Mapping your influence zones

Understanding your sphere of influence starts with recognizing that impact radiates outward like ripples on water. Your immediate work represents the inner circle where your influence is strongest and most direct. Here you shape daily decisions, set cultural norms, and model ethical behavior through your actions.

Beyond this core sits your extended influence zone: cross-functional partners, stakeholders you regularly engage, and teams that depend on your product decisions. Product designers influence through their interface choices, researchers through their insights, engineers through their technical implementations. Each role creates different pathways for ethical impact.

The outer rings include indirect influence through the products you help create, industry standards you might shape, and the users whose lives you touch. Mapping these zones helps identify where you can most effectively advocate for ethical practices and where you might need to build coalitions to extend your reach.