Tech leads rarely have formal power over other teams or even their own, you can't order people. Your leadership runs on influence: trust, credibility, relationships, and persuasion. This is the core skill of senior technical leadership, and it's learnable.
How to build influence
✓ Build CREDIBILITY — be right often, deliver, admit when you're wrong
✓ Build RELATIONSHIPS before you need them — not just when you want something
✓ Understand others' GOALS — frame your ask in terms of what they care about
✓ Give before you take — help others; reciprocity is real
✓ Use DATA and reasoning, not just opinion or title
✓ Find allies and build coalitions for big changes
✓ Make it easy to say yes — lower the cost of agreeing with you
