Minding Gaps

The Birthplace of Cynicism Is an Iceberg

 

By Thomas J. Lee

Companies and other large organizations—agencies or administrations of government, universities, non-profits, hospitals, museums, and the like—typically go to great lengths to craft their formal strategic messages.
 
These organizations appreciate the importance of carefully defining their mission and regularly communicating with key stakeholders like customers, employees, investors, and others who want to be kept abreast of their progress. That's what the formal voice is for.
 
It can veer off course, however, and sometimes it does. Leaders may neglect or ignore communication outside and beyond the realm of formal messages. Two other voices—the semi-formal and the informal—account for well over half of all the messages that key stakeholders receive. These messages can wreak havoc if left unmanaged.
 
The semi-formal voice consists of explicit and implicit messaging from the institutional management tools an organization uses to operate: things like budgets, procedures, policies, its hierarchy, agendas, requirements, quotas, and more. For example, who gets hired and who gets promoted send loud signals as to what kinds of behavior are expected and rewarded.
 
The informal voice (not be confused with water-cooler chitchat) consists of explicit and implicit messaging drawn from workplace experiences touching on integrity, respect, dignity, pride, teamwork, inclusion, trust, and so forth. These experiences define the employee's social relationship with the employer. As a practical matter, they commonly involve the interpersonal relationship with one's manager and with his or her manager.
 
Like the submerged bulk of an iceberg, the semi-formal and informal voices can sink the ship if they are not managed. For when the formal voice is saying one thing, and either or both the semi-formal and informal voices are saying something else, the formal voice instantly loses credibility. It's never a tie. It's never close to a tie. The ship always lists to the same side.
 
Moreover, the louder the formal voice is, the more noticeable the erosion of credibility is. That's often the case, because the formal voice alone has the amplification of marketing, publishing, broadcasting, and web presence.
 
At the risk of mixing metaphors, you can think of an iceberg as the birthplace of cynicism in large, complex organizations. When the semi-formal and informal voices fail to confirm and corroborate the formal voice, the distance between them is a credibility gap.

In the military, the difference between the formal voice and the semi-formal and informal voices is known colloquially as the official truth and the ground truth. Whenever the difference rears its head, the cynicism of the troops is bound to grow. No successful organization can tolerate that cynicism more than minimally.
 
To ward off such cynicism, it's imperative to include the semi-formal and informal voices in strategic communication planning, and it's imperative to include communication planning for key stakeholders in any strategic planning process.
 
Think of it this way. You can keep the upper hand by doing your best to manage the communication about your organization—formal, semi-formal, and informal—or you can let unmanaged communication gain the upper hand. Which makes more sense?

 

 © Copyright 2013   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Trust Is Foundational to People Engagement

 

By Thomas J. Lee

Lest any corporate executive, department head, plant manager, team leader, or any other administrator believe they can do whatever they damn well please with no adverse consequences on the engagement of people, consider some stunning correlations turned up by a St. Louis market research firm:

• Among people with strong trust in the management where they work, 63 percent would be happy to spend the remainder of their careers with that organization; among employees with weak trust, only 7 percent would.
• Among people with strong trust in management, 51 percent would invest their own money in the organization if they could. Among people with weak trust in management, the corresponding figure is only 6 percent.
• Among people with strong trust in management, 50 percent look forward to coming to work every day. Among people with weak trust in management, only 3 percent do.

Those are dramatic and determinative correlations. They are well beyond any statistical test of significance.

These numbers do not mean that executive authority must or should shirk difficult decisions that people will find hard to accept. That is not the point.

Rather, they mean that decisions must be accompanied by a great deal of honest and forthright communication, both verbally and behaviorally, explicit and implicit, and, more than anything, decency and sincerity of intent. You cannot and must not assume that people will understand and accept a decision that you haven't explained and justified, morally as well as legally or strategically.

Maybe there was a time when fast talk and double talk could fool people, and maybe there was a time when no talk was acceptable and expected, but that was a long time ago. People are far too sophisticated today, and they insist on being treated with respect.

Always remember that the talent and skills on which you depend are in bodies with legs. Those legs can walk.

 

 © Copyright 2013   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

'Just kidding—I was fired today'

 

By Thomas J. Lee

There's so much gobbledygook and doubletalk spewing forth from corporations every day, you get in the habit of blithely ignoring it—in spite of the fact that it demeans and insults all the most important stakeholders: customers, employees, and investors, all both actual and prospective.

Thus, when an executive of a publicly traded company has the courage, self-awareness, and humility to tell the truth with self-deprecating humor, it grabs your attention. Just such a thing happened a few days ago.

No, we’re not speaking of Warren Buffet, whose annual shareholder newsletter was published Friday, although Buffet has been refreshingly telling the truth for decades. He is a happy exception to the rule. We expect plain talk from him.

Rather, the executive whose truth telling was startling and invigorating was Andrew Mason, who was deposed Friday as CEO of Groupon, Inc., the e-commerce company he co-founded.

Usually in an executive shuffle, the dearly departed say nothing. They just disappear, and the company’s mouthpiece issues some verbal pabulum to explain the change. The worst of these anodyne comments asks us to believe that the executive wants “to spend more time with his family” or has chosen “to pursue other opportunities.”

Mr. Mason needed no corporate mouthpiece. He could speak just fine for himself. In a farewell letter to employees, he began with a nod to the cliché and then—well, read it for yourself:

After four and a half intense and wonderful years as CEO of Groupon, I’ve decided that I’d like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding—I was fired today. If you’re wondering why, you haven’t been paying attention. From controversial metrics in our S1 to our material weakness to two quarters of missing our expectations and a stock price that’s hovering around one quarter of our listing price, the events of the last year and a half speak for themselves. As CEO, I am accountable.

That alone was refreshing. Mr. Mason went on to pay tribute to the company’s employees and to voice support for both the board’s strategy and the board’s decision to fire him. “It’s time to give Groupon a relief valve from the public noise,” he wrote.

Then he used a metaphor to help people understand. Metaphors are often terrific rhetorical devices. Never underestimate the value and power of an apt metaphor. In this case, he invoked the old video game Battletoads and poked fun at himself:

I’m OK with having failed at this part of the journey. If Groupon was Battletoads, it would be like I made it all the way to the Terra Tubes without dying on my first-ever play through. I am so lucky to have had the opportunity to take the company this far with all of you. I’ll now take some time to decompress (FYI I’m looking for a good fat camp to lose my Groupon 40, if anyone has a suggestion), and then maybe I’ll figure out how to channel this experience into something productive.

He closed by reminding his former employees always to think first of the customer, something that seems increasingly foreign and hostile to the priorities of so many CEOs, who pay obeisance to investors first and everyone else a distant second. Then he said something truly phenomenal.

This leadership change gives you some breathing room to break bad habits and deliver sustainable customer happiness—don’t waste the opportunity!

I will miss you terribly.

Love,

Andrew

Did you see that? He used the L word: love. In a business letter!

Frankly, I have long had my doubts about Groupon and its business model, but now I’m thinking that I will keep an eye on young Mr. Mason. Go lose those 40 pounds, sir, and keep us posted as to your whereabouts.

 © Copyright 2013   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

A Little Fable From James Thurber

 

By Thomas J. Lee (with apologies to James Thurber)

The late James Thurber crafted many wonderful fables with wisdom for the generations.

Here is one of my favorites. It is short and playful. Titled The Weaver and the Worm, it has a sweet moral on communication for leadership. (Note: The word gudda has largely faded from use. It meant nasty or mean.)

The little fable goes like this:

A weaver watched in wide-eyed wonder a silkworm spinning its cocoon in a white Mulberry tree.

“Where’d you get that stuff?” asked the admiring weaver.

“You want to make something out of it?” inquired the silkworm, eagerly.

The weaver and the silkworm went their separate ways for each thought the other had insulted him. We live, man and worm, in a time when almost everything can mean almost anything, for this is the age of gobbledygook, doubletalk, and gudda.

Moral: A word to the wise is not sufficient if it doesn’t make any sense.

Think of yourself as the weaver, and think of the people in your organization or on your team as the silkworm. Know that what you say and how you say it—especially if you resort to jargon, acronyms, and neologism, and most especially if you don’t know beforehand what you really think or why you think it—runs a high risk of being misunderstood or distrusted, or both, by the silkworm.

The only way around that is first to know what you think, and why you think it, and then to speak in plain, old-fashioned English. Look people in the eye. Take time to understand and be understood. Speak what you truly believe, and explain yourself.

Be empathic. Ask people what they heard, what they think, and how they feel. Listen patiently. Respond with your heart as well as your head. Listen for perspective and purpose as well as simple position. 

Speak the essence of your truth over and over again. Explain yourself over and over again. Draw pictures. Tell stories. Give examples. Then start over.

Remember: A word to the wise is not sufficient if it doesn’t make any sense.

 

© Copyright 2013   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Ozzie Guillen's Foul Ball on Fidel Castro

by Thomas J. Lee

Every business manager, government official, and aspiring entrepreneur should sit up and pay rapt attention to the ordeal that Miami Marlins manager Ozzie Guillén is going through this week—and then remember to choose her words very, very carefully.

A native of Venezuela, where he still has a home, Guillén has enjoyed a long and successful career as a baseball player and manager. He managed the Chicago White Sox to a World Series championship. After leaving the White Sox last autumn, he signed with the Miami Marlins, who have just built a shiny new stadium in the Little Havana section of Miami. The city's million-strong community of Cuban Americans is the heart of the Marlins' fan base.

After only five days as Marlins manager, Guillén is interrupting a road trip to fly back to Miami and apologize after telling Time magazine of his admiration for Cuba strongman Fidel Castro. Guillén had gone so far as to say he loved and respected Castro for remaining in power so very long. No mention of machine guns, firing squads, 30-year prison terms, or anything of the sort.

You can read all about it for yourself in these dispatches from the Miami Herald, Bloomberg, and the Associated Press.

Regular readers of the Minding Gaps blog know that I generally advise leaders in business, government, and any other sphere to "say what you think, and think what you say."

However, there are five important boundaries on that advice. I call them the 5Rs. You should speak only when your thoughts are "5R Ready."

So before you say what you think, make sure it is:

• real, which is to say based on observable facts and familiar experience;
• relevant to the challenge at hand;
• respectful of people and their feelings;
• relationally constructive, not destructive; and
• reasonable and rational, by which we mean both within the bounds of reason and logically derived by reasoning.

If it isn't, you should be asking yourself some tough-love questions as to why you're even thinking such things. They're toxic to you and everyone else. Before you speak, get your head together.

Ozzie Guillén's remarks to Time magazine met none of these five tests. They didn't come close.

If I were advising Guillén, I would suggest not going before a bank of microphones. Rather, he should be sitting down with Miami's ex-pat community and just listening to its voices. Then, after coming to a better understanding of Castro, he should apologize without using the words "if I have."

Maybe, just maybe, he can survive. No bets though.

 

© Copyright 2012   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Golf and Other Bad Metaphors for Business

Regular readers with a good memory have requested that we rerun this essay on The Masters, golf, and other bad metaphors for business. We are only too happy to oblige.

TJL                

 

by Thomas J. Lee

This week the best golfers in the world converge on Augusta, Georgia, to compete in The Masters. It is a special event in sports. You need not be a golfer—I myself haven't swung a driver in 23 years—indeed, you need not even enjoy sports to find special beauty in the magnolias, dogwoods, and azaleas of the Augusta National Golf Course and in the glorious traditions of The Masters.

There's just one problem with major golf tournaments and with golf in general. They give license to so many executives to use this wonderful game as a metaphor, absurd though it is, for business performance.

Sooner or later almost every manager will find himself in a town-hall meeting or a skip-level luncheon or an after-dinner speech when a senior executive—his own boss, perhaps—begins to wax eloquent on golf as the perfect comparison for business. Maybe the speaker will even step away from the lectern and pretend to size up that 20-foot putt for a birdie on the 18th hole, and then go on to expound on the parallels between golf and business. That's what we mean by using golf as a metaphor for business.

By metaphor we are not referring to clichés, which are another problem altogether. A cliché is just an overused and typically tin-sounding word or phrase that has lost whatever zest it once had. Business is full of clichés, too: walking the talk, win-win solution, thinking outside the box, synergy, paradigm shift, pushing the envelope, today's highly competitive marketplace, proactive, a perfect storm, leverage—and we're just getting started. There are hundreds of them, Lord help us all.

In contrast, metaphors can be good or bad. A metaphor (and its like-as cousin, the simile) is a comparison for the sake of shedding light on something. A well-chosen metaphor can be terrific for a speech or presentation. Executives who use golf as a metaphor for business success are trying to be creative, and that is fine. We like creativity.

Some common metaphors in business work well. Low-hanging fruit refers to easy, early solutions. A well-oiled machine suggests an operation running smoothly. Tip of the iceberg conjures up a superficial observation. These metaphors lack something in freshness and creativity, but they make up for it in clarity and color.

Golf, however, is a perfectly awful metaphor in business. It is awful because there are no real parallels between performance in business and performance in golf. What matters in business has nothing to do with what matters in golf. Looking for parallels between business and golf is like looking for similarities between mollusks and molecules. 

I do realize that millions of people enjoy golf, and that is certainly their privilege. They may think of it as a social sport because they golf in twosomes and foursomes, and afterward they enjoy lunch or drinks and dinner. Moreover, many parents (including my own) have taken delight in teaching their children to golf, and it becomes a wonderful family activity. All good.

But the sport of golf is a solitary enterprise. It requires intense concentration, hushed silence, and perfect form, and it is so very leisurely. It isn't noisy or messy, and it certainly isn't fast. It does not require collaboration or innovation or engagement or teamwork or agility or communication of any sort—all of which are essential components of business success. Conducting an orchestra comes closer to running a business than golf ever can. For that matter, a Saturday night jazz quartet is more like a business than a Saturday morning foursome is.

Another bad metaphor is "human capital." Companies commonly refer to the people who work for them as human capital. Please.

I understand the different kinds of capital: economic, physical, intellectual, social. But something repugnant, thoroughly repugnant, happens when we juxtapose the words "human" and "capital."

Substitute the word "chattel" for the word "capital" and you begin to see it. Then take another small step to "indentured servitude" and—well, you can see where I am going with this. As every youngster in the United States learns in school, the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment were supposed to put an end to thinking of people as capital. It's about time business caught up.

Similarly, many companies think they are saying something good and decent and noble when they tout employees as "our most important asset."

I am all in favor of declaring that people are important, but they are not and never can be an asset. An asset is something you own and control. No business owns its people, and when a company thinks it can control people, it is in for a rude surprise.

The fact is that any employee can quit and go to work for the competition any day of the week. A machine or a forklift or a trademark cannot do that. They are assets. People are people. People have legs and pride and souls, and they can walk across the street to take a job with your competitor. Sometimes they do, too.

One other metaphor, so innocent and even noble in its intent, is actually problematic as well. It is likening the people of a business to a family. "We're just like a family around here," too many CEOs are in the habit of saying.

This metaphor has the same issue as golf has: It just isn't true. An office or a factory may feel like a family because you spend so much time with the same people, and perhaps everyone even has everyone else's back. That is fine as far as it goes, but sooner or later the similarities end.

Here's the bucket of ice water: Families are forever. Companies are not. Families thrive on love and devotion. Companies thrive on revenue and income.

It is true that divorce can ruin a family just as bankruptcy can ruin a business. But companies must make tough but honorable decisions that can have devastating repercussions for some employees. Families make tough but honorable decisions so they can stay together, laugh together, love together. The two are not and cannot be the same.

I probably sound like a curmudgeon today, and that is not my intent. I applaud anyone who struggles with articulating a vision or values or the essence of a workplace. It isn't easy, I know.

But all four of these metaphors are bad because they are emphatically untrue or because they inadvertently undermine the dignity of people or because they promise something they cannot always deliver. With just a little more thought, you can do better.

So enjoy The Masters this week. Enjoy as much golf as you can this summer. Just don't think of this wonderful sport as a metaphor for anything in business, especially performance and success. And the next time someone uses one of those other metaphors, give him a link to this blog.

 

© Copyright 2012   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

A Case Study in Poor Executive Communication

Here is an unfortunate but instructive case study on executive leadership that underestimates and undervalues the challenge of communication as the energy of leadership.

It involves the troubled president of the University of Illinois, and it appeared in the Chicago Tribune today.

