Lead Your Leader: How to Master Leading Up and Build Influence That Gets You Promoted

What if the most valuable leadership skill you've never been taught isn't how to manage your team, it's how to lead the person you report to?

In this episode of The Leadership Sovereignty Podcast, host Ralph E. Owens II and co-host Terry Baylor sit down with Lawrence Scott, United States Military Academy at West Point graduate, former Army officer, and certified John Maxwell Team leadership coach, to break down the skill almost nobody trains you on: leading up.

Lawrence puts it plainly. Every professional needs to master two things: leading down, the people who report to you, and leading up, the person you report to. Most leadership development stops at the first one. This conversation is built entirely around the second.

He walks through the real mechanics of it: why the leaders above you are giants, not gods, how trust gets built long before your best idea ever needs approval, and why knowing what actually motivates your specific leader changes how quickly your ideas move.

WHO THIS EPISODE IS FOR

• You want to influence the direction of your team or organization, not just wait for direction to come to you
• You're ready to treat "leading up" as a skill you can practice, not a personality trait you either have or don't
• You want to build real trust with your leader instead of hoping your work eventually speaks for itself
• You lead people yourself and want a sharper sense of what it looks like from the other side of the table
• You're aiming for your next promotion and know that visibility with leadership matters as much as output

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN IN THIS EPISODE

• Why leading up is a distinct, learnable skill, not something you either have or don't
• Why the people you answer to are giants, not gods, and what that reframe changes about how you show up
• How trust is built in small tasks long before you're ever handed a big idea
• Why you have to identify what motivates your specific leader instead of assuming
• The difference between being injured and being incapacitated by setbacks
• Why resilience requires a reason before it requires a method
• How to fall out of love with the story you keep telling yourself

THE REST OF THIS CONVERSATION
This episode closes out the run. Here is what came before it.

🎧 EP186: What Do You Do When Your Boss Becomes the Problem?

ABOUT LAWRENCE SCOTT
Lawrence Scott is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, a former Army officer, and a certified member of the John Maxwell Team. For over a decade, he has coached executives, teams, and professional athletes on leadership, communication, and purposeful living, helping them build systems that elevate both their lives and the people they lead.

Profile: https://www.leadershipsovereignty.com/guests/lawrence-scott/

🧾 Chapters

• (00:00) -
• (00:05) - Humility and Giant Awareness
• (01:52) - Seeing Giants as Human
• (03:23) - Humility Through Self-Awareness
• (05:57) - Leading Up with Discernment
• (09:08) - Trust, Excellence, and Leading Up
• (14:22) - Responding to Betrayal Well
• (17:02) - Don’t Build a Tent There
• (20:25) - Bleed a While
• (22:06) - A Reason to Be Resilient
• (23:48) - Finding the Soul of Leadership

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