How to Identify Informal Leaders in Your Organization with ONA

If you want to know how to identify informal leaders in your organization, an org chart or a meeting attendance list will not give you the answer. The most visible employee is not necessarily the most influential. Influence shows up in the work itself: colleagues seek someone out for advice, departments rely on that person to coordinate, or the team pays close attention to their view of a proposed change.

Testing that influence means looking at relationships, not just individuals. Organizational network analysis, or ONA, provides a way to do that. Its metrics point to places where an informal leadership hypothesis deserves investigation. They do not prove that someone is a leader.

What is an informal leader?

An informal leader influences how other people act, make decisions, or respond to events without relying on a title or formal authority. Colleagues may seek this person out for professional advice, trust their judgment in an ambiguous situation, or ask them to help several teams reach agreement.

The role depends on context. One person may be an authority on a technical subject, while another connects departments or helps a team through change. Looking for one universal informal leader across an entire company is usually the wrong goal.

Informal leadership is neutral in itself. It can help knowledge and change spread, but it can also reinforce ineffective norms or resistance. The point of analysis is to understand the influence, not to attach a positive or negative label to the person.

Formal vs. Informal Leadership

A formal manager receives authority through a role. That person makes decisions, assigns work, and manages resources. Informal influence grows from trust, expertise, and working relationships. It is not granted by an appointment, and it may never appear in standard reporting.

The same person can hold both kinds of leadership. A manager may also earn the team's informal trust through sound judgment and expertise. But influence without a management title does not mean that an employee wants to manage people or is ready to do so. Motivation and management capabilities need to be assessed separately.

Why managers may not see informal leaders

Most management information is organized around jobs, departments, goals, KPIs, and reports. Those records matter, but they say little about how people share knowledge and help one another from day to day.

Much of that work stays outside formal measures: advising a colleague, helping a new hire, sharing the right contact, or resolving a problem quickly. In meetings, the frequent speaker attracts attention. On an internal feed, the frequent poster does. Neither visibility nor activity tells a manager whom people trust for help or whose involvement changes how the work gets done.

Even an observant manager usually knows the ties within one team better than the relationships across functions, projects, and locations. As a company grows, personal observation covers less of the network. A network view fills part of that gap and gives managers a way to test what the org chart cannot show.

Which signs point to real influence?

No single characteristic is enough to classify an employee as an informal leader. Start with an observed signal, turn it into an analytical hypothesis, and make a management conclusion only after checking the context.

A recurring stream of requests for help is an observed signal. One possible hypothesis is that colleagues trust the employee's expertise. Before drawing a conclusion about the person's role, check what the requests concern, where they come from, whether they are part of the job, and how the pattern changes over time.

Colleagues regularly seek their help

When people across different tasks and teams turn to the same employee for advice, the pattern may indicate trusted expertise. The substance, direction, and recurrence of those requests matter more than the raw count.

Their contribution is recognized across teams

Repeated recognition from one close colleague and recognition from several departments describe different kinds of ties. The second pattern supports a hypothesis of broader influence, but it does not confirm that hypothesis on its own.

They connect groups

Network connectors carry context between teams, help functions understand one another, and reduce information loss. In network analysis, betweenness centrality can describe a person's position between groups. A high value tells you where to investigate: the employee may be maintaining an important bridge, or compensating for a missing direct process between teams.

Knowledge and decisions pass through them

The number of contacts is secondary. The better question is whether the person helps colleagues make decisions, learn working practices, or solve problems. What happens through a tie matters more than the mere existence of contact.

People trust them during change

During a reorganization, product launch, or process change, employees often take cues from people they trust. Support from these colleagues may help a change move forward, while their concerns may expose problems that management has not considered. They should be invited to act as change champions only after a direct conversation.

Their absence changes how work gets done

If approvals slow down, teams stop coordinating, or knowledge becomes unavailable when one person is absent, the pattern may signal both influence and organizational risk. The right response is not more work for that employee. It is to examine the process and distribute critical ties.

How influence differs from popularity

Popularity reflects social visibility or personal affinity. Influence describes how someone affects shared work, decisions, knowledge, or coordination. A popular employee may receive many reactions and talk to many people without being a source of professional advice. An internal expert may be barely visible in broad company communication yet remain important to several processes.

