Nov
26
The Leader’s Voice: How Communication Can Inspire Action and Get Results! written by Boyd Clarke and Ron Crossland, two executives at tompeterscompany, they define the core principles of effective leadership communication.
“To say language is everything to a leader is no understatement.” says Tom Peters
Overview
The forward for the book is written by Tom Peters who says in the forward:
“They are my colleagues, so this could be seen as a self serving introduction. Problem is, I hold my closest friends to a much higher standard than others. I informed Boyd and Ron months ago that I would not write this forward unless I “love the book” (I do. They passed. I’m writing)”
The book is divided into 11 chapters that are structured as follows.
The Leaders Voice - The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has occurred.
“The Leader’s Voice allows you to speak the truth so others can distinguish is from spin. It establishes a compelling context, while others squabble over trivial content. It challenges others to take a stand before certainty arrives. It is authentically your voice….. When your passion declares the direction you will go, it unites those who wold follow and divides those who will not.”
Hardwired for Facts, Emotions, and Symbols - Reason without emotion is impossible.
“By not using facts, emotions, and symbols in their communication, leaders leave out essential ingredients that stimulate and promote the transfer of meaning and quality decision making…. When constituents fill in the blanks left by leaders, they construct a different message than the leader sent.”
How TNT Found Drama
“Leaving constituents with just the facts is a recipe for disaster.”
People Love Facts - Facts alone seldom persuade and rarely inspire.
“Facts are meaningless without context and interpretation….. Facts have multiple interpretations. Facts provide the underpinning logic to a message. Most leaders understand the facts but do not often take time to create compelling, memorable representation of what the facts mean.”
Tune in to Emotions - We follow leaders because of how they make us feel.
“As a leader you must also know and articulate constituents’ important but unspoken feelings. Finally you must foster passionate alignment around shared aspirations. Constituents constantly scan the emotional channel, tuning in to stations that inspire, encourage, and engage.”
Symbols: Rabbit’s Foot and Rosary - From a rabbit’s foot to a rosary, symbols are the shortcuts to the great truths that guide our lives.
“The stories we tell, the art we display, and the music we love are symbols of identity…. A symbol is as powerful as the action or emotion it evokes…. A leader without symbols is like Elvis without hips… Remember the human brain uses facts, emotions and symbols to create complete thoughts.”
The Sound of Silos - Themes create communication threads…
“To make connections, leaders must communicate with facts, emotions and symbols on a variety of levels, from the trivial to the personal…. Leaders who say everything say nothing. Leaders connect with their constituents using a few key themes… Themes connect people to important ideas and create deeper levels of dialogue…. Themes create communication threads that tie node on the network together.”
Without Wax - As a leader you are irrelevant until you have something to say.
“Often leaders don’t know what they want to say, because they don’t know who they are…. The leader’s message grows naturally from a clear sense of self. Leaders who are authentic, who remain true to who they are and what they believe, retain their follower’s ear. When trust is high, communication bypasses all the natural filters that protects us from being cheated and deceived.”
Climbing the Ladder of Abstraction - The leader who creates a line of sight between vision and task can inspire greatness.
“Without an overarching strategic vision and direction, leaders can find themselves creating messages rather than meaning…. ‘The more information we amass, the more essential meaning becomes,’ says William Van Dusen Wishard.”
One Voice - Leaders must communicate a million complicated things when they fail to communicate a few, simple, profound ones.
“Alignment is primarily an emotional, not logical process. Yet managers spend 90 percent of their time aligning facts and 10 percent on the more difficult task of aligning hearts and minds.”
Last Word: Calling All Capitalists
“On September 10, 2001, Rudolph Giuliani was a lame-duck mayor struggling cancer and mired in a divorce scandal. On hundred and twelve days later he was named Time magazine’s ‘Person of the Year.’ Context shifted and Rudy responded with competence and caring… Leaders get context right when they see themselves and their constituents as actors across time, rather than as puppets on a momentary stage….. Just as social system failures are at the heart of the world’s economic problems, they are at the heart of most business problems. Historically, leaders with passionate voices have driven positive social change in countries and companies.”
