Leading Without the Title

Titles are cheap, but influence is earned. In this episode, we break down the Psychology behind leading without authority, and why trust, reliability, and shared ownership drive real impact inside teams.

Don't wait for the title or the money to fall into Place before you step into a leadership role within your team. 

• Przepiórka, A. (2025). The Resonant Organization: Informal Leadership, Strategy, and the Power of Silent Authority. Dinkum Journal of Social Innovations, 4(01), 43–50.
• Bilgin, E.L. (2025). Emergent Leadership. Junior Management Science, 10(2), 402–423.
• Liu et al. (2025). Political skill and informal leader emergence. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology.
• Journal of Business and Psychology (2025). Leadership Dynamics in Teams: The Reciprocity of Shared and Empowering Leadership.
• Van den Berg, B.J. (2025). The Relevance of Self-Leadership and Informal Leadership. GPR Journals.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hello and welcome to the Psych Leadership Podcast, the show that helps you understand the psychology of growth, leadership, and making big moves in your life and career. As always, my name's Luke Upchurch. I'm your host, and I'm glad that you're here with me today. I'm hoping that you caught up with last week's episode, where we talked all about trust and specifically why trust can be the superpower within your team. Well, if you didn't hear that one, I want you to pause right now, go back to that. It's going to be a natural progression. Um, so it this will make more sense if you heard last week's episode, or last two weeks rather. So go back and check that one out. If you're hanging out with me, though, that's what we're gonna get into. Is once you understand the power of trust, the next logical question in your mind should be, well, now I've got it, how do I use it? And that's really what we're unpacking today. We're gonna talk about the concept of leading without a title, what that means, and why it matters. And more importantly, how do you actually get out there and use it? So when I talk about leading without a title, first off, I want to just dispel any any um any trepidation that you might have in your mind here. I'm not talking about mutiny, I'm not talking about, you know, a Lord of the Flies situation where you're overthrowing, so to speak, your current leader. It's not about that, people. Uh and in fact, we'll get into this a little bit more later, but leadership is is kind of a collective thing. And what I mean by that is if your leader got promoted, promoted into their current role, chances are it had to do with proximity, right? Nobody hires a uh a person or promotes a person because they believe that individual to know every aspect of the job, right? Like if I if I apply for a role and I move from associate director to director, that's not a, you know, you don't you don't get the um, nobody waves a magic wand and says, well, now you're a director. Now you know all these director things. Huzzah, right? It doesn't work that way. You have to grow into it, right? If I get promoted into a director role and and I knew everything about the role, did I was that really a lateral move? Right? At that point, it's a title for title sake, not what I would consider a true promotion. So what I what I'm getting at here is your leader needs you, your team needs you. And it doesn't matter if your title has a word lead in front of it or not. It doesn't matter if you have direct reports, you still have influence. And that's that's folks what we're unpacking today. You know, I mean, essentially, titles are really thrown around kind of freely. Organizations hand them out all the time. I used to have a boss that told me, you know, titles are cheap. He said, you can call yourself whatever you want. It's what you actually do that makes a difference. And so a lot of times companies will use titles, they hand these out to motivate people, to create the appearance of authority, or maybe just to retain a flight risk without actually paying them more, right? So it's it's like a, I don't know, like a participation trophy situation. So I'll give you an easy example. I was talking with a colleague of mine a couple, I guess it's been a couple months back, and he says, Hey, I've got this role that opened up at my company. I think it's right up your alley, Luke. You ought to think about applying to it. And I look at the role, and qualifications seemed to match, and job description seemed to match. I thought, well, that's that's not bad. But what was hanging me up, frankly, was the title. It was a vice president role. And and so I call up my buddy and I said, Man, I, you know, in my company, I don't know how the hierarchy structure works at yours, but in mine, it would go from associate director to director to associate vice president and then to vice president. You're talking about me jumping from AD all the way up to VP. Like that's that's kind of big. Um, and and the salary range doesn't necessarily match what I had in my head for a VP. I thought those folks got paid, you know, a lot more. And I mean, don't get me wrong, this was a raise, but it wasn't the percentage raise that I expected it would be. Um, in any case, he kind of gets a chuckle and he says, uh, he goes, man, we just call it VP because that gives you some clout. He said, in this role, you'd be meeting with uh executives, you know, C-suite leaders at other companies, and we need you to have a little bit of a rep. We need you to walk in the room with some punch. And so we just call this VP so that it achieves that. He said, if I send you in there with an AD or a director role, um, you know, don't get me wrong, they'll be respectful, but will you get the motivation? Will you get the punch that you need, the push that you need without that title? He said, you know, in our experience, you don't. So we just start you out with that title. He goes, the responsibility matches, the qualifications match, your experience matches. You know, it's it's just a name. And that that kind of stuck with me a little bit. And I thought, well, how many times