that quietly stalls.
This tool sits alongside the other three capabilities in the INSC Framework, Networks, Convening and Stewardship, which I set out in full in my longer piece on leading effectively in a matrix organisation.
Sources and further reading
Cross, R. and Parker, A. (2004) The Hidden Power of Social Networks: Understanding How Work Really Gets Done in Organizations. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Eden, C. and Ackermann, F. (1998) Making Strategy: The Journey of Strategic Management. London: Sage Publications.
Ibarra, H. and Hunter, M. (2007) ‘How leaders create and use networks’, Harvard Business Review, 85(1), pp. 40 to 47.
Mendelow, A.L. (1981) ‘Environmental scanning: the impact of stakeholders’, paper presented at the Second International Conference on Information Systems, Cambridge, MA.
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