Summary
This is a great book on communication, it’s simple and profound. This is not a book about communication techniques, methods or tools. The book is about communication principles. I like that this is a principle based book, because research based and proven principles can be confidently used to guide, the use of communication methods and techniques. I had a difficult time with the first few chapters but the last part of the book really comes together with a powerful message. I can enthusiastically recommend this book to all leaders looking for a solid set of communication principles.
Technorati Tags: Leadership, Communication, Management, Book, Review, Principle, Strategy, Business, Character
Nov
26
Five Steps to Engaging Your Employees
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Ram Charan writes describing Five Steps to Engaging Your Employees, emphasizing that:
Great leaders understand the numbers, but they also touch people’s hearts.
To get people fully engaged, you have to pay attention to them and make a personal connection with them. There are lots of different approaches to doing so, but here are some specific ways to improve how you lead people:
- Spend time and listen. There’s no substitute for personal interaction. Even the most competent, motivated professionals can lose focus, energy, and commitment when their interaction with the boss dwindles. You have to make the time to converse with people in person, by phone, through email, at lunch, or through periodic sit-downs one on one. Asking how a person’s current challenge is going and whether there’s anything you can do to help shows you care about his success. Listening is more important than talking.
- Help people see why their work is important. It’s hard to feel engaged when you’re working in a vacuum. You can help people see their individual contribution as part of a bigger picture.
- Give people honest feedback. It’s a human phenomenon: When someone is doing really well and you reinforce it with positive feedback, good performance becomes even better. People need to be seen and recognized — and not just once a year in a typically brief performance review. They need to hear what you think of their work often, with candor. When people aren’t meeting expectations, let them know that, too, so that they have a chance to improve. Don’t let your disappointments build and fester. If you talk to people regularly there’ll be no surprises.
- Take an interest in people’s careers. People will be all the more committed to their work when they know you’re the kind of leader who is truly interested in their success. Look for what people are naturally good at and work with them to find ways that they can leverage their talents.
- Take an interest in the person beyond the job. Not every conversation should be about work. People have lives outside of work; indeed, some people are very different outside of their jobs. People will know you care about them if you take time to learn what’s important in their lives.
In this new economy, the need to engage people in the organisation’s vision and mission has never been greater and these fives ways provide a great starting point for thinking about the role that us as leaders need to play. Ram Charan sums the issue up well stating:
Sure, you can hire a motivational speaker to fire up the troops. But the effect will last 15 minutes. If you really want to get your employees fully engaged in their work, you must be fully engaged with them. It’s you who makes the difference. It’s in your daily behavior, and it’s your energy that creates energy in others. It’s that simple.
How engaged are you? How engaged is your team? Select one of the above five steps and implement it over the next few weeks to increase your team’s level of engagement.
Technorati Tags: Leadership, Communication, Management, Engagement, Team, Feedback, Business
Nov
26
Management f-LAWS
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What are f-LAWS you may ask? The f-LAWS website says that:
f-LAWS are truths about organizations that we might wish to deny or ignore - simple and more reliable guides to managers’ everyday behaviour than the complex truths proposed by scientists, economists, sociologists, politicians and philosophers.
In 1958, Professor Cyril Northcote Parkinson first articulated Parkinson’s Law, which states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”. His law and the accompanying book was based on his extensive experience in the British Civil Service and on his own scientific observations.
Almost 50 years later, Professor Russell Ackoff, renowned American management guru and systems thinker, has compiled over 80 new laws in the same vein. Based on a lifetime’s experience in public and private sector organizations, these f-LAWS (or laws as flaws) are designed to whet your appetite and get you thinking about the often-unacknowledged realities of organizations: what really motivates managers, why are companies run the way they are, how come they don’t work better…?
There are over 80 f-Laws and the authors intend releasing their book “Management f-LAWS: How Organizations Really Work” in January 2007. To whet our appetite the authors hae release a free e-book “Little Book of f-Laws” containing just 13 laws from the book. From the free e-book “Little Book of f-Laws” I found the following f-Laws most interesting…
- Managers who don’t know how to measure what they want settle for wanting what they can measure.
- There is nothing that a manager wants done that educated subordinates cannot undo. - The basis of this f-Law is as follows: the more power-over educated subordinates that managers exercise, the less is their power-to get them to do what they want them to.
