Hello Reader, It's Kayode

A few years ago, I sat in a planning meeting that had been running for 45 minutes without a single decision made.

Everyone had an opinion and nobody had ownership, and the same three options kept cycling through the conversation like luggage on a carousel that nobody wanted to claim. Then one engineer said: “We’ve been here long enough. Based on what we’ve heard, we’re going with option two. Here’s who owns what next.”

The room went quiet in the way rooms do when someone finally says the thing everyone already knew but nobody would commit to. Someone laughed softly. Laptops clicked shut. I drove home that evening thinking not about the decision itself, which was unremarkable, but about the moment before it. Forty-five minutes of intelligent people going nowhere, and then one person changed the temperature of the entire room with a single sentence.

I wanted to understand how to do that. And honestly, I wanted to understand why I hadn’t done it myself.

For years I operated on a quiet belief that good work was self-evident. That if I solved the hard problems, flagged the risks others missed, and delivered consistently, the right people would eventually notice and the right opportunities would follow. I kept my head down, stayed in my lane, and told myself it was professionalism. What it actually was, was invisibility dressed up as integrity.

The engineers who build real influence are not necessarily the most technically gifted people in the room. They are the ones who consistently do five specific things that most engineers either avoid or never think to do. Here they are, roughly in order of how uncomfortable they will make you.

Start with the easiest one: remember what people tell you.

When a colleague mentions their mother is in the hospital, or their team is heading into a difficult reorg, write it down and follow up later. Not strategically, just as a human being who was paying attention. This sounds almost too simple to mention, and most people still do not do it. The engineers who build the deepest loyalty are rarely the most impressive ones in a technical review. They are the ones who ask “How did that situation with your team resolve?” three weeks after you forgot you even mentioned it, and that quality of attention creates trust faster than any credential.

Name what others did, specifically and in public.

Influential engineers do not collect credit, they distribute it. When someone’s idea saves the project two weeks, say so by name in the next meeting rather than letting it dissolve into a vague “great team effort.” That kind of specific, public recognition builds your reputation as someone safe to collaborate with, which means people bring you into conversations earlier, share information more freely, and advocate for you in rooms where you are not present.

Lead with curiosity rather than conclusions.

You may be the most capable engineer on the call, but that alone will not make people act on your ideas. What earns trust is not how much you know. It is how you share what you know. “What if we adjusted the rollout sequence here? I’ve seen this pattern create downstream delays before” lands fundamentally differently than “We need to change the rollout sequence.” The information is identical, but one invites the room in while the other puts people on the defensive, and expert power has always been less about being right and more about being trusted enough that people want to follow your lead.

Hold the line when others look away.

This is the one most engineers quietly avoid. When someone consistently talks over colleagues, or a team member keeps missing commitments, the influential engineer addresses it directly and without drama rather than waiting for someone with a bigger title to step in. It will feel disproportionate the first time you do it, and you will second-guess yourself afterward. But the people around you are always watching who is willing to protect the standard and who is hoping someone else will handle it, and that observation shapes how much authority they extend to you over time.

Make the call.

This is the hardest one, and the one I avoided the longest. When a conversation keeps circling and the room has enough information to move but nobody will commit, step in, name where the group seems to be landing, assign ownership, and move forward. Most engineers wait, telling themselves they are being collaborative or do not want to overstep. I told myself those same things for years while watching other people build the kind of authority I was hoping would somehow find its way to me on its own.

It never does.

The engineer in that meeting was three years into his career with no formal authority over anyone in the room. What he had was the willingness to say the thing everyone already knew but nobody would commit to out loud, and that is not a personality trait you either have or you do not. It is a choice you make or you do not.

The question worth sitting with: in your last ten meetings, how many times did you know what needed to be said and chose to wait for someone else to say it first? That gap, between what you saw and what you said, is exactly where influence gets left on the table.

That’s all for this week.