does that happen at the company that I'm at now? Right? How many times have I been in positions that somebody has a title that, you know, maybe the skill set doesn't necessarily match up? And and so I need you to really just let that sink in a little bit. I'm not saying that titles don't matter, right? They can open doors, they can signal where you sit on the org chart. But here's what the research is telling us. And what I've seen play out in 28 years of working with leaders at every level is just plain and simple. Titles are cheap, influence is earned. There's this 2025 study, uh, so fairly recent study. It was in a journal. I'm probably mispronouncing this. It's called the Dincom Journal of Social Innovations. And what this study showed is that people without formal titles, so informal leaders, derive their influence not from position, but from trust, expertise, and what researchers call social capital. They also call it silent authority. And I love that phrase because it's not loud, it's not about demanding respect, it's about earning it quietly and consistently over time. And so, where this is especially important for you, if you're early in career, new to a team, if you don't have that manager, director, or lead in front of your name, that title isn't what makes you a leader. It's your behavior. So let's talk a little bit about the psychology behind this. And again, I don't mean to bore you, but I am going to pull in some research to this because I want you to know that this isn't just my opinion, that the research actually backs what I'm what I'm telling you here. So uh researchers have been studying what they call emergent leadership. And this is basically the process of somebody rising into a leadership role in a group without necessarily being appointed. And you've seen this, right? Any kind of group project you've had, there tends to be somebody that just sort of takes the reins, that that rises to the top without somebody necessarily saying, here, you are officially our team lead, so to speak. So the study found that employees that have proactive personalities, these are people that take initiative, that anticipate problems, that speak up, they're significantly significantly more likely to develop the status within their team and step into informal leadership roles. So think about that. Leadership emergence is connected to your mindset, to your habits, not to where you are on an org chart. Okay. It's kind of like I always uh I've had this conversation even with family members, talking about the idea that respect is earned, it's not given. Right. So some of the um more the old school family mentality is, you know, so and so is the the patriarch, the matriarch of our family. Therefore, give them respect. And I absolutely agree, respect your elders. You know, they've they've been there, done that. There's there's a reason they survived this long, right? Um, but that doesn't mean that we have to be stupid about it. That doesn't mean that we have to follow them blindly. It doesn't mean that when they do things that are dumb or uh ill-informed, that we just salute and say, well, you're older than me. You have such and such a title, therefore, I'm just going to follow you blindly, right? Another piece of this puzzle is political skill. And I'm not talking about manipulation or playing games. In the research, political skill refers to your ability to genuinely build relationships, um, to build quality relationships and be perceived as competent by your peers. There was a multiwave study from 2024, occupational and organizational psychology, that found that this skill, how well you build relationships and demonstrate real competence, is one of the strongest predictors to somebody that will emerge as an informal leader, which brings us right back to last week's episode: trust, right? Relationship quality, competence. These aren't soft, fluffy concepts. They're built on influence. So tying that back, you know, we talked about that trust is a superpower within teams. I want to connect the dots very intentionally here, uh, because this is where this whole concept, this collective uh leadership emergence concept becomes really powerful. If you can build trust within your team, agnostic of your title, that's a powerful position that you can occupy within your organization. Something else from the research that kind of stopped me here, there was a study published in the Journal of Business and Psychology. It found that informal leadership behaviors can actually shape and improve the behavior of the formal leader over time. So I touched on this earlier, um, but but let that sink in a little bit. What I'm saying here is that as you step into that informal leadership role, you're actually helping the person with the title to be a better leader themselves. That's pretty cool, right? That uh that you can influence how they behave. Um, and part of this is just the fact that, you know, again, if I if I were to get promoted, I don't magically know everything about that new role. If I'm a good leader, if I'm an intelligent leader and build psychological safety on my team, I want the rest of the team to step up. I want the rest of the team to lead without necessarily being asked to do so. So that's not a small thing. Uh, that's not just being a good team player, but that's real, real structural influence within the organization. And again, for those of you early in your career, this is your edge. You might not be able to compete on the experience yet, but you can absolutely compete on trustworthiness, consistency, and proactive behavior. Those are choices, not credentials. Okay. And and, you know, I'm I've told told you guys as I've done these podcasts over the the last 18 months or so. I've talked about the idea that, you know, as I moved up in my role, and and you can do the same thing here. I moved into a position when I started at my current company. You're supposed to have an associate's degree just to get in the door. I leveraged my network, I got in the door. I didn't have that associate's degree. I had a high school diploma. I moved up, was promoted over the years multiple times, not