U. of I. president says he did poor job of connecting with faculty.

 

The Three Essential Components of Any Leader's Credibility

by Thomas J. Lee

Back in the 1980s a onetime IBM salesman and singing cowboy by the name of Robert Fulghum wrote a little book that became a worldwide sensation. All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten stayed atop the best-seller lists for two solid years. It was translated into 27 languages and sold in more than 100 countries.

As the title suggests, this marvelous book asserted that the really important verities of life we learn as young children. Perhaps nowhere is that more true than in communication, especially for the sake of leadership.

Consider what we learned about communication as youngsters on the playground:

• Thou shalt not lie.
• Practice what you preach.
• Actions speak louder than words.
• Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
• Seeing is believing.

In other words, we learn early on that credibility is the currency of communication. We learn that we cannot get away with just saying whatever we want, when we really don’t mean it. Other people resent and dislike that, and they will resent and dislike us.

As we grow into adults, we come to appreciate the significance of this. We realize that all the fast and fulsome talk in the world cannot buy the allegiance and dedication of people: our kids or our employees or our constituents. Only our credibility as leaders can do that. Without credibility, our communication is like counterfeit money.

Moreover, we realize that the measuring rod of credibility does not belong to us as leaders. It rather belongs to the people we seek to lead. They and they alone measure our credibility. If they find it in our leadership, we and they can go anywhere. If they don’t, we and they can go nowhere.

Those of us who think a little longer about the challenge of credibility also realize that, when we begin to assert ourselves as leaders, credibility becomes more elusive and difficult. It begins with simple trust, for sure, but it also seems to demand more than trust alone. It also requires respect and affinity with people.

By trust, we have in mind a high regard for the veracity of one's word. People who trust someone believe the person is telling the truth. The truth that he tells may be a factual depiction of reality. Or it may be a sincere statement of intent, or a frank and honest description of his opinion, values, or perspective. Whatever path it takes, it must square with reality.

By respect, we're referring to a high regard for the leader's command, control, and competence: his ability, energy, initiative, resources, and perseverance—in short, his authority. In the colloquial, this quality is often referred to as "street cred." People must recognize and respect a leader's capacity for situational authority in order to believe he is capable of accomplishing that which he is setting out to accomplish.

By affinity, we mean a high regard for a common bond of interests, needs, and concerns. Apart from someone under the hypnotic spell of a cult, no one willingly follows a leader whose purpose runs counter to their own well-being. Rather, people look for nobility of intent: an honorable purpose that aligns with their own well-being. What is important and valuable to the leader must be, or must become, important and valuable to the people she would lead, and vice versa.

One or even two of these three cornerstones is not enough. Respect and affinity in the absence of trust leaves a residue of doubt. Affinity and trust in the absence of respect leaves a residue of skepticism. Trust and respect in the absence of affinity leaves a residue of opposition. Leaders need all three: trust, respect, and affinity with people.

Now most of us didn’t actually learn this part in kindergarten. Those who never learn it at all will never capture the hearts and minds of people. They will never lead.

 

 © Copyright 2012   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

{Numbers} New Managers Get Little or No Training in Leadership

 

Numbers, a twice-monthly feature, regularly presents business data that is noteworthy, puzzling, alarming, widely misunderstood or misinterpreted, or otherwise deserving of explanation, comment, or clarification. We accompany it with thought-provoking questions or commentary for reflection and discussion. It appears on the first and third Monday of each month.

Since its inception two years ago, Numbers has presented data on a wide variety of issues: employee engagement, organizational culture, trust in business and in management, information overload, strategic communication, CEO compensation, layoffs, job satisfaction, Internet usage, nonverbal communication, fear in the workplace, and many other variables.

You can read any or all of those posts (and hundreds of other short essays, as well) whenever you wish, just by scrolling through the archives. For a particular subject, use the search button atop the right column.

by Thomas J. Lee

American companies have not consistently been rising to the challenge of cultivating the next generation of leadership, it appears.

According to a nationwide survey sponsored by CareerBuilder, promotions to management usually come with little or no formal training, and many managers continue to flounder in their new roles.

Some 26 percent of managers said they were not prepared to take on their new challenges, and 58 percent said they received no training at all to meet the responsibilities of leadership.

Managers identified their biggest challenges as resolving issues between co-workers on their team, motivating team members, and reviewing employee performance.

Primary concerns that employees have about their manager are playing favorites (23 percent), not delivering on promises and not listening to concerns (both 21 percent), not providing feedback (20 percent), not motivating (17 percent), and providing only negative feedback (14 percent).

 

Coming on Wednesday

Leaders Must Know and Respect

Other Kinds of Authority

©  Copyright 2011    Thomas J. Lee    All rights reserved.

Quote / Unquote: Ralph Waldo Emerson on Hypocrisy

 

Recently we resumed publishing a feature we call Quote / Unquote, which offers a simple, noteworthy quotation on some aspect of leadership, communication, change, or engagement in business. In most cases we also provide context, comment, or questions to stir discussion. Occasionally, however, the quotation stands alone.

Previous posts in this category have included, among others, Peter Drucker on regarding employees as volunteers, Charles Osgood on responsibility, Margaret Mead on teams, Jim Nordstrom on employee engagement, Andre Agassi on decisions, Carl Jung on accountability, Albert Einstein on curiosity, Bejamin Disraeli on the great paradox of leadership, Charles Dickens on electronic communication, and Eric Hoffer on change. For any of those posts, or for any of the other 400 essays in our archives, just enter a keyword in the search box to the right.

Our quotation today comes from the leading voice of American Transcendentalism in the 19th century. The wisdom of this quotation is as valid and as relevant today as ever.

by Thomas J. Lee

Ralph Waldo Emerson, along with Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman, laid the cornerstones of Transcendentalist thought in the United States. A reaction to both stolid religious doctrine and objective intellectualism that found no room for intuitive faith, Transcendentalism offered a path for spirituality that resided in the individual's heart and mind. It required no confirmation from either ecclesiastical or academic authority.

A prolific essayist and frequent lecturer, Emerson had a silver tongue for aphorisms, many of which have survived more than a century since his death in 1882. You may recall one from ever-present dorm posters in college: "Do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path, and leave a trail." You can easily find many others in a quick online search.

One of my favorite Emerson quotations speaks to every business manager and, for that matter, any leader in any walk of life:

 

What you do speaks so loud I cannot hear what you say.

 

We have often used this venue to explain that words count, for they set expectations, but that decisions and behavior count even more as communication, for they either validate or invalidate the words.

Moreover, we have asserted that nonverbal communication is far more than it is conventionally thought of: body language, facial expression, and vocal intonation. It is actually the totality of what you think and do. 

To our thinking, many companies (and even more so, politicians) are preoccupied with what they say—to employees, to customers, to shareowners, and to regulators—at the expense of what they intend and do to bring meaning and import to their words. All too often they devote more time to crafting just the right words than to committing themselves to following through.

Take a few moments to reflect on Emerson's quotation, and then consider the following questions:

• Why is it so common to say one thing and do another?
• What are some inherent difficulties in seeking to speak with authority and influence?
• Why can it it be especially problematic to say the "right thing"?
• How often do you fail to live up to your own words? Who is usually the first to notice it? Do you sometimes not notice it at all?
• What built-in constraints can you identify to talking? (You may wish to refer back to our essay of May 20 on ten talk traps.)
• When you think of nonverbal communication, do you think mainly of body language? Facial expression? Vocal intonation? Or something bigger?
• What other kinds of nonverbal communication communicate far more?
• What does your own nonverbal communication say about you? In what ways?
• How are you working to lead with more integrity?

Coming on Monday

Data on Leadership Training

Coming on Wednesday

Types of Authority

 © Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Presidents and Social Media

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Twitter is fine for its original purpose—updating friends on an ETA or changing plans at the last minute—but its 140 characters are scarcely enough for the nuances and complexity of serious discourse.

Until someone invents a robust social-media bullhorn, presidents (and anyone else with a big message) should stay off it.

Just one man's opinion, worth what you're paying for it.

 

Coming on Friday

Be Your Own First Follower

 © Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

The Irony of Seeing and Believing

 

by Thomas J. Lee

On any given issue, people may or may not hear what their leaders say. But they will always see what the leaders do, and seeing is believing.

Does that strike you as true? It certainly does me.

And yet there's a problem with such a facile analysis: The opposite is also true.

Believing is seeing, too. That's right. Just as seeing is believing, so is believing seeing.

Think about that. We're not just playing with words here. It's an important if complicating point for leaders and for anyone who counsels leaders on communication.

Not only do people believe what they see with their own eyes (that's the seeing-is-believing part), but they tend to see mainly that which they already believe (the believing-is-seeing part).

Their eyesight—yours and mine, too—is naturally selective. We see things first, notice things most, and remember things longest that conform to our own perspective and that confirm our own judgment.

It's certainly no secret that two intelligent, reasonable persons can experience the same event—a concert, a movie, or a dinner in a restaurant, say—and come away with sharply divergent impressions.

How often have you and a friend read the same book and disagreed on it? Listened to the same political debate and disagreed on the candidates? 

The fact is that each individual processes new data through his own lens of preconceived expectations, needs, experiences, opinions, and concerns. This frame of reference changes slowly, if at all.

That basic dynamic holds as well for news and announcements about the workplace. What people already know and believe bears heavily on their reaction to additional information and messages.

Does that make leadership communication in the workplace pointless? Not really, no. It does make it more difficult though.

As a practical matter, it underlines the need to educate employees constantly on the company's strategic reality. The more that people know, the more likely their beliefs will reflect the company's real-world environment.

Moreover, it reminds us that, as the best comedians and orators have long understood, we are always speaking to an audience of one. Never to a crowd, but always to each individual person in the crowd.

The distinction is critical. Ever notice how a riveting speaker works a room? She fixes her eyes on one person at a time. Afterward, almost to a person, people say: "I felt as if she was talking just to me." That's what we mean.

What are the implications of all this for business leadership? Even in the largest organizations, any leader must keep uppermost in mind who it is that he is hoping to lead, and must address their issues as they see them.

He should ask: How much do people already know about the situation, the direction for the future, the organization's progress? What do they think of it? What is their emotional state? Exactly what are they worrying about, fearful of, concerned about, hopeful for?

That—even more than the nuts and bolts of the message—is the most important consideration in leadership communication. In it lies the secret of great communication. Speak to the human heart and what lies inside, and you cannot go wrong.

So just remember this: It is always, always the who before the what. Never the other way around.

 

Coming on Friday

Be Your Own First Follower

 © Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

A Vision of Parades and Fireworks

 

After the thirteen colonies declared independence from the British crown 235 years ago, the American patriot John Adams wrote to his beloved Abigail back in Massachusetts:

“I am apt to believe [the anniversary of the declaration] will be celebrated by succeeding generations . . . with pomp and parade; with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations; from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward, forever more.”

Now that, we can all agree, was an extraordinary leadership vision.

 

 

Today is the Fourth of July, the official anniversary of the declaration and the quintessential American holiday. Lo these many years later, we continue to celebrate our independence with parades, flags, cookouts, and of course fireworks.

Lest you ever wonder whether a vividly articulated vision is worth the effort, look skyward after dusk tonight, and see for yourself.

Celebrate exuberantly but safely today, and enjoy a glorious Fourth of July.

 

Coming on Wednesday

The Irony of Seeing and Believing

 © Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Quote / Unquote: Rod Tidwell on Primitive Communication

 

It has been a while since we published a feature we call Quote / Unquote, which offers a simple, noteworthy quotation on some aspect of leadership, communication, change, or engagement in business. In most cases we also provide context, comment, or questions to stir discussion. Occasionally, however, the quotation stands alone.

Previous posts in this category have included, among others, Peter Drucker on regarding employees as volunteers, Charles Osgood on responsibility, Margaret Mead on teams, Jim Nordstrom on employee engagement, Andre Agassi on decisions, Carl Jung on accountability, Albert Einstein on curiosity, Bejamin Disraeli on the great paradox of leadership, Charles Dickens on electronic communication, and Eric Hoffer on change. For any of those posts, or for any of the other 400 essays in our archives, just enter a keyword in the search box to the right.

Today we turn to Rod Tidwell, the fictional National Football League wide receiver in the 1996 Cameron Crowe movie "Jerry Maguire," which starred Tom Cruise in the title role, along with Cuba Gooding Jr. as Tidwell and Renée Zellweger as Dorothy Boyd. To my thinking, "Jerry Maguire" should have won the Oscar for best picture that "The English Patient" did win.

by Thomas J. Lee

In "Jerry Maguire," the 1996 movie that Cameron Crowe both wrote and directed, Cuba Gooding Jr. plays Rod Tidwell, a self-centered professional football player, to Tom Cruise's Jerry Maguire, his agent.

Crowe gave Tidwell several powerful lines, one of which is among the most memorable in the history of movie making, for it was Tidwell who said: "Show me the money!"

But another of Tidwell's line's in the same movie is even more relevant to the subject of this blog and to your work as a manager and a leader: 

 

Talking is just a primitive form of communication.

 

One of the fundamental points we have made repeatedly in Minding Gaps over the years is that your words count, but your intent, behavior, and decisions count as much or more. They are your identity, your character. They are you.

Moreover, nonverbal communication is far more than it is conventionally thought of. It is the totality of what you think, say, and do.

To our thinking, many companies (and even more so, politicians) are preoccupied with what they say at the expense of what they intend and do to bring meaning and import to their words. 

Reflect on Tidwell's line about primitive communication, and then consider the following questions:

• Why does he call talking "primitive communication"?
• What are the limitations of talking in business? (You may wish to refer back to our essay of May 20 on ten talk traps.)
• When you think of nonverbal communication, do you think mainly of body language? Facial expression?
• What other kinds of nonverbal communication communicate far more than body language or facial expression?
• What does your own nonverbal communication say about you? In what ways?
• Is it deliberate or accidental?
• How specifically are you working to improve your nonverbal messages?

Coming on Monday

The Vision of a Celebration

 © Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Emotion Is Central to Leadership and Thus to Change

 

We are on our annual study and renewal period through June 30. During this time we are reprising some of our favorite posts of the preceding twelve months. We'll return with all-new essays on Friday, July 1.

 —TJL                         

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Have you ever noticed the difference in tone between a company's marketing communication and its leadership communication on business strategy? Especially in the consumer-products sector, but elsewhere to an extent, it can be dramatic.

Advertising is often unabashedly emotional. TV commercials for new cars, for example, commonly appeal to the pride of ownership and, at the holidays, even the joy of giving. They play down or ignore things like horsepower or trade-in value. Advertising for life insurance tugs at the heartstrings of family, and 30-second spots for beer invoke friendship and fun.

In contrast, a company's employee communication on business strategy is typically straightforward, sober, and matter-of-fact. There is little emotion. Yes, you see sporadic articles and photographs in newsletters on dedicated employees or extraordinary service. But the fundamental purpose of business is often reduced to quarterly goals, and the bulk of information is on new procedures and controls.

Canadian neurologist Donald B. Calne observes: "Reasoning leads to conclusions. Emotion leads to action."

Conclusions are important. Facts and logic have an important role. But action is essential. If emotion brings us to the brink of action, then it is an essential component of employee communication. We neglect it to our peril.

Always be mindful of the fact that people find a great deal of motivation in positive, affirmative appeals of emotion. Employees need straight information, of course. But they also need to hear the emotional cause for working hard, doing the right thing, persevering through adversity, scratching the creative itch, and taking risks. They need to hear of pride, service, loyalty, and so much more. Anyone who has ever succeeded at anything knows the importance and the truth of this.

 

Coming on Friday

Microvision Statements for Collateral Leaders

 

(c) 2011 Arceil Leadership Ltd.  All rights reserved. 

The Business Case for Communication on Change

 

We are on our annual study and renewal period through June 30. During this time we will reprise some of our favorite posts of the preceding twelve months. We'll return with all-new essays on Friday, July 1.

 —TJL                         

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Over the last few days I have been involved in two discussions—one as an observer in an online forum, the other as a participant in an exchange of emails—regarding the necessity for communication in support of leadership and change.

It appears some people out there are not yet convinced that communication matters.

Frankly, I find that astonishing. The factual basis is so solid, and the logic is so compelling, that I cannot understand why any serious business executive has any doubt. The evidence is both quantitative and qualitative, and it is conclusive.

Surely we can stipulate that the world is always changing. Technology changes. Economies grow and shrink. Older people retire, and younger people with new ideas come along. The market for goods and services changes as consumers and businesses decide they want and need different things. Companies merge and spin off. Trade barriers come down. Management fads come and go. Innovation creates new competition. Companies form and enter the marketplace. Always, things are changing.