Message volume, contact count, reactions, or thank-yous are therefore not enough to identify informal leaders. Check:

• who starts the interaction and why;
• whether the tie recurs and which teams it reaches;
• whether the interaction helps solve a problem or move work forward;
• whether the activity follows from the person's role, a process issue, or collaboration overload.

Popularity describes how visible someone is. Influence describes the role they play in the network.

Which roles appear in an organizational network?

A single ranking hides more than it explains. It is more useful to examine several kinds of informal leadership and other important network roles. One employee may combine more than one.

Go-to colleague

Many people approach this employee for help. The person may direct them to the right colleague, explain a process, or resolve a common problem. A high number of incoming ties makes the role visible, but it may also indicate overload.

Internal expert

Colleagues seek this person out for a specific subject. The employee may have a small network, while the substance of recurring requests points to recognized expertise. That is a hypothesis about the role, not a complete assessment of the person's knowledge.

Network connector

This employee links teams, functions, or locations that have few direct ties. The work often goes unnoticed in ordinary reporting even though important context passes through the connection.

Change champion

Colleagues trust this person's judgment, so they may be able to explain a change, gather feedback, and help a new practice take hold. Participation should be voluntary, not assigned automatically because an analysis suggests influence.

Source of team support

Some employees help colleagues remain confident, bring others into the work, and sustain a sense of purpose. Contact frequency does a poor job of describing this role, so quantitative signals need qualitative feedback.

High centrality is not the same as leadership. It may result from a formal role, scarce expertise, or a poorly designed process.

How to identify informal leaders in your organization with ONA

Organizational network analysis represents employees as nodes and working interactions as ties. To identify informal leaders with ONA, begin with a management question, not a leaderboard.

1. Frame the management question

Decide what the organization needs to investigate. The question might concern who can help with a specific change, how knowledge moves, which employees connect departments, where overload is hidden, or whose expertise is not reflected in a job title.

Without a defined purpose, the result is a network map that is difficult to interpret.

2. Choose signals that match the question

A professional advice network and an emotional support network describe different relationships. Possible data sources include short surveys about working ties, business communication metadata collected under a lawful basis and transparent rules, collaboration data, recognition for a specific contribution, ideas, problem reports, and qualitative interviews.

Survey questions should be specific as well: whom do employees approach for professional advice, who helps with difficult work problems, and with whom do they discuss new ideas? Combining several kinds of influence into one broad question weakens the result.

3. Observe a representative period

A single action may be incidental. A recurring pattern is enough to form a hypothesis, but the observation period should include ordinary team activity rather than only a crisis project, vacation season, or short campaign.

A 30-day pilot can provide an initial network map and a set of questions to investigate. It is a starting point for observation, not a basis for final personnel decisions. A stronger interpretation requires context and evidence of how the network changes over time.

4. Examine the structure of the ties

ONA uses several network measures:

• incoming ties — how many people choose an employee as a source of help, advice, or trust;
• betweenness centrality — how often a person connects different parts of the network;
• tie diversity — whether the employee interacts only with one group or across several functions;
• persistence — whether ties recur over time;
• context — which subjects and tasks produce the interaction.

None of these measures proves leadership. They should not be combined into a universal score without considering the employee's role, the data source, and the purpose of the analysis.

5. Test the hypothesis in context

A network measure answers where to investigate, not why the pattern exists. High betweenness centrality, for example, means that an employee occupies a position between groups. One hypothesis is that the person helps teams exchange context. Another is that a direct process between departments is missing.

Discussion with managers and network participants helps move from a signal to a conclusion. In the first case, the organization might recognize and support the connecting work. In the second, it may need to fix a structural bottleneck. The metric cannot choose between those actions.

6. Track change over time

Organizational networks change as companies grow, reorganize, appoint new managers, and start new projects. Compare the network across periods rather than turning one snapshot into an employee ranking.

The comparison may show whether ties between teams have strengthened, dependence on one person has fallen, or new sources of expertise have appeared. Those changes still require context.

How HiveHR surfaces informal influence

In HiveHR, familiar work actions serve as organizational signals. In the basic workflow, participants can:

• thank a colleague for specific help or a contribution;
• suggest an idea;
• report a work problem.

