How L&D Earns Upstream Influence

Upstream influence isn’t granted. It’s earned.

Most L&D professionals don’t lack credibility because they’re not capable. They lack influence because organisations have learned to see learning as a downstream activity, something that happens after decisions are made, not while they’re being shaped.

Changing that perception requires a deliberate shift in how L&D shows up.

From Delivery to Diagnosis

Upstream influence starts with the quality of questions L&D asks.

When the first response to a request is “what course do you want?”, learning stays in delivery mode. When the response becomes “what’s driving this?”, “what would success look like?”, or “what’s currently getting in the way?”, the conversation changes.

Diagnosis is the moment L&D earns credibility. It signals that learning isn’t there to fulfil an order, but to help the organisation understand itself better. That’s where influence begins.

The Confidence to Challenge the Question

Many learning requests arrive as pre-packaged solutions. The hardest, and most valuable, thing L&D can do is slow the moment down.

Upstream influence grows when L&D has the confidence to say, “Before we build anything, can we step back?” That doesn’t mean being obstructive. It means being curious enough to challenge assumptions and grounded enough to hold the tension.

If L&D never challenges the question, it will never be invited to shape the answer.

System Literacy Changes the Conversation

Influence comes from understanding how the organisation actually works.

L&D earns a seat at the table when it can speak fluently about workflows, incentives, decision rights, leadership behaviours and operational realities, not just learning design. This system literacy allows learning professionals to connect capability gaps to structural issues, and to position learning as part of a wider solution.

That’s when leaders stop seeing L&D as a service function and start seeing it as a thinking partner.

Influence Requires Evidence, Not Activity

Upstream conversations are built on trust, and trust is built through evidence.

Attendance figures and completion rates rarely influence strategic decisions. Influence grows when L&D can clearly articulate how learning has supported change, shifted behaviour, reduced risk or improved performance.

This isn’t about perfect measurement. It’s about clarity of intent, outcome and contribution, and the confidence to talk about learning in the language leaders use.

Why This Is a Capability Gap, Not a Motivation Problem

Here’s the reality: most L&D professionals want to work upstream. What holds them back isn’t ambition, it’s capability, confidence and consistency.

Influencing without authority, diagnosing complex problems, challenging senior stakeholders, and thinking systemically are learned skills. Yet very few L&D teams are ever developed to do this work well.

That’s the gap the TwentyOne Leadership L&D Academy is designed to close.

The TwentyOne Leadership L&D Academy: Building Upstream Capability

The Academy exists to help L&D professionals and L&D teams move beyond order-taking and delivery, and into genuine learning partnership.

For individuals, it builds diagnostic skill, strategic thinking and the confidence to influence conversations that matter, even without formal authority.

For L&D teams, it creates shared language, consistent ways of working and the collective capability to operate as a strategic function, not just a responsive one.

The focus isn’t on theory or more tools. It’s on how L&D shows up day to day, in conversations, in decision-making, and in moments where influence is either gained or lost.

Email me matt@twentyoneleadership.com