Now, follow along with me. Wouldn't you agree that:

• Companies cannot control the changes around them, but they can control (a) whether and how they initiate change and (b) whether and how they respond to external change. Both the direction and the pace of their own change are variable, and both are controllable.
• Organizations that fail to change will invariably become irrelevant. Then they will whither and die. From the British Empire to the Pickett Slide Rule Company and AOL, history is filled with the bones of giants that failed to adapt.
• If what made you good is alone enough to make you great, you would already be greater than you are. In fact you will always need new ideas, new competencies, and new practices to grow and meet the demands of the future. That's life, and life is change.
• The work of leadership is largely the work of envisioning, articulating, and supporting change, commonly requiring discretionary effort and even self-sacrifice by many people, often in a state of uncertainty and risk. That fairly describes the business world of the 21st century, doesn't it?
• Communication is the energy of leadership and thus of change. You know this to be true because all of history's great leaders, those individuals who have brought about the greatest change in the most trying of circumstances, have consistently been articulate and inspiring communicators. Think of Winston Churchill and Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln and Nelson Mandela. The reason this is true is equally obvious: People cannot act in concert with a leadership vision and agenda unless they have the big ideas, the information, and the incentive to do so, and they get all that through communication.
• Every organization is always communicating with itself—thinking out loud, as it were. People talk. Rumors spread. Leaks occur. The communication may be managed well or poorly or not at all. It may be clear, credible, compelling, constructive, collaborative, continuous, civil, and concise, or it may not be. The degree to which it is managed well and purposefully is the degree to which the organization can change in accord with the leadership vision and agenda and thereby determine its own destiny. 

Now forgive a little hubris, but executives who choose to deny these propositions are denying some very obvious truths, perhaps because it is comfortable for them to remain in denial. After all, it is easier to deny the need for communication than to assume responsibility for communicating and perhaps even to confront some long-festering professional competency gaps.

Executives who acknowledge these facts, and we hope this includes you and your colleagues, will properly ask what they should do first. I would suggest they consider the possibility that a systematic process of integrated strategic communication just may be the missing piece of the puzzle. At the very least, they should get moving on a needs assessment to better understand their situation and the opportunities it presents. Remember, every problem in life is an opportunity.

Call us. The number is +1-847-247-2241. We can help if you call, but not if you don't.

 

Coming on Wednesday

The Role of Emotion in Leadership

 Coming on Friday

A Great Tool for Collateral Leaders

(c) Copyright 2011 Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Ten Tactics and Tips for Better Power Point Presentations

 

We will be on our annual study and renewal period through June 30. During this time we will reprise some of our favorite posts of the preceding twelve months. We'll return with all-new essays on Friday, July 1.

 —TJL                         

 

 

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Relax. You aren't alone. No one else can understand a PowerPoint slide like this one, either. We have all seen too many of them, haven't we?

Recently I sat through yet another PowerPoint presentation that left me numb. Three weeks later I still don't know what the speaker, an official of a major university, was really trying to say.

He was knowledgeable, to be sure; he certainly had the academic credentials and the impressive position to deserve our attention, and his topic was compelling. But he left just about everyone shaking their head. In particular, his PowerPoint slides were a mess. They were worse than the slide you see above, which is just something I stumbled across on the Internet.

Like many presenters, he apologized for the tiny fonts and cluttered layout, but that didn't solve the problem. The members of the audience were squinting their eyes, and one woman told me she had a migraine just trying to decipher the slides.

This phenomenon is all too common. I don't blame the technology, as some people do. Long before there was PowerPoint, there were boring speakers who used overhead projectors. Long before there were overhead projectors, there were boring speakers who read their speech in a droning monotone.

Rather, I point to priorities. Many executives and managers place a premium on data at the expense of connecting with people. Thus, they see little need to invest in and master the art of speaking.

I have no illusions about changing the world. Still, I am offering ten tips and tactics to help the busy executive or manager with presentations. There's a lot more to meeting this challenge, and I stand ready to help. But this will get you started.

I actually hope these tips and tactics are not helpful to you, that you are already well beyond them. But in my experience, few executives are. Just about all managers and all executives need training in public speaking. Alas, according to data published in The Wall Street Journal, few managers think they need any instruction or coaching in communication.

Here are ten tips and tactics you may find helpful:

1. Know your audience. Make an effort to talk with some of the people beforehand, even if only over coffee or lunch, especially if it's a new or special group. If it's a conference, get there early and mill around. Try to gain a sense of the audience's knowledge of the topic, their disposition toward your subject and toward you, their willingness to learn, their inclination to be influenced, and their overall expectations. Then speak to people where they are, both cognitively and emotionally. Take into account the time of day and whether you are speaking immediately after a meal. If the audience appears lethargic, ask people to stand for a moment before you begin. (If your session is long, take a short break every 75 to 90 minutes.) 
2. Don't speak down to people, but don't use acronyms or jargon that some persons may not know, either. Present your message and explain yourself without patronizing anyone, but remember that members of an audience can vary enormously in terms of education and experience. Give real-world examples that everyone will understand. Here, specificity is your friend.
3. Know that you have the “curse of knowledge” working against you. Because you are expert in your subject, you are probably taking certain facts and logical relationships for granted that other people will not. Look at your presentation with a fresh eye. Ask someone who is unacquainted with the material to glance at it, too.
4. Do not prepare or use your slides as talking points. Rather, have talking points on the lectern if you need them. Use the slides mainly for illustrations and mnemonics: pictures, graphs, simple tables and maps, quotes, oversize numbers, and so forth. Slides should never be a substitute for a Teleprompter.
5. Avoid data dumps. Don't try to capture much detail at all in any one slide. Complexity will smother and overcome your message. If you have detailed information to convey, distribute it on paper at the presentation or, better yet, by email attachment beforehand. Complex diagrams and data-heavy tables are especially toxic. Avoid them. Use your oral presentation to explain, persuade, and inspire. Find one or two on-point stories to tell that capture the essence of your message. People remember good stories for a long, long time. Twenty-five years later, you can probably still recall a couple of stories Ronald Reagan told.
6. Prepare the slides so that people in the back row can read them without squinting and that people in the front row can read them without getting a migraine. That means using a large, sans serif font with colors chosen specifically to be easy on the eyes. My preference is navy blue type on a white or off-white background, at least 18 points, preferably larger. It also means using few bullet points and few words on each line.
7. Face the audience. Never turn your back and read from the slides. Speak loudly and assertively, with your lungs full of air. Present yourself with confidence. Give your voice some energy and range. Before you get up to speak, breathe deeply for two or three minutes. Pause whenever you need to. Vary your tone and timing. Make brief eye contact with individuals as you speak.
8. Avoid the hackneyed opening of saying "Good morning" or "Good afternoon" and then repeating it, only louder. Instead, jump headlong into your material. Give two or three riveting facts, or ask a succession of unsettling questions, or quickly relate a relevant anecdote. By the same token, make sure any technology you are using is ready to go beforehand. You should never be fiddling with it while people wait for you to begin speaking.
9. If it's necessary or expected to distribute your presentation, consider doing so as a narrative rather than a succession of bullet-point slides. This way, people will get your message, and you can freely concentrate on the context and core assertions. Set aside more time than usual for questions and answers. Place a high premium on dialogue. Truly listen to people who ask questions, and show that you appreciate their initiative and even their courage. Be especially welcoming of the "elephant in the room" question that everyone is thinking about but few are bold enough to ask.
10. Finally, remember that your slide deck isn't your message. You are. Make yourself and your thinking, not your slides, the focus of everyone in the audience. Avoid distracting slide transitions or anything else that draws attention away from you and your presence. Remember, connecting with people is more important than delivering information. Everyone will feel it and know it if you succeed, and people will remember it as one of the few good presentations they have ever seen.

One more thing: Be sure you practice, and try to memorize your opening lines.

In all my years in business, I have seen very few truly powerful PowerPoint presentations. That doesn't mean it cannot be done. It can, but it takes discipline, creativity, and work.

Call me if you need further advice. I'll be glad to help.

 

Coming on Friday

Suddenly, a Great Need for Immediate Change

 

© Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Ten Strategies for Straight Talk in the Workplace

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Over the past week or so we have been exploring ten “talk traps” and their alternative. Talk traps are conventions of internal communication (for leadership in companies or other organizations) that often prove problematic.

The ten talk traps are Small Talk, Sunny Talk, Scare Talk, Sweet Talk (or Smooth Talk), Smart Talk, Simple Talk, Song and Dance Talk, Slick Talk, Snarky Talk (or Surly Talk), and Self Talk. We identified an eleventh, too: Snarl Talk. You can click here or scroll down to read all about these common talk traps.

As we explained, some of these talk traps work just fine in the right place and the right time, but they can backfire in the wrong place or the wrong time. Others are always ill-advised.

We also took a long look at some difficulties that beset Straight Talk, the preferable alternative to those ten talk traps. It turns out that Straight Talk can often pose its own challenges, few of which are obvious to the leader.

Here are ten strategies to make sure that Straight Talk, not one or more of the common talk traps, is undergirding your leadership communication in the workplace:

1. Lay a good foundation. You cannot begin talking about your business environment early enough. If you’re not in the habit, start now. You needn’t talk about future plans that are not yet finalized. Just talk about the past and the present. If you don’t begin now, people won’t be prepared when you do. The straight talk you eventually offer will very likely come as a shock to the system.
2. Establish a broad context. Address the weaknesses of your processes and products as well as the strengths. Talk about changes in technology, customer expectations, and speed to market. Deal openly with your culture, its advantages and its disadvantages. Discuss the business from multiple perspectives. It’s important to view reality from the point of view of customers, investors, hourly employees, even competitors.
3. Consider forming a small communication council consisting of articulate individuals at various levels of the organization or team, both non-management and management, who can provide diverse perspectives on what’s going on.
4. Recognize the fact that senior management has the luxury of time and typically a sophisticated educational background to help it absorb the need for change, while rank-and-file employees typically do not. By the time a new policy or strategy comes down, its imperative is clear to senior managers but can still be a mystery to ground-level employees.
5. Be sensitive to the words and phrases you use to describe the business landscape and to establish the direction and the case for change. Jargon and acronyms that are part of your own day-to-day vernacular can be meaningless to others, especially to employees who must execute your strategy. Language that has no meaning cannot possibly have any credibility or impact.
6. Test your stated values against the real drivers of your decision making. It’s easy to invoke a list of pretty values and nominally pay homage to them. It’s quite another thing to recognize the powerful impetuses that truly direct and shape policy. What really matters? That’s what your values are, like it or not. (One good test: Ask yourself whether you're willing to fire a senior manager you personally like but who violates a value.)
7. Set a high bar on standards and accountability, but acknowledge that none of us is perfect or perfectible. Make clear what rises to a capital offense and what doesn’t, and underscore the hard importance of aspirations. Don’t be impetuous or fickle. Do insist on common rules. If you expect an hourly employee to pay a parking ticket on company time out of his own pocket, the same rule has to apply to a senior vice president.
8. Appreciate the problems inherent in cascading. By cascading, we mean disseminating strategic information through an organization one level at a time. Cascading spawns rumors and creates a tangled web of misinformation and misunderstanding. It is a big problem in a lot of companies, yet it is routinely accepted as necessary and even desirable. It’s neither.
9. Take emotions into account. Emotions are a big part of everyone’s personality. Ignore them at your peril. Probably no emotion is more ubiquitous at work than fear: the fear of speaking up, the fear of questioning authority, the fear of offering an idea. If you’re not dealing with it, you’re being victimized by it.
10. Get into the nitty-gritty of specifics. It is one thing to lay out a grand strategy. It is quite another thing, and much more difficult, to translate that big strategy into detailed implications for rank-and-file employees. You must do this; the failure to do it is all but an abdication of management in support of leadership.

There’s more, but that’s enough to give you pause as you move forward. Don’t let it paralyze you, and certainly don’t allow it to keep you from speaking the truth. Honesty is still the best policy. Just be careful out there.

Coming on Wednesday

 Four Rules for Growing Engagement

(We will be off Monday for a national holiday in the United States.)

 

(c) Copyright 2011 Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved. 

Eight Common Scenarios When Straight Talk Backfires

by Thomas J. Lee

Over the last few days we have explored ten “talk traps,” or conventions of communication in business that often prove problematic for managers. Many of them work just fine in the right place and the right time, but they backfire in the wrong place or the wrong time. Others are always ill-advised.

The talk traps are Small Talk, Sunny Talk, Scare Talk, Sweet Talk (or Smooth Talk), Smart Talk, Simple Talk, Song and Dance Talk, Slick Talk, Snarky Talk (or Surly Talk), and Self Talk. We identified an eleventh, too: Snarl Talk. You can click here or scroll down to read all about these common talk traps.

Then a couple of days ago we took a long look at some difficulties that beset Straight Talk, the preferable alternative to those ten talk traps. It turns out that Straight Talk can be difficult indeed.

Not only can Straight Talk be difficult, but occasionally it backfires altogether. If you have ever watched Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada, you know what we mean. Straight talk can turn into a mess. 

Here are eight scenarios we have seen, even when leaders have the best of intentions:

• Perhaps a leader has been taciturn in the past and then realizes she must communicate a new business strategy. She may assume that employees have a depth of knowledge about the company’s competitive situation that they actually do not. She speaks about the strategy as if it is a foregone conclusion, and she fails to explain its rationale. Employees can only wonder what she is talking about and why the particular strategy has found favor.
• Or the leader sets out to communicate about the organization’s direction and priorities using words and phrases that are foreign to employees. The leader is speaking naturally and forthrightly, but employees perceive attempts to manipulate and spin the information.
• Sometimes a new leader comes on board from another department or even another company in another industry. He wants to “hit the ground running,” as they say, so he lays out a vision before taking the time to fully appreciate the situation he has inherited. That leaves employees mystified over his selection in the first place.
• The leader wants to set a high standard, so he invokes values that put a premium on integrity and team spirit. In the weeks and months that follow, decisions on policy and day-to-day management are seen as conflicting with, or only nominally conforming to, those values. Employees decide the leader is weak.
• Not uncommonly, a leadership team relies on cascading to “get the word out” about a new policy, program, or priority. By cascading, we mean disseminating strategic information through an organization one level at a time. Cascading spawns rumors and creates a tangled web of misinformation and misunderstanding. It never works, and worse, it teases leadership into thinking that it has communicated when it actually has only miscommunicated.
• Senior management devotes weeks or even months to crafting a new strategy, and the strategy is a glorious thing. But it exists only at the level of the enterprise or the division. It has not been translated or interpreted to its practical implications, so employees and their supervisors don’t know what to do with it. Mystified, they naturally ignore it. It’s dead on arrival, but management doesn’t realize it for months to come. So leaders continue talking about something that is a mere historical footnote in the minds of employees.
• In harsh economic times, employees have reason to worry about their own economic security. Many are naturally fearful. The organization needs everyone’s full involvement, but only those people who like to hear themselves talk are willing to speak up. The need for open dialogue has yielded to a cacophony of the loud.
• Having just read the latest best-seller from Harvard Business Press, the leader is pursuing a new management fad that employees think is just plain silly. Having seen so many fads come and go, they’re naturally resilient. They let the leader talk, of course—no one in her right mind will interrupt or fall asleep—but they’re thinking about their own projects and deadlines. The leader is serious but irrelevant.

If you have been around a while, you have seen scenarios like these more than once. None of them is the product of the ten talk traps. All of them involve leaders who think they are talking straight, and yet their very straight talk is actually part of the problem.

On Friday we will look at some strategies and tactics a leader can use to keep straight talk straight. 

 

Coming on Friday

Ten Strategies for Talking Straight

 © Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Six Reasons Why Straight Talk Is Difficult

by Thomas J. Lee

A few days ago in this space we explored ten “talk traps,” or conventions of communication that managers often fall into. Some of them can work in the right place and the right time, but don't work in the wrong place or the wrong time. Others are ill-advised all the time. Each of them poses its own challenge, and they all are tricky.

The talk traps are Small Talk, Sunny Talk, Scare Talk, Sweet Talk (or Smooth Talk), Smart Talk, Simple Talk, Song and Dance Talk, Slick Talk, Snarky Talk (or Surly Talk), and Self Talk. We identified an eleventh, too: Snarl Talk. You can click here or scroll down to read all about talk traps.

By far the best overall approach to communication in business is Straight Talk: just speaking the truth—gently and respectfully, of course—and letting the chips fall where they fall. But even it is difficult, and occasionally it, too, can backfire.

I can think of six powerful reasons why Straight Talk is often difficult.

