Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact

This is one of the central problems of modern organizations: if you are doing today’s job, you are probably handling yesterday’s priorities.

Specifically, the tendency to “work outside their official job scope to solve problems or realize opportunities” was one of the top three differences between high-impact and typical contributors.

Upward empathy is looking beyond what frustrates you about your boss to appreciate what frustrates your boss, especially if the frustration is you. Upward empathy can be enhanced through perspective taking—the ability to take someone else’s viewpoint into account.6

Contributors see themselves as position holders. They do the work they’re given and stay within the boundaries of their role but risk becoming so myopic that they lose sight of the overall strategy and veer off the agenda.

THREAT LENS VS. OPPORTUNITY LENS Impact Players tend to see opportunity where others see threat

In the world of work, Contributors are like the plastic soccer players on a foosball table—well spaced but locked into position along the rod. They can spin but easily miss the action. In sharp contrast, Impact Players operate more like the best live-action midfielders, who watch for developing action and then shift up- or downfield to play where t

“It’s one thing to be ‘in the room where it happens,’ but the thing about Mike is that he makes it happen no matter what room he’s in.”

Researchers have shown that perspective taking occurs naturally when we are at the low end of the power scale.

Some were doing their job so diligently that they overlooked the real work to be done—the work no one was officially assigned to do but that the organization most needed.