- The more time managers spend trying to get rid of what they don’t want, the less likely they are to get what they do want. - It is more difficult to define what we want than what we do not want. Nevertheless, a ‘getting rid of’ strategy is a cop out. Great gains are seldom made easily.
- A bureaucrat is one who has the power to say ‘no’ but none to say ‘yes’. - In a bureaucracy a ‘no’ cannot lead to what is considered to be an error, only a ‘yes’ can do that. Therefore, within a bureaucracy doing as little as possible is the best strategy for avoiding detectable errors.
- The less important an issue is, the more time managers spend discussing it. - More time is spent on small talk than is spent on large talk. Most talk is about what matters least. What matters least is what most of us know most about. The more something matters, the less we know about it.
- Managers cannot learn from doing things right, only from doing them wrong. - Doing something right can only confirm what one already knows or believes; one cannot learn from it. However, one can learn from making mistakes, by identifying and correcting them…… Organizations fail more often because of what they have not done than because of what they have done.
The book is planned to be released in January 2007 which you can pre-order here. The authors are running a competition looking for additional f-Laws. If can submit your own f-Law to the authors for consideration and stand a chance to win the f-LAW trophy. Entries will be judged by the publishers.
Technorati Tags: Leadership, f-Laws, Management, Book, Review, Principle, Business
Nov
26
Leaders place people at the heart of their work
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“Good leaders make people feel that they’re at the very heart of things, not at the periphery. Everyone feels that he or she makes a difference to the success of the organization. When that happens people feel centered and that gives their work meaning.” - Warren Bennis
The Leadership Insight
Leadership is about people. In all the day-to-day rush and activity we can loose sight of the people. In all the activity we loose touch with our people and we soon begin to treat people like machines, as replaceable parts, as a means to an end. Nothing of significance happens if we lose the people in all our striving for results. People matter. It’s the role of leaders to create meaning and engagement, to put heart back into work. Leaders place people at the very heart of their work, their vision and their success.
Technorati Tags: Leadership, Quote, Management, Engagement, Meaning, Business
Nov
19
Leaders Focus on Creating, Not Problem Solving
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Robert Fritz in his book “Path of Least Resistance” discusses the idea that creating is not problem solving and that understanding the distinction between these two concepts makes all the difference to the results we get as leaders. What is the difference between problem solving and creating?
“The fundamental difference between creating and problem solving is simple. In problem solving we seek to make something we do not like go away. In creating, we seek to make what we truly care about exist.” - Peter M. Senge, Creating Desired Futures in a Global Economy, Reflections The SoL Journal, 2003.
Creating is about bringing something into existence. Problem solving is about removing what we don’t want. As leaders we are constantly being called upon to solve a constant barrage of problems, to such an extent that we forget what we’re trying to achieve. Missing the purpose of it all, why we’re doing what we’re doing? Society is too problem focused, we are more concerned about fixing problems, removing what we don’t want, than we are with creating what we do want. In all this action, we rarely take action based upon the vision of what we do want to create.
“What determines your orientation is where you spend most of your time. For many people, much of their life is organized around the circumstances in their lives. For others, much of their lives are organized around creating what they want to create…. Their is a dramatic difference between the two orientations. In the first, you are always subject to the whims of circumstances. In the other, you are the predominant creative force in your own life, and circumstances are one of the forces you use in the creative process.” - Robert Fritz, Path of Least Resistance
It may seem like a subtle difference, but creating is very different from problem solving. When problem solving we’re seeking a solution that makes something go away. When we are creating we’re attempting to bring something new into existence. Reflecting on these two ways of thinking, it’s seems to me, that we spend more time problem solving, reacting to circumstances, than we do creating what we desire. We become so caught up in the frenzy of solving problem, that we forget what we originally set out to create. So what exactly are the differences between problem solving and creating?
| Problem solving Orientation | Creating Orientation |
| Problem solving is a reactive approach to situations | Creating is a sustained, pro-active approach to situations |
| Results in an either / or response to situations | Leverages the power of paradox, the genius of the AND |
| Creates and reactive pattern, resulting from knee-jerk reactions to situations. | Creates a growth pattern as we focus on creating what we desire |
| An effective approach when there is only one correct answer (convergent thinking) | An effective approach when there is more than one correct answer (divergent thinking) |
| Orientates our thinking towards problems | Orientates our thinking towards our vision |
| Results in negative emotional energy and responses | Results in positive emotional energy and responses |
| Focused on relieving intensity of the situation | Focused on creating what we desire |
The table above draws upon the work of Bruce Elkin from his book “Simplicity and Success“, who was strongly influenced by Robert Fritz.