First, it isn’t always clear what the "facts" are. What you see often depends on what you’re looking for and on what you have seen before. Moreover, the facts of a situation can change rapidly and repeatedly, nowadays with blinding speed. What was true yesterday isn’t necessarily true today or tomorrow.

Second, it isn’t always easy to distinguish between fact and opinion. Again, where you stand often depends on where you sit. For example, try to find some factual ground that politicians on the left and right both acknowledge to be true. Not so long ago, my older brother, whom I have always admired, and I got into a little tiff over the telephone because we happen to disagree on politics. It happens.

Third, the facts can be very unpleasant, to the point that you may not want to face them. Probably all of us have something or someone in our life that we are avoiding. Unfortunately, ignoring or neglecting these simmering problems just lets them fester. Eventually, they are bound to explode like Mount St. Helens.

Fourth, not all facts have an equal claim on your judgment. The facts that you think mitigate your own decisions and behavior are usually, and systematically, ignored by others, and vice versa. It is an unfortunate aspect of human nature that people can excuse themselves for a mortal sin but rush to condemn others for every venal sin imaginable.

Fifth, the facts can force you to confront your own vulnerabilities: perhaps a professional competency that you should have mastered, or a relational skill that has proved elusive, or a loose command over your own time and resources that threatens to undercut your effectiveness. In those situations, it is tempting to look the other way, isn't it?

Sixth, the facts can challenge and bring into question the values you claim, and even undermine your integrity as a leader. No leader exercises such total and abject control over an organization that it fully lives up to the leader’s aspirations. But when the organization falls short, everyone looks to the leader for an explanation or accountability. For the leader, those moments are not enjoyable.

Not only can Straight Talk pose difficulty, but it can backfire. Wednesday, we’ll explore some of the ways it backfires.

Coming on Wednesday

When Straight Talk Backfires

Coming on Friday

Ten Strategies for Talking Straight

 © Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Ten Talk Traps Every Leader Must Carefully Manage

Editor's Note: In the past we have presented lists of three and five talk traps. Some of you suggested additional kinds of talk traps, so we grew the list. Here is a revised and larger version incorporating your suggestions. Thank you!

 

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Business leaders are supposed to value communication.

But not all communication is created equal. In tone or substance, the wrong kind of communication often backfires. We all know that, because we have all been there.

Here are ten kinds of "talk traps," along with a bonus. Some have their place and their moment when they serve you well, but at the wrong place or the wrong moment, they gravely compound problems. Others are always ill-advised.

In every case, they are tricky. They can easily send the wrong message or confusing and contradictory messages, and their patronizing or presumptuous attitude can alienate employees or other constituents.

Lots of leaders unwittingly fall into these traps. So here is a little guide.

• Small Talk is useful for exchanging pleasantries and greetings, of course. As a social lubricant, it is usually harmless, and occasionally it can be informative. Be sure you don’t neglect it. But if small talk is the totality of your communication as you wander about the workplace, you’re missing a great opportunity. Small talk is no substitute for relevant, substantive information about the company’s direction and decisions.
• Sunny Talk, also known as Sunshine Talk or Pumping Sunshine, is the tendency to paint a rosy, simpleminded picture on an unrosy situation. As a leader, you’re supposed to be optimistic and resolute. Just don’t be a Pollyanna. Employees who hear an endless stream of Sunny Talk eventually stop listening. Who can blame them? Everyone knows the real story is rarely if ever so wonderful. The problem with Sunny Talk is its patronizing assumption that employees need to be manipulated in order to be influenced. How sad.
• Scare Talk is just the opposite. It constantly paints a picture of woe. It, too, can cause all kinds of problems. Just as the future is never entirely pretty, it’s never completely dismal. Employees know that. By the same token, a leader should have the courage to share unhappy news, as, for example, the reason a big customer is jumping to a competitor. It can be just what’s needed to help sharpen the edge of customer service, product design, or service quality.
• Sweet Talk, also known as Smooth Talk, seduces people into taking shortcuts they probably shouldn't, or to accept a deal or situation that is not in their best interest or the company's best interest. Managers under pressure to meet deadlines, budgets, or quotas are often to blame. At its worst, Sweet Talk can result in shipping goods of poor quality, overlooking safety precautions, violating labor agreements, or disappointing customers—any of which can do severe damage to the company's reputation and cost customers or even human life.
• Smart Talk is the tendency, all too common in both business and politics, to let words substitute for action. You will often see it when someone is trying to sound smarter than he actually is, or when he is pretending to have information or answers that he doesn't have. It backfires when the real information becomes available, which, in the 21st Century, is invariably sooner than the smart talker anticipates. You will also see Smart Talk in action—or, more aptly, inaction—when organizations are averse to the change they must undertake. They find it easier to talk about change than to actually change. They are in a state of paralysis by analysis.
• Simple Talk underestimates, ignores, or glosses over the nuances, uncertainty, difficulty, or general complexity of a situation or challenge. It offers iron-clad directives in spite of frequent circumstances that cry out for exceptions. As a result, it leaves people feeling like cogs rather than individuals, as units rather than persons, as a machine rather than a team. People are inclined just to shrug their shoulders rather than exercise discretion and judgment, and then to blame their management. Often customers will sense the air of resignation. Not good.
• Song and Dance Talk is full of excuses. Any veteran manager or frontline supervisor has heard his share of Song and Dance Talk from underperforming employees. When managers themselves indulge in the same thing, employees quickly realize they are working for a can't-do management team and a never-will company, and they begin looking for the exit.
• Slick Talk is an effort to distract someone from a legitimate concern or to mislead someone about something of legitimate concern to them. It takes its name from high-gloss, high-polish production values that call attention to themselves such as an expensive video, a lavish meeting, a slide presentation with brilliant graphics, or such extensive collateral documentation that a reader doesn't know where to begin. Spin often accompanies it.
• Snarky Talk or Surly Talk frequently rears its ugly head in pressure-cooker situations when patience is wearing thin. This is just the uncivil, demeaning treatment of people. It may consist of only a single word, such as "Brilliant" or "Genius," uttered in a scornful, mocking tone. Or it may consist of extensive unnecessary background information that is implicitly condescending. It may even be a sneering, if looks could kill facial expression. Managers who frequently resort to Snarky Talk are often intellectually intelligent but emotionally unintelligent, perhaps narcissistic and sometimes even belligerent.
• Self Talk is perhaps the most difficult of them all, for no one else ever hears it—but everyone can see its consequences in your choices, behavior, and regard for others. Think of it as covert communication: what you are saying, and how you are saying it, to yourself. What happens to your outward dignity when you are alone in your thoughts? What are you explaining away in a mean-spirited way? How much vitriol do you heap upon yourself? Do you curse yourself? Or are you critical of others for things you excuse or overlook altogether in yourself? Are you ever privately racist or sexist in your thinking? How do you account for personal slights to your ego?

Here's the bonus, though I hesitate to use the same nomenclature. If I did, I suppose it would be Snarl Talk. Like the snarl of tangled cords behind your television or stereo, it refers to the tendency to pack too much information and too many themes into a presentation, publication, or report. Anyone on the receiving end senses a data dump and usually shuts down for want of a tighter focus.

Yet another kind of talk is the leader’s most valuable tool: Straight Talk. But all too often, leaders think they’re talking straight when they aren’t necessarily.

 

Post Script: I couldn't resist using the picture. For the record, I am not suggesting that business leaders are like this caricature of a used-car salesman. Well, a few are, but fortunately only a few. 

 

 

Coming on Monday

Why Is Straight Talk So Difficult?

 © Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Like It or Not, You Are Your Message

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Ralph Waldo Emerson once remarked: "What you do speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you say."

Probably all of us react knowingly to that insightful statement, yet all of us are its intended target, as well.

If you think it is only apt for the other guy, think again. It is you, and I, and he, and Emerson himself, whom Emerson had in mind. We are all our walking message.

Some of the work I do involves communication troubleshooting. Typically, a company will ask me to determine why it has so much misunderstanding or so many rumors. Or it will bring my methodology to bear on issues around open and honest communication. Or it will ask me to work
with eight or ten or twelve particular managers whose technical expertise is great but whose communication skills are not.

On arriving at the scene I often find complicating factors. The process of disseminating information may be creating all kinds of problems. Not uncommonly, the communication competencies of the senior executives who hired me also contribute to the problem. Their own messages may not be entirely clear or credible or cogent, and that leaves other people wondering what they meant or even whether they are serious and sincere.

You can hardly blame the others, then, for interpreting a message for themselves, or for patching it together on the basis of what they think they know to be true.

One common problem is something I call rogue communication. These are just the messages that we send implicitly and usually obliviously. They can be verbal or non-verbal. Typically we are clueless that we are sending them at all. But they are no less powerful because of that. They can have severe consequences, even derailing or prematurely ending a career.

Here are a couple of real-life examples. A former colleague was meeting with the chief executive officer of a Fortune 100 company. The CEO leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on his desk. A moment later, my colleague did the same thing. That was a mistake. Deliberately or not, he was communicating his own sense of parity with the CEO, and the executive most certainly did not share it.

Come to think of it, I wonder whatever happened to Ben.

Another time, the board chairman of a major corporation made some unprepared after-dinner remarks to a weekend retreat for the company's senior executives. Afterward the executive vice president rose to cap the evening's proceedings and send everyone on their way. In referring to the chairman's remarks a moment earlier, he said: "I think what John was trying to say was . . . " A few weeks later Fred decided to retire early.

More commonly, we send messages day in and day out about our priorities, concerns, and values. Calling someone or not calling someone can send such a large message to that person that it overwhelms whatever was said on the call. Positive messages such as a token of friendship or appreciation, a gentle word of reassurance, a note of gratitude or consolation, or an appropriately light tough on the elbow can be remembered for years.

By the same measure, unfortunate messages such as a sharp tone of voice, delays without explanations, an ill-timed smirk, offensive humor, a pattern of excuses, evasive eye contact, the hurried neglect of etiquette, or an appearance of boredom can all send messages that are taken very seriously. They are rarely thoughtful and intended, and they may not even be real. But their mere perception makes them real.

Here's the thing: The people who are doing the reading, listening, or observing get to decide what the message is. For all intents and purposes, the message as sent is immaterial. The message as received is what counts.

All of us are, as Emerson observed, what we do as well as what we say. When the two collide, what we do speaks the loudest. And all of us—you, I, and the other guy—need to keep that in mind.

 

Coming on Friday

Beware These Ten Talk Traps

 

©  Copyright 2011    Thomas J. Lee    All rights reserved.

{Numbers} Effective Managers Repeat Themselves

 

Numbers, a twice-monthly feature, regularly presents business data that is noteworthy, puzzling, alarming, widely misunderstood or misinterpreted, or otherwise deserving of explanation, comment, or clarification. We accompany it with thought-provoking questions or commentary for reflection and discussion. It appears on the first and third Monday of each month.

Since its inception two years ago, Numbers has presented data on a wide variety of issues: employee engagement, organizational culture, trust in business, information overload, strategic communication, CEO compensation, layoffs, job satisfaction, Internet usage, nonverbal communication, fear in the workplace, and many other variables.

You can read any or all of those posts (and hundreds of other short essays, as well) whenever you wish, just by scrolling through the archives. For a particular subject, use the search button atop the right column.

by Thomas J. Lee

Ever since the pioneering work of Frederick Winslow Taylor a century ago, managers have been trying to do more with less. Efficiency is good.

For many managers, that is certainly true of communication. They want to say something once and be done with it. Especially in a time when we are all assaulted daily by thousands of messages—emails, advertising, announcements, complaints, questions, Google searches, conversations, requests for this and that, the news—brevity is the soul of clarity as well as wit.

There's just one nagging issue: Does it work? Can we truly say something only once to someone and seriously expect to communicate well?

The answer isn't so simple.

In some circumstances it can work. Probably all of us remember hearing some particularly pleasant or hurtful words on the job: "We want you to start work next Monday" or "You have to go to Fresno again" or "We won the Smith account" or "Everyone has to take a pay cut."

On the other hand, when I am troubleshooting poor communication, one-off instructions often emerge as a problem. For routine information, saying something once is tantamount to never saying it at all. People don't remember hearing things that they were told just last week.

Now comes intriguing new research on the importance of redundant communication. A study reported in the current (May 2011) issue of Harvard Business Review found that managers who deliberately repeat themselves are significantly more effective than managers who don't. The key word there is deliberately.

The researchers noticed that the effective managers were building redundancy into their communication plans. Even before they communicated the news the first time, they were planning how to do it a second and even a third time.

The pattern was especially pronounced among managers without formal authority. These days, that includes more managers than ever before, as companies form ad hoc project teams for special assignments and limited periods of time.

The study of six companies shows that 21 percent of managers without formal authority routinely sent redundant messages—for example, following up a face-to-face meeting or a telephone conversation with an email—while only 12 percent of managers with formal power did likewise, according to Paul Leonardi of Northwestern University and Tsedal Neeley of Harvard Business School.

The powerless managers got things done faster and with fewer hiccups, presumably as a result of the redundant messaging, the professors said. Meanwhile, managers with official power tend to rely on their authority. They apparently assumed that employees would just follow their directions, and they believed that communicating once was enough.

"We’re so bred to believe that clarity is the key to being a better communicator," said Leonardi. "The literature says pick the best medium for the [message], and anything else is wasteful. This research suggests that’s not true. You need to use multiple media.

"It’s not necessarily just about clarity. It’s about making your presence felt. Employees are getting pulled in many directions and reporting to lots of people and getting tons of communications. So how do you keep your issues top of mind? Redundancy is a way to do that."

For many of you, this will confirm your lingering suspicion and our intuition. You know from your personal lives the importance of repetition. After all, how many of us are content to hear our spouses say "I love you" only once?

If there is anything I have learned over the years, it is that people are not robots, and that business is all about people. As advertisers and politicians seem to have known all along, managers should repeat themselves. I say:  Managers should repeat themselves. I say . . .

 

Coming on Wednesday

Rogue Communication

 

©  Copyright 2011    Thomas J. Lee    All rights reserved.

When Leaders Just Cannot Speak Clearly

 

 

by Thomas J. Lee

A client who truly understands the energy that clear, compelling, credible communication brings to leadership has a memorable way of explaining it.

"A funny thing happens to leadership in the absence of communication," Charlene likes to say. "Nothing."

That sums it up fairly well.

Sometimes, though, a leader comes along who has many other important qualities—passion, resolve, intensity, vision, knowledge—but who cannot articulate his thoughts in a coherent sentence. Similarly, sometimes a leader has a knack for saying things that are unintentionally funny, in the manner of Yogi Berra.

Anyone who has lived in or near Chicago for the last 22 years is familiar with the phenomenon. Richard M. Daley, the city's mayor since 1989 who will leave office on Monday, regularly manages to mangle and tangle the English language out of all recognition. Often you don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Consider some of the things Mayor Daley has said:

Insisting to reporters that public scrutiny doesn't bother him: "Go scrutinize yourself! I get scrootened every day, don't worry, from each and every one of you. It doesn't bother me."

In the heat of debate over the obligation of railroads to make street crossings safer: "They have a responsibility, they can't get away with it. I mean, they stole the land from the Indians. They took all that land. They got it free from us."

Responding to appeals for a business casual dress code in City Hall: "If somebody takes their tie off, I'm not going to take my tie off. If somebody takes their pants off, I'm not going to take my pants off."

Asked to clarify his position on capital punishment: "I'm pro death! I'm a death-penalty opponent!"

In the wake of concerns about poor sanitation in restaurants: "If a rat is on your sandwich, you hope to know it before. If a mouse is on your salad, it's common sense."

Replying to complaints about police brutality to protesters: "It's just a group of people, yuppies and yippies and hoppies or whatever they call them, I don't know. Who are they? Are they worried about the moon coming out or something? The sun is changing and I don't know. This is unbelievable."

There are countless more.

Daley's father, the late Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley—they were not Sr. and Jr. as their middle names differed—was similarly afflicted. He was legendary for saying: "The policeman isn't there to create disorder. The policeman is there to preserve disorder."

And: "I resent insinuendo." And: "No man is an Ireland." And: "We will reach greater and greater platitudes of achievement."

The thing is, few Chicagoans ever doubted either mayor's loving commitment to the City of Chicago. I didn't live here when the elder Daley was mayor, but I have been here throughout the tenure of the younger Daley. This city is far cleaner, far prettier, far safer, far nicer, and generally far better now than it was 22 years ago. I invite all of you to visit and see for yourself. You'll love it.

I tell business managers: You need not be eloquent, but you must speak, and the more clarity, cogency, and credibility you can bring to your communication, the more energy your leadership will have.