As these actions accumulate, they form a network of ties and contexts. The data can support questions about who regularly helps colleagues, which expertise people seek from an employee, whose work receives recognition across departments, and who connects groups. Recurring signals can also point to possible relationships between work problems and overload.

Thank-you counts, general activity, and centrality should never become an informal leadership ranking. One action may be incidental, while visibility often depends on a person's role and working conditions. Testing a hypothesis requires the structure and substance of the ties, recurrence, and change over time.

The analysis does not answer the question, “Who should we appoint as a leader?” It shows which people and relationships appear to support the team's work and where a manager should gather more context.

What to do after the analysis

An observed pattern of influence begins an investigation. It is not a personnel decision. What happens next depends on the employee's role, workload, and willingness to take part.

Recognize the contribution

Connecting and supporting work often goes unnoticed. It can inform feedback, development, role design, and career discussions. Talk about the specific contribution rather than attaching a label to the employee.

Check the workload

When too many requests depend on one person, additional visibility may make the situation worse. Distribute knowledge, build backup ties, simplify processes, and help colleagues handle some questions independently.

Invite voluntary participation in change

An informal leader can be invited to test initiatives, gather feedback, or communicate a change. The employee is not obligated to take on that work simply because the analysis suggests influence.

Spread the expertise

If one person is the only source of critical knowledge, mentoring, documentation, working pairs, and communities of practice can distribute it. The goal is to strengthen the network, not make a valuable employee even harder to replace.

Develop more than one leader

A resilient organization should not depend on one central person. Supporting a distributed network of internal experts, network connectors, and change champions reduces that dependence.

Mistakes to avoid

Publishing an employee ranking

A public list of the “most influential” employees creates competition, encourages people to optimize for the metric, and damages trust. ONA results should support organizational development, not an internal contest.

Promoting someone automatically

Informal influence does not guarantee the desire or ability to manage people. A promotion requires a separate assessment of motivation, capabilities, and fit for the role.

Drawing a conclusion from one measure

Many incoming ties may reflect expertise, approachability, a job requirement, or overload. Without context, the measure supports a hypothesis but does not prove it.

Ignoring less visible roles

An employee with a small network may do rare expert work and remain essential to a specific process. Low centrality does not mean low value.

Collecting data without transparency

Employees should understand what data is used, why the analysis is being conducted, who will see the results, and which decisions may follow. Hidden monitoring damages trust and lowers data quality. Personal data should be protected, and access to the analysis should be restricted.

Frequently asked questions

What is an informal leader?

An informal leader is an employee whom colleagues trust and whose involvement affects shared work regardless of title. The role may involve expertise, knowledge transfer, team coordination, or support during change.

How do you identify informal leaders in the workplace?

Look for recurring signals of influence, compare more than one source of data, and test the resulting hypothesis with managers and network participants. Contact counts, thank-yous, or message volume are not enough on their own.

What are the signs of informal leadership?

Possible informal leader characteristics include recurring requests for advice, trust across teams, knowledge transfer, a connecting position between groups, and visible disruption when the employee is absent. Each signal needs to be checked against the person's role, tasks, and observation period.

Can a formal manager also be an informal leader?

Yes. A formal manager may also have the team's informal trust. A title does not create that trust automatically, and influence without a title does not demonstrate readiness to manage people.

Can ONA identify informal influencers?

ONA can show where informal influence may exist by revealing recurring ties, network positions, and patterns across groups. It cannot automatically label someone as an informal leader. The pattern is an analytical hypothesis until it has been checked in context.

What should an organization do after identifying an informal leader?

Discuss the employee's specific contribution, workload, motivation, and willingness to take on an additional role. The organization may then support the work, distribute knowledge, or invite voluntary participation in change. It should not automatically promote the person, expand their duties, or announce a leadership label.

Sources

• Rob Cross: What is Organizational Network Analysis?
• Center for Creative Leadership: Networking for Leaders: Understanding the Invisible Structure That Drives Results
• Microsoft Learn: Network collaboration insights
• Polinode: What is Organizational Network Analysis?
• Valentina Ramos et al.: Comparative organizational network analysis considering formal power-based networks and organizational hierarchies