When leading from a problem orientation, what drives the action is the intensity of the problem, remove the intensity of the problem and the resulting action slows and soon stops. We need to be leading from a strong vision of what we are striving to create, this inspires and motivates us to continually act, creating our vision…
“What are we trying to create? Without a compelling answer to this question, it is hard to know why all the problem solving actually matters. Problem solving becomes the busywork of organizations in which people have forgotten their purpose and vision. Reconnecting with that purpose always starts with asking questions like: Why are we here? What are we trying to create that will make the world a better place? And, who would miss us if we were gone?” - Peter M. Senge, Creating Desired Futures in a Global Economy, Reflections The SoL Journal, 2003.
Ultimately leaders need to solve problems whilst they focus to create their vision of the future, they need to be good at doing both, however as Peter Senge points our our primary focus is on the big picture and on what we are creating.
Ultimately leaders need to solve problems and create the future, they need to be good at doing both, however as Peter Senge points our our primary focus is on the big picture and on what we are creating.
Organizations must do both - resolve day-to-day problems and generate new results. But if your primary role is to fix problems, individually or collectively, rather than create something new and meaningful, it’s hard to maintain a sense of purpose.” - Peter M. Senge, Creating Desired Futures in a Global Economy, Reflections The SoL Journal, 2003.
The vital question for leaders is not “What problem are we trying to solve?”, but “What do I want to create?” Are you leading from a vision of what you want to create? When you find yourself solving problems, do you approach solving them within the context of the vision you’re striving to create?
Technorati Tags: Leaders, Leadership, Management, Books, Business, Book, Principles, Creating
Nov
19
Honoré’s Leadership Lessons
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The Center for Creative Leadership discusses the leadership lessons from Lieutenant General Russel Honoré. General Honoré has learned his lessons in leadership over a 35-year career in the U.S. Army.
Honoré’s Leadership Lessons
Take it from the General. Here are a few of his guiding truths of leadership:
- In crisis, the first report is usually wrong.
- Have the ability to listen to bad news.
- The real art of leadership is getting people to willingly follow you.
- Think about who else needs to know? Collaborate, communicate.
- What you say and what you do have to match.
- Leaders can’t just be observers; they must be players.
- Your people are #1.
- Be a lifetime learner.
- Be wary of quicker, faster, cheaper—it isn’t always better.
Taking time to learn the leadership lessons from those who have walked a path different than ourselves always provides interesting insghts….. Salute, General Russel Honoré!
Technorati Tags: Leadership, Management, Lessons, Business, Mentor
Nov
19
Tom Hirshfield’s Rules of Thumb for Problem Solving
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A post on the Creative Think blog discusses the follow “rules of thumb” to be followed for problem solving, from Tom Hirshfield, a research physicist at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory.
Tom Hirshfield’s Rules of Thumb
- If you hit every time, the target’s too near — or too big.
- Never learn details before deciding on a first approach.
- Never state a problem to yourself in the same terms as it was brought to you.
- The second assault on the same problem should come from a totally different direction.
- If you don’t understand a problem, then explain it to an audience and listen to yourself.
- Don’t mind approaches that transform one problem into another, that’s a new chance.
- If it’s surprising, it’s useful.
- Studying the inverse problem always helps.
- Spend a proportion of your time analyzing your work methods.
- If you don’t ask “Why this?” often enough, someone else will ask, “Why you?”
The need for innovative and creative approaches to problem solving is an important leadership practice, a practice that we all should be developing….
Technorati Tags: Leadership, Management, Practice, Problem-solving, Business, Lifehack, Rules-of-Thumb
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