Every rule has the exceptions that prove it. Somehow, both Mayors Daley managed to wreck the English language with abandon, but no one ever doubted what they meant or how much they cared.

 

Coming on Monday

{Numbers}     Repeat Thyself. Repeat thyself. 

©  Copyright 2011    Thomas J. Lee    All rights reserved.

President Obama Finally Finds His Voice

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Last summer I went public with my criticism of President Obama's plodding, lawyerly style of communication. The silver tongue we had heard it on the campaign trail was tarnished and twisted. He often seemed like a cross between Dwight Eisenhower and Walter Mondale, with a little Jimmy Carter thrown in for good measure. You can read that essay here.

So it's only fair that I go public with a little approbation when it is due. The president finally found his inspiring oratorical voice again Friday afternoon in some powerful remarks to the 101st Airborne troops at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

It was a radical and refreshing change. Stylistically, he delivered this speech with confidence and verve, something that has been sorely missing. Substantively, he packed it with bold calls to greatness. Americans want to be summoned to greatness. Every president should know that and always remember it.

I don't wade into partisan politics very often in this blog, but it seems only fair to give credit when credit is due if I am already throwing barbs when barbs are due.

You can watch the speech here.

 

Coming on Monday

The Irony of the Non-Essential Boss

 ©  Copyright 2011    Thomas J. Lee    All rights reserved.

A Surprising Insight on Influence

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Most leaders see the essence of leadership as influence, and that is understandable. People who follow in the footsteps of a leader have generally been influenced by the leader to think, speak, or behave in a certain way.

Ironically, leaders can be far more effective by first allowing themselves to be influenced, both by others and by themselves.

First, just by seeking out and listening to others, the leader conveys the important message that she sincerely appreciates the experience, knowledge, and perspective of the people she would lead. When genuine, and only when genuine, this reciprocity renders people more receptive to her influence than they might otherwise be.

Second, by influencing herself, she serves as a walking example of the message. She becomes, to paraphrase Ghandi, the change she seeks. People can watch her model the message, and they can emulate it. They will watch and emulate her, too, in ways she cannot possibly imagine beforehand.

Look back over your own life and career. Think back to the individuals you have held in high regard: teachers, parents, coaches, perhaps even peers. Notice how many instances you tried to be like those persons you so respected.

Inasmuch as leaders lead by example, they transcend the act of influencing people to the beauty of inspiring people. That is the real power, even the magic, of leadership.

 

Coming on Friday

Fear and Doubt, the Hobgoblins of Change

 ©  Copyright 2011    Thomas J. Lee    All rights reserved.

Does Accountability Actually Thwart Your Potential?

by Thomas J. Lee

Probably every business manager regards accountability as an invisible but veritable whip, which ensures that people actually do what they're supposed to do.

Without accountability, the assumption holds, managers would have no way of enforcing standards of any sort. Things would be a big mess.

That certainly seems logical. But what if we were to substitute an ethic of opportunity for our reliance on accountability? What if we were to make more use of the carrot and less use of the stick?

On a large scale, what if we were to think and talk more about our potential and less about our problems? If we were to get away from "the burning platform" and instead dream more of "the promised land"?

Would people necessarily ignore deadlines, budgets, blueprints, recipes, parameters, or instructions of any sort? Would they refuse to change?

For now, it's just a hypothetical. But give it some thought.

My instinct, and perhaps yours, is that it would indeed create some real headaches. It would complicate and confound things.

But here's the thing: My experience is different. I have a hunch my instinct is wrong.

In my experience, people want to be about solutions. They are drawn to big opportunities. Daniel Burnham once declared: "Make no little plans, for they have no magic to stir men's souls." That does indeed seem to be true, and it holds important lessons for anyone who aspires to lead.

In the workshops I run, we always ask the managers in the room to describe the coolest project or team they ever worked on. They are free to cite any example from their entire life, as long as it is true. It can be something in business or something in their personal life.

Their examples are fascinating. Most of them are from business, but some are from coaching Little League teams, or singing in a church choir, or starting a business of their own, or raising up a child, or earning an advanced degree, or serving in a military conflict or on an emergency rescue.

The thing that all the best stories have in common is a large, quasi-spiritual reward, a huge emotional return that people experience from accomplishing an ambitious goal, or from being of service to the community, or from finding an inner fortitude they didn't realize they had, or from simply working on an important project with other dedicated, talented people.

They remember these experiences in detail forever. Forever!

Moreover, few managers use negative words to describe the experience. Few dwell on the problem they encountered and set out to solve. Nor do they cite the application of technical expertise or the availability of ample resources. They don't talk about those things. It would be too small, too mundane.

Rather, they choose to speak of the achievement itself, of the resourcefulness or creativity or perseverance of the team, or of the collaboration they experienced on something so big.

Maybe, if we were to focus more on opportunity and less on accountability, we would all go a lot further together. Just maybe.

 

Coming on Monday

25 Years of Incredible, Exhilarating Change

 

©  Copyright 2011    Thomas J. Lee    All rights reserved.

Big Lessons in Leadership from 'I Love Lucy'

 

Madelyn Pugh Davis died on Wednesday, April 20, at the age of 90. Together with her collaborator Bob Carroll Jr., she wrote every episode of the legendary television comedy I Love Lucy. Original episodes of the Emmy Award-winning program aired from 1951 to 1957. Sixty years after it premiered, reruns of this pioneering situation comedy continue to be broadcast around the world.

For the uninitiated, I Love Lucy depicted the misadventures of a wacky New York City homemaker whose husband was a Cuban-American bandleader. It starred Lucille Ball as Lucy Ricardo, Dezi Arnaz as her husband Ricky, and Vivian Vance and William Frawley as their neighbors and landlords Ethel and Fred Mertz.

In 1998 I wrote an essay for the Journal of Employee Communication that celebrated I Love Lucy and teased out some truths about leadership and organizational communication from three of its episodes. Here, in commemoration of Ms. Davis, is a condensed and updated version of that essay.

—TJL                

 

 

  
 

by Thomas J. Lee

Probably everyone remembers the episode of I Love Lucy in which Lucy and her pal Ethel go to work on an assembly line in a candy factory.

Their job is simple. As candy comes down a conveyor belt, they must wrap each piece of chocolate in paper and place it back on the conveyor.

Their boss is a humorless drill sergeant of a manager with no tolerance for mistakes. The dour supervisor warns that if even a single piece of unwrapped candy gets past them, they’ll both be fired. Then the boss bellows: “Let ‘er roll!”

Suddenly the conveyor belt begins moving, and it rapidly picks up speed. Trying to keep up, Lucy and Ethel work faster and faster. But they fall further and further behind.

Growing desperate, they clumsily hide the evidence. Unwrapped candies go in their pockets, under their caps, into their mouths, down their blouses—anywhere they can think of.

The scene is hilarious, and untold millions of viewers have chortled over it. First broadcast in 1952, the episode has frequently been rerun ever since. Other Lucy shows are equally precious, the work of comic genius.

So novel and popular were those early episodes of I Love Lucy that Manhattan traffic actually fell quiet each Monday evening when Lucy came on. Telephones around the United States went silent. Marshall Field’s, the grand Chicago department store, shifted its evening hours from Monday to Thursday. “We love Lucy, too,” the sign on its doors said.

Today only the eggheads among us would dare attribute anything remotely philosophical or high-minded to such a wonderful, light-hearted program. Yet it must be said: I Love Lucy was truly more than comedy. Between its lines lay bright little nuggets of wisdom on issues of leadership communication.

Indeed, more than a half-century after Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz invented the live-audience situation comedy, a selection of I Love Lucy episodes can be viewed not solely as terrific television comedy, which they surely were, but also as provocative reflections on how people in organizations attempt—and so often fail—to communicate for some higher purpose. 

Several well-known episodes of I Love Lucy offer lessons in this regard, though many of the situations are dated and, by today’s standards, arguably sexist or at least quaint. Here is a look at some insights or lessons you can draw from three of them: "Kleptomaniac," "Lucy Tells the Truth," and "Job Sharing."

 

"Kleptomaniac"

First broadcast in April 1952, “Kleptomaniac” has Lucy concealing from her husband, Ricky, the fact she is chairman of the annual bazaar and in charge of holding onto prizes prior to the event.

Ricky discovers a wad of currency in her purse and a closet full of valuables. Later, he and Fred catch Lucy apparently red-handed in the act of stealing. Without any other information, they conclude that she is a kleptomaniac.

Of course, Lucy could just as easily have told Ricky she was chairman of the bazaar. Instead she decides that he doesn’t really need to know, and she appears oblivious to any sense of risk associated with withholding the information.

Forgetting the wad of currency, she even tells Ricky to check her purse for cab fare, whereupon he discovers the money. Then she proceeds to lie about it.

Her gambit is necessary to set up some television laughs, of course. But for us, decades later, it’s terrific grist for some second-guessing about "need to know" communication.

The episode raises a number of issues. Why, and why not, should people share information? Who ought to know information of what kind? What compels a person with information not to share it? What happens when people glean incomplete information for themselves? How does one form impressions on the basis of incomplete information? What happens when people reach too far in attempting to verify a hunch?

 

"Lucy Tells the Truth"

Another episode, “Lucy Tells the Truth,” raises issues such as applying spin, dodging the bullet, and telling the complete truth even to the point of hurting people.

In this episode, which first aired in November 1953, Lucy enters into a $100 bet with Ricky, Ethel, and Fred that she can tell the absolute truth, and nothing but the truth, for 24 hours. (Two movies—Nothing But the Truth (1941) starring Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard and Liar Liar (1997) starring Jim Carrey—were based on a similar premise.)

Of course, that isn’t easy for a gal like Lucy. Telling the whole truth at bridge club the next day, she roundly insults each of her partners. They get revenge by forcing Lucy to confess her age, weight, and original hair color. Lucy complies but offers: “It feels good to tell the truth. You should try it. We’d all be much better friends if everyone told the truth.” To which Ethel retorts: “Somehow I doubt it.”

Sure enough, Lucy, having already unburdened herself of the truth, becomes brutally frank and nearly loses all three friendships. The particular issue raised by this show, and I think worth discussing in a management team, is the appropriate role of truth—the whole truth and nothing but the truth—in organizational communication.

Naïve appeals for complete candor imply there are no circumstances warranting discretion or self-restraint, and we certainly know better. On the other hand, the rule in most organizations seems to be excessive reticence, even to the point that, at one large international corporation, the director of employee communication learned of a billion-dollar merger involving her company as she drove to work one morning, listening to her car radio. The question is: Who should know what? When? How?

Moreover, does “spin” really serve any legitimate purpose? Some would argue that, by selectively reporting or distorting facts even a little, it invariably backfires. Every manager should remember that employees are always there to see the truth for themselves. Indeed, they are constantly on the alert for any sign of hyprocrisy, and when they find it, they do not soon forget it.

 

"Job Switching"

I save the best for last. “Job Switching”—the episode that puts Lucy and Ethel in the candy factory—is surely one of the funniest ever, and it offers more grist for discussion than Lucy and Ethel’s shenanigans alongside the conveyor belt would suggest.

Dating back to September 1952, the program raises questions of communication in teams and of misunderstandings about the work and contributions of coworkers.

In this episode Ricky and Fred exchange roles with Lucy and Ethel. The two men begin cooking and keeping house while the two women go to work in the candy factory. Ricky and Fred, obviously too self-confident to bother reading written instructions and follow directions, turn out to be terrible housekeepers and even worse cooks.

Ricky makes sure he uses “plenty of starch” in laundering Lucy’s hosiery. Fred’s seven-layer cake comes out less than one inch tall, and the two men agree that a pound of rice per person is “just about right” for dinner that night. The volcano on the stove erupts just before Lucy and Ethel get home. The women don’t fare any better. Lucy is assigned to make chocolate dough balls alongside a stoic, stone-silent coworker. Obviously unskilled, Lucy cannot get the assistance she needs, for want of any communication.

At one point, spotting a fly buzzing around, she slaps her chocolate-laden hand first into the chocolate dough, then against the face of her coworker, who goes tit-for-tat. More than hilarious, the slapstick underlines the importance of collaboration.

Lucy and Ethel, having each failed at other assignments, get one last chance, wrapping candy. The speed of the conveyor belt is a little metaphor for the increasing expectations that management holds out for workers. At first, Lucy and Ethel are able to keep up appearances, if only by hiding the evidence.

The supervisor returns, judges everything all right, and declares: “Fine. You’re doing splendidly.” Then she calls to the conveyor belt operator: “Speed it up!”

By day’s end Lucy and Ethel have eaten more chocolates than they ever wanted. Before the credits roll, Ricky and Fred predictably acknowledge a newfound respect for Lucy and Ethel’s work, and vice versa.

Though formulaic, the story works; and it prompts us to ask whether, in the workplace, we truly do appreciate the contributions made by other individuals and departments. What with all our silos and rivalries, the answer is plainly no.

There’s another moral to this story, too. Lucy and Ethel must feel the way that contemporary employees feel as they are constantly pushed to produce more and perform better without adequate or appropriate training, support, or understanding. Better and more communication can bridge that gap between the needs of employer and employee. So it should. So it must. 

You could take a similar analytical look at many other episodes of I Love Lucy (or of other television programs, movies, and plays) and find many more insights on organizational communication and leadership. Or you could just sit back and watch these comedies for the purpose they were intended: as harmless fun.

Either way, it's reason enough to rediscover the many reasons we all loved Lucy.

 

Coming on Wednesday

What We Measure When We Measure Engagement

 

©  Copyright 2011    Thomas J. Lee    All rights reserved.

Counterfeit Currency of Leadership

by Thomas J. Lee

Just as money is the medium of exchange for any transaction, so communication is the medium of exchange for any transformation in business.

Apart from barter, no transaction can take place without money. Apart from fiat, no transformation can take place without communication.

Moreover, just as the money that enables a transaction must be credible and legitimate, so the communication that enables transformation must be credible and legitimate.

In either case, anything that is not is counterfeit.

For leaders, counterfeit currency in communication buys only alienation, denial, cynicism, and resistance. That's a bad deal at any price.

 

Coming on Friday

Precisely What Is Employee Engagement?

 ©  Copyright 2011    Thomas J. Lee    All rights reserved.

One Year Later, a Persistent Reminder and Prodding to BP

 

On the eve of the first anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, we call BP's attention to our special report and comment of August 18, 2010, outlining a comprehensive approach to best practice in leadership and integrated communication for workplace safety.

We believe it continues to be timely and relevant.

 

©  Copyright 2011    Thomas J. Lee    All rights reserved.

Microvision Statements for Collateral Leadership

by Thomas J. Lee

Many of us regard vision statements as the province of the CEO and the board of directors. That's only natural, as vision statements set forth an ideal future state for their entire enterprise. 

But collateral leaders throughout the organization can use microvision statements to advance their own leadership, too. By microvision statement, we just mean a vision statement with a tight field of view. It paints a vivid picture of an ideal future for only a part of an organization.

Any leader at any level of any organization can use a microvision statement to describe an ideal future state for a subset of the enterprise, be it a division, a department, a team, even an individual—perhaps for the leader himself or herself.

Don't confuse microvision with micromanagement. Microvision is useful and conducive to leadership, and the best people on your team will generally appreciate the effort. Micromanagement—a manager's overbearing and distrustful meddling in the day-to-day work of individuals—is destructive and corrosive to leadership. The best people on your team will resent it.

Micro or macro, a good vision can be worth gold. While the worst vision statements are riddled with clichés and rhetorical flatulence, the best are noble, inspiring, even glorious. They are very, very powerful, too.

For one thing, a well-crafted vision statement brings everyone together on the same page, and it gives everyone a mental image of success. That imagery enables people to order their work around a crystal-clear picture that energizes and directs them. It's like having a compass, a battery pack, and a talking map all in one.

A good vision does more than that though. It gives you a means of testing your stated values against a picture of the future. Does your vision rest on the bedrock of your values as applied in the real world? It should. If it doesn't, then it's just counterfeit currency.

Moreover, a good vision lets you deduce the appropriate strategies and tactics that can make the vision a reality, and it inspires you and your colleagues to go to extraordinary lengths on its behalf. Finally, it serves as a useful landscape for milestones that help you measure and assess your progress.

To do and be all that, a vision must be specific to its business and social context. It must get beyond the boilerplate that so many organizations settle for. It must reach for the stars, but more than that, point to the North Star as a beacon. That is true for macrovision and microvision statements alike. 