because I was some sort of sycophant kissing the ass of the person above me, but because I built trust with those teams, right? Because I led without necessarily having the title. And don't get me wrong, if I would have had that degree, that's think of that like your kind of your fast pass, right? That's instant credentials. That allows that that would have allowed the journey to be a little less rocky, a little less stutter step, right? But I I got there because of that tenacity, because of my willingness to build that with the team to build that trust. So let's talk a little bit more about what this all looks like in practice, right? How did how did I achieve that? How can you achieve that? So the research points to a few key behaviors that informal leaders are going to demonstrate consistently. And I'm gonna give you three of them here. The first is to take initiative before being asked. Now, we'll talk about this in in the next episode. We're gonna talk about the idea of balance and work-life balance. How do you take on more responsibility without being taken advantage of? There's a fine line there, folks. Um, but uh I notice uh a lot of the younger generation, they have this mindset. And I God, I just sounded old when I said that. Um yes, I'm I I would consider myself uh a Gen Xer. Um, but some of the younger generation, they have this mentality of I was hired to do exactly this job. Anything more than exactly this job, anything more than what was on the job description, they they have their handout asking for more money. They want more money, they want more title, don't ask me to do more than exactly what I'm being paid for to do. Um, I want you to get out of that mindset. Again, don't be taken advantage of, but take initiative. You know, I tell my team all the time: don't come to me with a problem if you haven't bothered to put any thought into what does the resolution look like. And I'm not saying that you have to have the answers as to how to operationalize that solution, but don't say this thing's broken and just drop the problem on my desk and think that you get to walk away. I it's much more powerful if you can say, hey, Luke, this thing's broken. Um, and I partnered with the team. We've got some recommendations. Or, you know, I think I know what a solution looks like. I don't know how to put it together. That says I took initiative. That says I in, you know, I worked with the team. Okay. So the second thing, I want you to invest in relationships intentionally, not networking for networking's sake, but genuinely caring about people. So, for example, one of the best leaders I ever worked for, um, and this this sticks with me to this day, and I haven't reported this guy in years. Um, he knew my kids' names, he knew their birthdays, so and he knew my wife's name. He, you know, knew what kind of movies I liked, what kind of books I liked, right? We had those informal conversations, which allowed him first off to be a more effective leader because he could tap into my intrinsic motivation. But it also showed me that he genuinely cared about me as an individual, not just what have you done for me lately. And that's uh, you know, again, even without the title, I would have still followed this guy because of the way that he set up that. You know, because when he called me up, instead of giving me some generic BS on Monday morning like happy Monday, or how was your weekend? Uh, was the weather nice where you are? Right, you've you've had those filler conversations. And they they're meaningless. It's just to fill the dead space to make you feel like you're somehow connecting with your team. That's not connecting with your team, folks. That's fluff. That's bull crap. This guy would ask me, hey, how did your son, and he knew my son's name, how did your son do in that soccer game? I if I recall you said that you guys were going to a tournament this weekend, right? He knew those kind of details. And because of that, you know, by the time he actually did eventually get promoted and become the leader of our team, it it didn't feel disingenuous. Right. He invested in those relationships. He showed me that that he cared, and that builds the foundation of trust. And that's something that is so easy to replicate if you invest the time. The third thing I want to make sure that you do is make other people uh feel seen and heard. So informal leaders, they don't use their their influence to dominate, they use it to elevate everybody else around them. Uh typically you have somebody on your team that has these great ideas, um, but because they haven't been given the permission space to speak up, they don't they don't feel like their opinions are valued, and so they keep them tucked away. This is the easiest card for you to play as an informal leader is just give them space, even if it initially is one-on-one conversations, right? If you can help build their self-esteem, then you know, again, they're you're building that influence, you're building that foundation of trust. And trust me when I tell you that it pays dividends. All right. So closing out today, a couple things I want to leave you with. The world doesn't need more people waiting for a title to start leading. It needs people who understand that influence is built through trust, consistency, and genuinely caring about the people around them. Remember, titles are cheap, influence is earned. And the good news is you can start earning that today, right now, this instant. So if today's episode resonated with you, I want you to share it with somebody earlier in their career, somebody that needs to hear this. And if you haven't caught last week's episode on trust, again, go back. The two episodes come together and we'll give you the framework you can actually use. The next thing we're going to talk about is balance, uh, balancing work life and making sure that while you're leading without authority, that you're you're tap dancing that line of taking on extra without being the patsy. All right, without being made the fool. All right, folks. That's all I had for you today. I hope you have a wonderful day, and we'll talk again soon. Bye bye.