Microvision statements need not be florid or evocative, and they most certainly should not be replete with clichés, as many of their bigger siblings are. Indeed, these small-bore vision statements may not be narratives at all. They may come closer to a matrix, a little spreadsheet, or even a Gantt chart than to a descriptive narrative.

To begin thinking about a microvision for just a piece of the enterprise, take the bigger enterprise vision statement (the macrovision) and extract its essence. List its key phrases and translate them to real day-to-day work. Look for parallels here to the work you and your team do or can be doing. Then imagine, or envision, what the result of that work would be. Describe it in detail. Now give some thought to exactly how you and your team make it real. In other words, what does the enterprise vision become in your hands?

See? It's easier than you thought.

Before you go too far, make sure you understand the difference between a vision, a goal, and an objective. To borrow a metaphor from sports, the vision is tantamount to the visual image of players hoisting a trophy and parading down Main Street after winning the championship. In contrast, a goal is winning more games than the other team. The objective is winning today's game or even just scoring a point.

Now some of you may prefer a structure to the traditional narrative of a vision statement. That, too, is fine. Here's a structure you can use for a microvision.

On a single sheet of paper, draw a 3x3 matrix with each of the nine cells large enough for 25 to 35 words. Across the top, label the three columns with years. Choose the years that make sense for you and your team. Young people and mature organizations (trust me, that isn't the paradox it may appear to be) will want long-range years—say five, ten, and twenty years out. Older people and startups or turnaround companies will want short-range years—perhaps one, two, and three years out.

Down the left side, label the three rows Have, Do, and Be. Thus the top row captures what you or your team want to have (that you do not already have) by each of the years you listed. The middle row describes what you want to do or be doing (again, that you have not already done) by each year. The bottom row identifies who you want to be (that you are not yet) by each year.

Invest a lot of thought in this. Let it evolve. Give yourself permission to change it over time. As it does change, however, be sure to think critically about why you are changing it. Is it because you are growing? Because you have shrunk from your challenges? Because your interests have changed? Because other people have come into your personal life or joined your team at work? Because new opportunities have opened up?

One final point. Allow your vision, even a microvision, to be large. Let it be big. Let it be grand. That is what a vision should be and must be so that it can inspire. Small things are just small, but something big must be reckoned with. It demands to be.

Just be sure to do the work that follows, the work of bringing your vision down to earth. Give it legs. Then get on with the work of making it real.

 

Coming on Friday

My Love-Hate Relationship with Wikipedia

 

© Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

The Masters, Golf, and Other Bad Metaphors for Business

by Thomas J. Lee

This week the best golfers in the world converge on Augusta, Georgia, to compete in The Masters. It is a special event in sports. You need not be a golfer—I myself haven't swung a driver in 22 years—indeed, you need not even enjoy sports to find special beauty in the magnolias, dogwoods, and azaleas of the Augusta National Golf Course and in the glorious traditions of The Masters.

There's just one problem with major golf tournaments and with golf in general. They give license to so many executives to use this wonderful game as a metaphor, absurd though it is, for business performance.

Sooner or later almost every manager will find himself in a town-hall meeting or a skip-level luncheon or an after-dinner speech when a senior executive—his own boss, perhaps—begins to wax eloquent on golf as the perfect comparison for business. Maybe the speaker will even step away from the lectern and pretend to size up that 20-foot putt for a birdie on the 18th hole, and then go on to expound on the parallels between golf and business. That's what we mean by using golf as a metaphor for business.

By metaphor we are not referring to clichés, which are another problem altogether. A cliché is just an overused and typically tin-sounding word or phrase that has lost whatever zest it once had. Business is full of clichés, too: walking the talk, win-win solution, thinking outside the box, synergy, paradigm shift, pushing the envelope, today's highly competitive marketplace, proactive, a perfect storm, leverage—and we're just getting started. There are hundreds of them, Lord help us all.

In contrast, metaphors can be good or bad. A metaphor (and its like-as cousin, the simile) is a comparison for the sake of shedding light on something. Executives who use golf as a metaphor for business success are trying to be creative, and that is fine. We like creativity.

Some common metaphors in business work well. Low-hanging fruit refers to easy, early solutions. A well-oiled machine suggests an operation running smoothly. Tip of the iceberg conjures up a superficial observation. What these metaphors lack in creativity they make up in clarity and color.

Golf, however, is a perfectly awful metaphor in business. It is awful because there are no real parallels between performance in business and performance in golf. What matters in business has nothing to do with what matters in golf. Looking for parallels between business and golf is like looking for similarities between mollusks and molecules. 

I do realize that millions of people enjoy golf, and that is certainly their privilege. They may think of it as a social sport because they golf in twosomes and foursomes, and afterward they enjoy lunch or drinks and dinner. Moreover, many parents (including my own) have taken delight in teaching their children to golf, and it becomes a wonderful family activity. All good.

But the sport of golf is a solitary enterprise. It requires intense concentration, hushed silence, and perfect form, and it is so very leisurely. It isn't noisy or messy, and it certainly isn't fast. It does not require collaboration or innovation or engagement or teamwork or agility or communication of any sort—all of which are essential components of business performance. Conducting an orchestra comes closer to running a business than golf ever can. For that matter, a Saturday night jazz quartet is more like a business than a Saturday morning foursome is.

Another bad metaphor is "human capital." Companies commonly refer to the people who work for them as human capital. Please.

I understand the different kinds of capital: economic, physical, intellectual, social. But something repugnant, thoroughly repugnant, happens when we juxtapose the words "human" and "capital."

Substitute the word "chattel" for the word "capital" and you begin to see it. Then take another small step to "indentured servitude" and—well, you can see where I am going with this. As every youngster in the United States learns in school, the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment were supposed to put an end to thinking of people as capital. It's about time business caught up.

Similarly, many companies think they are saying something good and decent and noble when they tout employees as "our most important asset."

I am all in favor of declaring that people are important, but they are not and never can be an asset. An asset is something you own and control. No business owns its people, and when a company thinks it can control people, it is in for a rude surprise.

The fact is that any employee can quit and go to work for the competition any day of the week. A machine or a forklift or a trademark cannot do that. They are assets. People are people. People have legs and pride and souls, and they can walk across the street. They do, too.

One other metaphor, so innocent and even noble in its intent, is actually problematic as well. It is likening the people of a business to a family. "We're just like a family around here," so many CEOs are in the habit of saying.

This metaphor has the same issue as golf has: It just isn't true. An office or a factory may feel like a family because you spend so much time with the same people, and perhaps everyone even has everyone else's back. That is fine as far as it goes, but sooner or later the similarities end.

Here's the bucket of ice water: Families are forever. Companies are not. Families thrive on love and devotion. Companies thrive on revenue and income.

It is true that divorce can ruin a family just as bankruptcy can ruin a business. But companies must make tough but honorable decisions that can have devastating repercussions for some employees. Families make tough but honorable decisions so they can stay together, laugh together, love together. The two are not and cannot be the same.

I probably sound like a curmudgeon today, and that is not my intent. I applaud anyone who struggles with articulating a vision or values or the essence of a workplace. It isn't easy, I know.

But all four of these metaphors are bad because they are emphatically untrue or because they inadvertently undermine the dignity of people or because they promise something they cannot always deliver. With just a little more thought, you can do better.

So enjoy The Masters this week. Enjoy as much golf as you can this summer. Just don't think of this wonderful sport as a metaphor for anything in business, especially performance and success. And the next time someone uses one of those other metaphors, give him a link to this blog.

 

Coming on Friday

From Obligation to Opportunity

 

© Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

The NCAA Brackets and Your Leadership

by Thomas J. Lee

If it's March, and it is, many if not most Americans are watching far more college basketball than they normally watch. For three straight weekends, from mid-March into early April, the annual rite of spring known colloquially as March Madness and formally as the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament dominates conversations everywhere.

I offer myself as a case study. Apart from the Wisconsin Badgers (I took my undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin), I haven't really paid attention to college basketball since—well, since the NCAA Tournament last year at this time. But this past weekend I watched all four games. The winning teams—Butler, Kentucky, UConn, and VCU—will compete in next weekend's Final Four, which culminates in the championship game on April 4.

Something else about the NCAA Tournament is relevant to the subject of this blog. It is the tournament's brackets, like those in the photograph above. In the abstract, the full brackets look a little like the branches of a tree extending out in four directions, one for each of the four sectionals that feed into the tournament's final weekend.

Each of the 64 teams that earned berths in the tournament began on one of the far branches. The winner of the first round of games, which winnows the field to 32, advanced to the outer limb. The progression continued until only four teams are surviving, then only two, and finally only the champion. Last year it was Duke.

Here is how the brackets apply to leadership. Those brackets create a skeletal structure for the tournament. Without the brackets, no one would know which team was playing which other team. The whole tournament would be meaningless and pointless. The brackets impose structure and order on chaos and ambiguity. That's how important structure is.

People take structure for granted, but it is everywhere. You depend on structure whenever you walk into a grocery store, because it tells you where the cereals are, where the fruits and vegetables are, and where the milk and butter are. You rely on it when you get behind the wheel of a car, because the structure on the dashboard tells you your speed and fuel supply and mileage.

You need structure to read a menu in a restaurant, to surf the net on your computer, to balance your checkbook, to find a book in the library, to book a flight, to pick a TV show, to read a map, to pay a bill or apply for a job or weigh yourself or make an appointment—really, to do just about anything.

In business, we have plenty of structure, too. A balance sheet has structure. A bill of lading has structure. A computer algorithm has structure. A Gantt chart has structure. A contract has structure. A manufacturing process has structure. An organizational chart has structure.

One thing in business, however, does not have structure: the very work of leadership. There is no structure for a process of leadership, or for a culture of leadership, or for the training and development of leaders, or for any aspect of the work of leadership.

Moreover, because leadership is the hard work of envisioning, articulating, supporting and driving change, it follows that there is no structure for change.

Now in my experience, most companies are intensely interested in change. They recognize they must change just to keep pace with their customers and their competition, let alone exceed the expectations of customers and build a competitive advantage that puts them ahead of their competition.

The absence of a structure for that work means that people are lost—even bright, hard-working, serious managers who want to do the right thing by their company. Without a structure, they have no road map, no compass, no plan that tells them what do.

Make that didn't have a structure. We have just the structure they need. We'll take you through it on Wednesday. 

 

Coming on Wednesday

A Structure for Leadership 

 

© Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Robust Credibility Requires Respect, Affinity, and Trust

(Part Five of a Five-Part Series on Robust Credibility)

 

by Thomas J. Lee

By now you understand that the challenge of building leadership credibility goes well beyond walking the talk. Simple credibility—doing what you say you will do—is enough for most people, but not enough for anyone who aspires to lead.

Leaders must reach for something greater: robust credibility, or the intersection of authentic trust, organic respect, and the bond of affinity. Over the preceding ten days, we have explored each of these three cornerstones in greater depth; just scroll down to read those essays.

Robust credibility acknowledges that the credibility of leadership is large because the commitment a leader asks of people is large. It isn't enough that people believe their leader. They must also believe in their leader—in her ability and in her nobility—lest the flame of leadership begin to flicker.

To appreciate the importance of all three components—trust, respect, and affinity—ask yourself what attitude would predominate in the absence of each. So visualize a big Venn diagram in the sky with three circles that partially overlap. In the middle, where all three circles converge, we see the robust credibility that is the product of all three. One or even two of these three cornerstones is not enough. Leaders need all three.

Let's take a moment to review these three fundamental components briefly.

By trust, we are thinking of just the veracity of a leader's word. If you trust someone you believe that the person is telling the truth. The truth may be a factual depiction of reality. Or it may be a sincere statement of intent, or a frank and honest description of one's opinion, values, or perspective.

By respect, we have in mind a high regard for the leader's command, control, and competence: his ability, energy, initiative, and perseverance. In the colloquial, this quality is often referred to as "street cred." People must recognize and respect a leader's capacity for situational authority in order to believe he is capable of accomplishing that which he is setting out to accomplish.

By affinity, we mean a high regard for a common bond of interests, needs, and concerns. Apart from someone under the hypnotic spell of a cult, no one willingly follows a leader whose purpose runs counter to their own well-being. Rather, people look for nobility of intent: an honorable purpose that aligns with their own well-being. This shared well-being takes the form of mutual interests, needs, and concerns. What is important to the leader must be, or must become, important to the people she would lead, and vice versa.

Now in the absence of trust, people who would otherwise be inclined to follow a leader are left in a state of doubt. In the absence of affinity, they are left in a state of opposition. And in the absence of respect, they are left in a state of skepticism.

Many organizations have such weak and ineffectual leadership that they are running low on all three. Thus their people are in a state of full rebellion: doubt, opposition, and skepticism. In the last few weeks alone, I have worked with three companies that recently received low engagement scores on employee surveys. When we begin digging into those surveys, I wouldn't be surprised to find a lot of doubt, opposition, and skepticism.

But even just one of those three is a reflection of less than robust leadership credibility. It alone can stymie the force of leadership, and it often does. Leaders require robust credibility: trust, respect, and affinity, and they cannot get any of it by ordering people to show it.

 

Coming on Monday

March Madness and Leadership Communication 

 

© Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

A Leader's Robust Credibility Requires Authentic Trust

 

 

(Part Four of a Five-Part Series on Robust Credibility)

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Now we come to the issue of trust. As we have already seen in this series, trust is not the whole of leadership credibility. Two other cornerstones of credibility—organic respect and a bond of affinity between leader and led—are also critical.

(We addressed the bond of affinity last Friday, March 18, and we addressed organic respect last Wednesday, March 16. Just scroll down for both.)

We call the intersection of all three cornerstones robust credibility. It recognizes that the credibility of leadership is larger than everyone else's ordinary, garden-variety credibility, simply because the commitment a leader is asking of people can be so great. It isn't enough that people believe their leader. They must also believe in their leader—in the leader's ability and in the leader's nobility. Otherwise, the spark of leadership goes out.

But just because respect and affinity play key such roles does not mean that trust is unimportant. To the contrary, trust is the granddaddy of all three cornerstones. It enables the other two to be of consequence.

In a sense, trust is a little like the Golden Rule. Both are all-purpose bromides that everyone pays honor to, and well they should, but that sooner or later everyone also honors in the breach.

For most of us, the violations are few, sporadic, mundane, and incidental. We miss a deadline or exceed a budget or run late for a meeting—that kind of thing. Even these misdemeanors can be problematic, however, for they may be a harbinger of relational difficulty, and they may be perceived or regarded with outsize significance. Remember, the first and final judge of trust is always the person who was made vulnerable by trusting, never the person who was emboldened by an investment of trust.

For some other few, and fortunately only a few, the violations rise to the frequent, the routine, the material, the notorious, or even the criminal. These are profiles in deceit, their names familiar headlines of the last decade: L. Dennis Koslowski, Jeffrey Skillings, Bernie Madoff, Richard Scrushy, Joseph Nacchio, Bernard Ebbers, and too many others.

Certainly in the bruising battles of board rooms, trust can inadvertently be the first victim of a power play. Management, after all, must do what it must do, and managers are naturally concerned first and last with their own self-preservation.

The same is true in politics. Rare indeed is the politician who fulfills every campaign promise. (The last U.S. president to do so was James K. Polk, who made only four promises on the 1844 campaign trail—yes, the 1844 campaign trail.) Instead, candidates and officeholders promise what they need to promise, regardless of whether they mean it and regardless of whether they can fulfill it. In contemporary American politics, we would remind Republicans of Medicare Part D and Democrats of Guantanamo.

Moreover, anyone who has been close to the action at a senior level, in either business or government (or, for that matter, any other sector), knows all this to be true. Often, the clash of interests leaves someone else to clean up the mess, and it isn't unusual for that person to walk straight into one of the five classic talk traps. 

So let's bring some clarity to the challenge of trust—first as a general notion, then specifically with regard to leadership.

Generally speaking, trust is just a high regard for the veracity of one's word. It is the confidence and belief that someone is telling the truth. The truth may be objective or subjective; but in either case it must be real. It may be a list of facts about something, or a straightforward description of something. Or it may be a candid statement of intentions and capabilities, or it may be a frank and honest expression of opinion, values, or perspective. Preferably, it is consistently all this.

With regard to leadership specifically, trust is an open window to the soul of the leader. It reveals where the leader is coming from and where the leader is going. It anchors the purpose of the leadership, and it gives real meaning to the work that people are doing. It strips away the mask of command that so many ersatz leaders wear, and it takes everyone, including the leader, to a place of authenticity, humility, empathy, and reality.

Getting to trust is not always easy, for a wide array of pressures conspire against it. Some of them are in the environment: insufficient information, cultural constraints, procedural or legal requirements, poor training. But others, as for Brutus, are in ourselves: pride, greed, shame, fear, insensitivity, arrogance, expediency.

How often have you retreated from speaking truthfully because you didn't want to hurt someone's feelings? Or because you didn't want to reveal your true motive? Or because you sensed duplicity in yourself? Or because you pitied a person? Or because you feared losing face or authority? Or because you didn't want to take the time to explain complex reality? Or because you didn't believe it necessary to justify yourself to someone your junior?

So you paraphrased, you reached for euphemism, you danced the old two-step, you retreated to silence. If there is comfort in numbers, take solace, for you are not the only one.

No leader is perfect, and none has perfect trust. We err when we expect any leader to have it. At best, we merely tease ourselves into believing that a leader who commands our support does have it.

It is especially easy to look past the flaws of leaders with a charismatic appeal: a John F. Kennedy or a Pierre Trudeau, for example. By the same token, it is easy to dwell on the flaws of leaders without that charismatic appeal—a Lyndon Johnson or a Richard Nixon, for example—in spite of the fact that both Johnson and Nixon proved their mettle as leaders by compiling records of prodigious accomplishment, even as both proved morally wanting. 

Organizations and their leaders can go a long way toward building or rebuilding trust by following a few simple precepts:

• Demonstrate trust in the first place by realizing that employees can handle the truth, prefer the truth, and want the truth. So give them the truth. (Another contemporary case study: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, whose straight talk is popular YouTube video.)
• Recognize that, for yourself as for all of us, the first and biggest step toward relationships of trust is a brutally honest self-examination and commitment to change oneself.
• Abandon the level-by-level cascade of information through the organization, and put the dissemination of strategic information on autopilot. Better yet, at the risk of really mixing metaphors, prefer a rain forest of constantly sharing incremental information so that the work force is always well-informed and always expecting to learn truths about the business from the mouth of senior leadership.
• Appreciate the importance of implicit as well as explicit communication. By implicit communication, we do mean nonverbal messages, but body language is the least of it. Rather, acknowledge the powerful messages implicit in decisions, behaviors, routines, priorities, schedules, agendas, budgets, and so much more.
• Question the smooth talk of any consultant or advisor who suggests you say things that are not completely true. Almost always, you will find yourself or your company in greater difficulty by choosing gentle evasion over hard truth.
• Express yourself and train managers throughout the company to express themselves with simplicity and directness. That is not to say you must dumb down information before sharing it. But certainly remove unnecessary jargon and ambiguity.
• Make few promises, but do everything humanly possible to keep promises that you and your predecessors have made. (Yes, a promise made by your predecessor is your burden to keep.)

Finally, if you are accepting all this as banal, but telling yourself the real problem is the other guy—the CEO, the labor union, the regulatory agency, the news media, the clamor of investors, the recalcitrant employee, the cheap customer—then you have found the real problem, and you have found the one person who is most responsible for the real problem.

You can begin an important conversation with that person first thing tomorrow morning. And we do mean first thing tomorrow morning: gentlemen, when you shaving; ladies, when you are applying your makeup. Be sure to speak up, and be sure to ask the tough questions.

 

Addendum on Friday, 25 March 2011:  A reader in Copenhagen, Denmark wrote to ask whether there was any kind of trust other than authentic. Wasn't "authentic trust" redundant? I replied: "You would hope authentic trust would be redundant, but to so many companies, trust is something they think they can buy through public relations, advertising, media spin, catchlines, smooth talk, etc. I have heard executives say their companies are "trusted by millions" because millions buy their products. Well, yes, but that doesn't mean their leadership is trusted by employees. So that's where I am going with 'authentic.' "

 

Coming on Friday

Why Robust Credibility Requires All Three Cornerstones:

Organic Respect, a Bond of Affinity, and Authentic Trust

 

© Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

For a Leader, Credibility Is More Than Just Trust

 

(Part One of a Five-Part Series on Robust Credibility)

 

by Thomas J. Lee

By the very nature of leadership, a leader must work in murky territory.

Leadership is all about big change that often requires significant risk amid great uncertainty. A leader asks people to do extraordinary things that they are not otherwise inclined to do. In order to emerge from their comfort zone and take on the burden of doing extraordinary things, people must believe in the leader.

We call that belief credibility. Ordinarily, most of us associate the word credibility with the word trust. Someone you trust is said to be credible, and someone who is credible is thought to command your trust. For the sake of leadership, however, credibility goes beyond trust. Leaders must reach for something more than it alone.

Trust is a cornerstone of credibility, to be sure, and indeed it may be the most important element. But two other components are also important: respect and affinity. Together, we call the intersection of all three of these cornerstones robust credibility. Every leader needs it, and every leader should devote a great deal of effort to building it.

Let's look briefly at all three components today, in the first installment of this five-part series. In the second, third, and fourth installments, we will examine each of the three more closely, one by one: first respect, then affinity, and finally trust. In the fifth and final installment of this series, we will explain why all three cornerstones are necessary.

Here is what we mean by each of these three terms: trust, respect, and affinity.

By trust, we have in mind a high regard for the veracity of one's word. People who trust someone believe that the person is telling the truth. The truth may be a factual depiction of reality. Or it may be a sincere statement of intent, or a frank and honest description of one's opinion, values, or perspective.

By respect, we're referring to a high regard for the leader's command, control, and competence: his ability, energy, initiative, and perseverance. In the colloquial, this quality is often referred to as "street cred." People must recognize and respect a leader's capacity for situational authority in order to believe he is capable of accomplishing that which he is setting out to accomplish.

By affinity, we mean a high regard for a common bond of interests, needs, and concerns. Apart from someone under the hypnotic spell of a cult, no one willingly follows a leader whose purpose runs counter to their own well-being. Rather, people look for nobility of intent: an honorable purpose that aligns with their own well-being. This shared well-being takes the form of mutual interests, needs, and concerns. What is important to the leader must be, or must become, important to the people she would lead, and vice versa. Remember, it is always the potential follower, never the putative leader, who judges the nobility of intent.

Imagine a Venn diagram with three circles that partially overlap. In the middle, where all three circles converge, we see the robust credibility that is the product of trust, respect, and affinity. One or even two of these three cornerstones is not enough. Leaders need all three.

 

Coming on Wednesday

A Closer Look at Respect 

 

 © Copyright 2011   Thomas J. Lee   Arceil Leadership Ltd.

What, and Who, Is a Communicator?

by Thomas J. Lee

Who is a communicator? What is a communicator?

The short answer is: someone who communicates. But everyone communicates, for better or for worse. Yet we don't call everyone a communicator, do we?

Maybe we should.

In large companies, communicator is shorthand for all those people in staff positions who bring their talent and skill to bear on communicating for the companies that employ them. They are speechwriters, publicists, editors, designers, producers, Website managers, technicians, photographers, and public-affairs representatives. (Full disclosure: I myself worked as an executive speechwriter for the CEO of a Fortune 25 company some years ago.)

The same word is also used, approvingly, to describe senior executives with a knack for speaking clearly, perhaps even eloquently, to large audiences and to the news media. Just as Ronald Reagan was once described as "the great communicator," so a CEO may be described. Alas, not many are.

But I am going after a bigger point.

Especially in a time when social media can so greatly amplify anyone's voice and so heavily influence public opinion, shouldn't all employees be regarded as communicators? For that matter, shouldn't all stakeholders of any sort be regarded as communicators: customers, investors, suppliers, retirees, employees, and more?

The question, it seems to me, is whether anyone is not a communicator. At the risk of confusing things with a double negative, I think not.

I recall a best-practice benchmarking visit I paid some years ago to 3M, the diversified manufacturing company based in St. Paul, Minnesota. When asked how many communicators the company employed, a senior executive replied: 72,385 or thereabouts (I forget the precise figure, but that's close).

I thought he had misunderstood the question, as I was expecting an answer in three digits, not five. No, he replied emphatically, he had clearly understood the question, he had already given it some thought, and he was standing by his answer.

Of course, the figure he cited just happened to be the number of people employed by 3M. And that was before Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were dominating our day-to-day reality.

His point was that all employees communicate with and about the company. Moreover, because the company took seriously the importance of two-way communication, it couldn't very well label as communicators only those few people who communicate officially and professionally on behalf of the company. The people they were communicating with—not just to, remember—had to be communicators as well. If they were not, then the conversation was rather lopsided.

Ever since, I have been bemused whenever I hear the word communicator applied only to staff professionals, and all the more so now that social media are so central to our lives. Every company has a lot more communicators than it pays to communicate. They are already communicating quite well, and all the more loudly today than just a few years ago.

 

Coming on Friday

 What Is Your Company's Change Quotient?

 

(c) Copyright 2011     Thomas J. Lee     All rights reserved.

Miscommunication and the Shuttle Challenger, 25 Years Ago Today

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Twenty-five years ago this morning, New Hampshire schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe and six astronauts settled into the Challenger space shuttle for what they expected would be a seven-day orbital mission. It lasted instead 73 seconds.

We pause today to remember the heroism of the crew, their sacrifice to science, and the sad role of miscommunication in the disaster.

The subsequent investigation established beyond doubt that if only officials and engineers had spoken with clarity and cogency and had listened with intellectual curiosity and good faith, the disaster would likely not have occurred because the Challenger would not have been launched.

Today most people attribute the cause of the Challenger disaster to the technical failure of O-rings on a solid-fuel booster, as a result of sub-freezing temperatures at Cape Canaveral the morning of the launch. Nominally, that was indeed true. But the root cause involved an institutional culture that thwarted communication and led to decision making that was oblivious to the real danger.

Sometimes it takes a disaster to teach a lesson, and sometimes it takes the anniversary of a disaster to remember the lesson.

 

(c) Copyright 2011 Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Is Communication Really Essential to Change? To Leadership?

by Thomas J. Lee

Over the last few days I have been involved in two discussions—one as an observer in an online forum, the other as a participant in an exchange of emails—regarding the necessity for communication in support of leadership and change.

It appears some people out there are not yet convinced that communication matters.

Frankly, I find that astonishing. The factual basis is so solid, and the logic is so compelling, that I cannot understand why any serious business executive has any doubt. The evidence is both quantitative and qualitative, and it is conclusive.

Surely we can stipulate that the world is always changing. Technology changes. Economies grow and shrink. Older people retire, and younger people with new ideas come along. The market for goods and services changes as consumers and businesses decide they want and need different things. Companies merge and spin off. Trade barriers come down. Management fads come and go. Innovation creates new competition. Companies form and enter the marketplace. Always, things are changing.

Now, follow along with me. Wouldn't you agree that:

• Companies cannot control the changes around them, but they can control (a) whether and how they initiate change and (b) whether and how they respond to external change. Both the direction and the pace of their own change are variable, and both are controllable.
• Organizations that fail to change will invariably become irrelevant. Then they will whither and die. From the British Empire to the Pickett Slide Rule Company and AOL, history is filled with the bones of giants that failed to adapt.
• If what made you great will make you greater, you would already be greater than you are. You aren't, so it can't. You will always need new ideas, new competencies, and new practices to grow and meet the demands of the future. That's life, and life is change.
• The work of leadership is largely the work of envisioning, articulating, and supporting change, commonly requiring discretionary effort and even self-sacrifice by many people, often in a state of uncertainty and risk. That fairly describes the business world of the 21st century, doesn't it?
• Communication is the energy of leadership and thus of change. You know this to be true because all of history's great leaders, those individuals who have brought about the greatest change in the most trying of circumstances, have consistently been articulate and inspiring communicators. Think of Winston Churchill and Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln and Nelson Mandela. The reason this is true is equally obvious: People cannot act in concert with a leadership vision and agenda unless they have the big ideas, the information, and the incentive to do so, and they get all that through communication.
• Every organization is always communicating with itself—thinking out loud, as it were. People talk. Rumors spread. Leaks occur. The communication may be managed well or poorly or not at all. It may be clear, credible, compelling, constructive, collaborative, continuous, civil, and concise, or it may not be. The degree to which it is managed well and purposefully is the degree to which the organization can change in accord with the leadership vision and agenda and thereby determine its own destiny. 

Now forgive a little hubris, but executives who choose to deny these propositions are denying some very obvious truths, perhaps because it is comfortable for them to remain in denial. After all, it is easier to deny the need for communication than to assume responsibility for communicating and perhaps even to confront some long-festering professional competency gaps.

Executives who acknowledge these facts, and we hope this includes you and your colleagues, will properly ask what they should do first. I would suggest they consider the possibility that a systematic process of integrated strategic communication just may be the missing piece of the puzzle. At the very least, they should get moving on a needs assessment to better understand their situation and the opportunities it presents. Remember, every problem in life is an opportunity.

Call us. The number is +1-847-247-2241. We can help if you call, but not if you don't.

 

(c) Copyright 2011 Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

My Case Against Traditional State of the Union Speeches

 

 

For those of you who are fascinated by the art and process of speechwriting, here is an old speechwriter's argument against traditional State of the Union speeches. It appeared in this space four years ago when George W. Bush was preparing to give the 2007 address, but the sum and substance of its argument remains valid today.

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Three or four weeks into every new year, the president of the United States goes before Congress—and, via television, directly before the American people—to deliver his State of the Union address. Year after year, for Democrat and Republican alike, it is a huge missed opportunity.

I'm not picking on President Bush here. Every president I can remember has neglected to make the most of the State of the Union address. Though often well-written, these speeches never rise to their potential as an instrument for leadership. Their shortcomings hold a lesson for leaders in other walks of life, especially business.

Think first of the audience for a typical State of the Union. Arrayed before the president are virtually every member of Congress, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the U.S. Supreme Court, the Cabinet, and diplomats from countries around the world. Watching television are probably the vast majority of Fortune 500 chief executives, hundreds of columnists and editorialists, thousands of state and local officials and community leaders, and untold numbers of Internet bloggers, not to mention millions upon millions of U.S. voters.

Not bad, would you agree?

Now think about what all these people typically hear: bromide after bromide, carefully scripted applause lines, a Sears catalogue of policy prescriptions for everything from embryonic stem-cell research to Medicare reforms, and, for the last 25 years, the saccharine introduction and standing ovation for an American hero, a visiting head-of-state, or a poster child for whatever. (This year, at least we’ll hear something we have never heard before, as the Sergeant at Arms intones: “Madam Speaker, the President of the United States!”)

Finally, think of the opportunity that gets away: the chance to focus public discourse on one or two core initiatives or challenges, in a way that enhances the potential for real leadership.

Business leaders frequently make the same mistake. They have so many things on their plate that they sacrifice the opportunity to shine a spotlight on their uppermost priorities. They squander an opportunity for focus.

The State of the Union speech has its roots in the U.S. Constitution. Modeled after the Throne Speech of monarchies, it calls on the president to give Congress information on the state of the Union “from time to time” and to recommend legislation he deems “necessary and expedient.” But it does not require a speech for that process, and there is no constraint on how the president should structure a speech should he choose to give one. Nor does it specify how often or how comprehensive or deep the communication must be.

That allows for flexibility that presidents should use. For more than a century, from Thomas Jefferson in 1801 to Woodrow Wilson in 1913, the State of the Union was a written report without any public oration. Only since 1965 has the speech been broadcast on prime-time television. So the event has evolved, and it can evolve some more.

Here’s what a creative leader would do: Submit the extensive detail on the “state of the union” to Congress in a written report. Accompany that report with another document describing in detail the “necessary and expedient” legislation he wishes to be enacted. Then, use the televised speech itself to focus attention on one or—at the most—two issues or initiatives that he deems particularly important.

Remember, the first step of the leadership process is fixing attention on a challenge or issue. Until people share a common focus, they cannot share a common bond of resolve. The focus is critical.

All of us have an inherent need for noble, visionary, resolute leadership. In calling for an annual message to Congress, the founders were simply sketching out the president's role as a policymaking leader. They would applaud mightily a president who stepped up to the challenge.

Business leaders take note: Convey detailed information in writing, either as narrative or spreadsheet. Use oral presentations and speeches to focus attention. Get to the point and stay on point. Do so often, and you will define your leadership and shape the future. You will lead.

 

(c) Copyright 2007 and 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved. 

Bring More Heart to Employee Communication

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Have you ever noticed the difference in tone between a company's marketing communication and its employee communication on business strategy? Especially in the consumer-products sector, but elsewhere to an extent, it can be dramatic.

Advertising is often unabashedly emotional. TV commercials for new cars, for example, commonly appeal to the pride of ownership and, at the holidays, even the joy of giving. They play down or ignore things like horsepower or trade-in value. Advertising for life insurance tugs at the heartstrings of family, and 30-second spots for beer invoke friendship and fun.

In contrast, employee communication on business strategy is typically straightforward, sober, and matter-of-fact. There is little emotion. Yes, you see sporadic articles and photographs in newsletters on dedicated employees or extraordinary service. But the fundamental purpose of business is often reduced to quarterly goals, and the bulk of information is on new procedures and controls.

Canadian neurologist Donald B. Calne observes: "Reasoning leads to conclusions. Emotion leads to action."

Conclusions are important. Facts and logic have an important role. But action is essential. If emotion brings us to the brink of action, then it is an essential component of employee communication. We neglect it to our peril.

Always be mindful of the fact that people find a great deal of motivation in positive, affirmative appeals of emotion. Employees need straight information, of course. But they also need to hear the emotional cause for working hard, doing the right thing, persevering through adversity, scratching the creative itch, and taking risks. They need to hear of pride, service, loyalty, and so much more. Anyone who has ever succeeded at anything knows the importance and the truth of this.

 

(c) 2011 Arceil Leadership Ltd.  All rights reserved. 

By the Numbers: Open and Honest Communication

 

 

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Most companies of any considerable size survey their employees from time to time on a raft of issues relating to satisfaction, morale, commitment, and engagement. The questions on these surveys vary considerably, but a few questions are typically devoted to the frequency and quality of managerial communication.

(Better companies go so far as to field annual communication audits. If the surveys are well-constructed and well-interpreted and acted upon, so much the better.)

One survey question in particular always interests me. It has to do with the candor and credibility of communication. Often it is phrased as the degree of "open and honest" communication. (Ideally, it should be two questions, but that is another matter for another day.) The results say a lot about the organization and its future.

The only acceptable score on this kind of question is (a) a score that is better than the comparable score of your most recent previous surveys, and (b) a score reflecting approval at or above 85 or even 90 percent of all cohorts, most especially ground-level and customer-facing employees.

If you think 85 or 90 percent is too ambitious a target, I would remind you that it is still shy of three sigma. No self-respecting manufacturing company tolerates a defect rate of less than six sigma. 

On questions of this nature, reference to an industry norm is irrelevant and perhaps even counterproductive. Let's say the external norm is 72 percent, and your score is 75 percent. You may be feeling heady, having beaten the norm by 3 percentage points, but you must realize that one of every four employees regards your communication as something less than acceptable.

Having said that, you should be less concerned about validating your management team's efforts than about assessing your present situation and mapping an approach to improving it. So even if your scores are improving from survey to survey, you should still use the data to determine how you might improve further. Of course, if your scores are deteriorating, consider it a five-alarm alert. You need to get busy, fast.

Now, here are some discussion points for you:

• Has your organization conducted such a survey recently?
• Did you even ask about communication?
• Did you specifically inquire about candor and credibility?
• Did you also inquire about clarity? Coherence? Civility?
• Did you collect data by grade level? What were the results?
• How did they compare with previous surveys?
• What are you doing in response?

 

By the Numbers is a twice-monthly feature presenting business data that is noteworthy, puzzling, alarming, widely misunderstood or misinterpreted, or otherwise deserving of explanation, comment, or clarification. We accompany it with thought-provoking questions or commentary for reflection and discussion. By the Numbers appears on the first and third Monday of each month.

Since its inception in mid-2009, By the Numbers has presented data on a wide variety of issues: employee engagement, organizational culture, trust in business, information overload, strategic communication, CEO compensation, layoffs, job satisfaction, Internet usage, the productivity of meetings, nonverbal communication, and fear in the workplace, among others.

You can read any or all of those posts (and hundreds of other short essays, as well) whenever you wish, just by scrolling through the archives. For a particular subject, use the search button atop the right column.

 

(c) Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Why Should Anyone Listen to You?

   

by Thomas J. Lee

Many of us in management just assume that the people on our team will pay attention to what we say, simply because we're the boss.

If this describes you, then I have some good news and some bad news for you.

First the good news.

It is that, happily for you, sometimes they will. They will pay attention to what you say for no reason other than the fact of your position. You're the boss, so they will listen. Sometimes.

Now the bad news.

It is that, unhappily for you, often they will not pay attention. Occasionally they may go so far as to ignore you deliberately. More commonly, they will just let your voice vanish in the din, the noise, the clamor of the day-to-day chaos of their working life. They won't even notice that you have said anything.

Now I have a question for you.

It is just this: In what other aspect of your managing would you tolerate such a roll of the dice?

 

(c) 2011  Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.

To Communicate a Strategic Focus, You Must First Have One

 

We're reprinting a few of our favorite posts for two weeks while we go through a year-beginning strategic review. We will return in full force, with completely new essays, next Monday, January 10, 2011. (The following day will be 1-11-11. It will be a good time to begin anew.)

In the meantime, here's another little essay that many of you liked when we first published it. Feel free to forward it to your staff and colleagues.

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Here are a half-dozen short, breezy, familiar catchphrases, each of which supports a corporate brand identity:

• Just do it!
• When you absolutely, positively need it overnight.
• We love to fly, and it shows.
• Nothing runs like a ________.
• We pick you up.
• The few. The proud. The ________.

What do they have in common? They're all splendid examples of successful marketing initiatives, quite obviously. At least here in the United States, virtually everyone is familiar with all of them, and anyone can fill in the two blanks with Deere and Marines. Each phrase takes only an instant to associate with its sponsor.

But they have something else in common. They're all statements of strategic focus. For all six organizations, these catchphrases succinctly state what their employees must know, do, believe, and ultimately be in order to live out the organization's mission and purpose. Think of them as the verbal foundation of engagement.

For Nike, it's initiative and action. For FedEx, it's reliability and speed. For Delta Air Lines, it's enthusiasm for flight. For John Deere, it's unparalleled mechanical performance. For Enterprise Rent-a-Car, it's service and optimism. For the United States Marine Corps, it's duty and honor.

In each case, distilled to a few well-chosen words, the catchphrase captures the essence of the organization's legacy, identity, and competitive advantage.

Externally, these familiar words convey an image designed to enhance the organization's public persona. Internally, they establish a cultural norm that sets a high bar for work expectations.

Both externally and internally, all six statements operationalize a strategy. That is why they work so well as statements of shared strategic focus.

Unfortunately, few companies successfully communicate a sharp, compelling focus. It isn't so much a failure of marketing as of leadership. To communicate a shared focus, you must first have a focus, and it must be clear and coherent. You can't communicate what you don't have.

Establishing and occasionally refining the strategic focus is the foundational work of leadership. It is absolutely imperative. Without focus, a company lacks a core, and it tends to jump from fad to fad. Its leaders often carry a long laundry list of initiatives and priorities—programs of the month—few or none of which have their earnest commitment.

Those programs become their own mockery;  people see right through them. To borrow from the Bard, each successive new program soon reveals itself as another "poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more."

Creating or refining a strategic focus requires first determining your unique selling proposition, the essence of your brand. What is it that truly sets you apart? What do your competitors envy about you? You must get to the beating heart of your distinctiveness.

From the beginning, it's important to keep the end in mind. The end is naturally a high level of employee commitment, so that the leader's focus becomes everyone's focus. Thus the prospective focus must have the potential to resonate with your people. Therefore it must have roots in the legitimate, authentic values and in the noble self-identity of your organization.

While the strategic focus is yours to create, the values and self-identity are already there. In the short term, they can only be discovered, not imposed from on high. Over time, with inspiring leadership and supportive stewardship, they can grow to something better and greater, just as a plant leans toward sunlight. But that takes time and leadership.

Once a values-driven strategic focus is in place, the challenge shifts to the hard work of translating the broad theme to particular behaviors: ways of thinking and acting so that the focus can take root and thrive.

On one level, that can be expressed in a concise, memorable phrase, as we have seen at Nike, FedEx, and the Marine Corps. On another level, it must also become specific to each individual job. This process will ultimately require the intimate involvement of all managers.

Then it's a matter of repetition, reiteration, and redundancy. Saying it once is tantamount to never saying it at all. You must say it over and over and over. When you think you have it said too many times, you're just getting started.

 

(c) 2011 Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.

Let's Move from I to We

 

We're back from a brief hiatus, but we're reprinting a few of our favorite posts for two weeks while we go through a year-end strategic review. We will return in full force, with completely new essays, on Monday, January 10, 2011. (The following day will be 1-11-11. It will be a good time to begin anew.) In the meantime, here's another little essay that many of you liked. Feel free to forward it to your staff and colleagues.

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Anyone who has studied languages knows this template for personal pronouns. (If it's indecipherable to you, ask your kids. They have seen this in school.)

 

Person and Case \ Number	Singular	Plural
First Person Nominative First Person Possessive First Person Objective First Person Reflexive	I my or mine me myself	we our or ours us ourselves
Second Person Nominative Second Person Possessive  Second Person Objective Second Person Reflexive	you your or yours you yourself	you your or yours you yourselves
Third Person Nominative Third Person Possessive Third Person Objective Third Person Reflexive	he / she / it his / her or hers / its  him / her / it  himself / herself / itself	they their or theirs them themselves

 

Too often in business, we hide behind the wrong personal pronouns. We lock ourselves into the singular, and we focus on our separateness.

We get caught up in my this and I that. We hold you accountable, but not me. We blame him or them.

It's long past time we change this. Our linguistic habits reflect an orientation of division, argument, and apportionment. It isn't good for anyone.

Organizations of any kind—profit or nonprofit, small or large, old or new—need cohesion and camaraderie. So let’s make a concerted effort to go beyond this little talk.

From this point forward, let’s shift to the first person plural whenever we can.

Everyone in the company should be part of us. We all should be we. Let’s pull everyone together under the same big tent. Let’s look for what binds us together, not what drives us apart. The competition is out there, not in here.

We. Now that’s a sweet sounding word.

 

(c) 2010 Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

What You Say Isn't Necessarily What They Hear

 

We're back from a brief hiatus, but we're reprinting a few of our favorite posts for two weeks while we go through a year-end strategic review. We will return in full force, with completely new essays, on Monday, January 10, 2011. (The following day will be 1-11-11. It will be a good time to begin anew.)

by Thomas J. Lee

We don’t coin many words around Minding Gaps, but there’s a real need for this one: the metamessage.

Actually, we coined it years ago. Those of you who have participated in our workshops on leadership communication should remember the term.

Anyone in management or its strategic support functions is familiar with messages. These are the statements of what matters to a company, of where the organization is headed, of how products and services need to be improved, of just what lies ahead.

Messages are plainly important, but focusing on them exclusively as they’re stated plays a nasty trick on management.

It is too easy, altogether too easy, for management to believe that a message as stated is a message if and as received, if and as understood, if and as believed, and if and as applied—when, in fact, it may not be any of those other things.

The natural inclination is to assume that because you said something, other people got the message. Unhappily, as we know from extensive research, that is often just not the case. Focus groups repeatedly tell of messages that come across as happy talk, fast talk, sweet talk, or even double talk—or as just incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo.

The trouble is, no one tells management, because no one knows what the intended message was. It’s a real hornet’s nest.

The solution to this problem is to focus on messages not as they are stated but rather as they are heard. The truth is, messages are rarely heard as they are stated.

In business, employees commonly filter messages through their own lenses. Each employee’s lens is unique. So the “rays” of a message bend this way for one employee and that way for another employee. The message as bent is the metamessage. Meta, as a prefix, means changed or changing, beyond, transcending, over and above. The metamessage, then, is a message that has undergone some change that takes it away from its intended meaning. It's a kind of parallel universe of communication. We ignore it at our peril.

In my mind’s eye, I envision a glass prism. A message is a beam of light headed into the prism. The prism consists of the environment of the organization, the experiences of employees on similar and related messages, and the expectations of employees as to management’s integrity and intent.

All those things refract the message to render it somewhat different. If the firm’s environment is stable and prosperous, a particular message will have one meaning. If the environment is unstable and uncertain, the same message may have a dramatically different reading.

The same is true of experiences and expectations. Each bends the message. The beam of light as refracted through the prism is the metamessage: the message as heard or not, as understood or not, as believed or not, as applied or not.

Unless you are acknowledging the metamessage, you are not communicating as you intended to. It’s the metamessage that counts. Beware the metamessage.

 

(c) 2010 Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.

How Concise Is Communication in Your Organization?

 

(Tenth in a Series.)

by Thomas J. Lee

Three weeks ago we introduced the concept of a culture of communication. (Click here to read the November 24 post).

Then we explored each of the eight hallmarks of a healthy communication culture: clear, credible, compelling (or cogent), constructive, continuous, collaborative, civil, and concise. (Click here to read the November 26 post.)

Since then, we have been presenting lists of diagnostic questions a company should ask itself to gauge its culture on each of the eight hallmarks.

Today we take up concise. More than just brevity, our use of concise extends to issues of speed, duplication, detail, hesitancy, and caution of communication.

Here are some of the questions I like to ask to get a sense of these issues of communication around strategic direction and work-place priorities:

 

• Does formal communication get right to the point?
• Do business proposals make use of a one-page or two-page format requiring concise statements of purpose, budget, impact, reasoning, and so forth?
• Are managers routinely sent CYA copies of emails, other correspondence, meeting minutes, proposals, and so forth?
• Are managers trained in the use of one-minute conversations and one-minute coaching of employees?
• Do internal company publications have a lot of extraneous, nonstrategic information?  
• Do middle managers hoard information that would be of strategic use to subordinates or peers?
• Do meetings begin on time and proceed according to schedule?
• Are data-intensive presentations and complex information circulated in advance of meetings?
• Are presentations couched in circuitous language?
• Are PowerPoint slides crowded with fine print and indecipherable diagrams?

 

We would be happy to help your organization assess and improve

its culture of communication. Just call us at +1-847-247-2241

 or write to us at info@arceil.com. 

 

(c) 2010 Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.

How Constant Is the Communication in Your Organization?

(Seventh in a Series.)

by Thomas J. Lee

Two weeks ago we introduced the concept of a culture of communication. (Click here to read the November 24 post).

Then we explored each of the eight hallmarks of a healthy communication culture: clear, credible, compelling (or cogent), constructive, continuous, collaborative, civil, and concise. (Click here to read the November 26 post.)

Since then we have been listing some diagnostic questions a company should ask itself to gauge its culture on each of the eight hallmarks.

Today we take up continuous. Here are some of the questions I like to ask to get a sense of the flow, the frequency, and the constancy of communication around strategic direction and work-place priorities:

 

• Is the organization in the habit of managing the flow of information as discrete communications—with an s—as opposed to a cohesive, continuing process of communication, which has no beginning and no end?
• Does the organization scramble to recover from miscommunication? Are the professionals responsible for the communication that drives external reputation and internal engagement often forced to play catch-up or "do damage control"?
• Are strategic messages cascaded down through the organization one level at a time? Does cascading interfere with reliable, timely, responsible communication of business strategy?
• Is your communication process essential one of push, or of pull, or a hybrid of both, and if so in what proportions and how?
• What kinds of information, and in what detail, about your performance and competitive situation are routinely available to employees?
• Is strategic information withheld from employees or disseminated only on a need-to-know basis? Is important information hoarded in middle management? How many employees feel they are often kept in the dark?
• What, if anything, do you do to ensure that ground-level employees are thinking about strategic priorities more or less in tandem with senior management?
• Do managers share business information quickly and eagerly, slowly and reluctantly, or not at all? How does senior management set the right tone for this?
• How well are front-line supervisors and team leaders kept informed of the full thinking behind strategic direction, imperatives, and priorities?
• Do supervisors and team leaders receive briefings that enable them to translate strategies, policies, and priorities to specific day-to-day work by employees?
• Are most supervisors addressing performance issues as they arise, in a spirit of support and improvement, or pushing aside the uncomfortable issues and beating around the bush?
• What is the core message there?
• How often do employees learn of substantive developments through the grapevine or by viewing a local TV newscast? How do they feel when they do?

 

We would be happy to help your organization assess and improve

its culture of communication. Just call us at +1-847-247-2241

 or write to us at info@arceil.com. 

 

(c) 2010 Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.

How Constructive Is the Communication in Your Organization?

 

(Sixth in a Series.)

by Thomas J. Lee

Two weeks ago we introduced the concept of a culture of communication. (Click here to read the November 24 post).

Then we explored each of the eight hallmarks of a healthy communication culture: clear, credible, compelling (or cogent), constructive, continuous, collaborative, civil, and concise. (Click here to read the November 26 post.)

Since then, we have been presenting lists of diagnostic questions a company should ask itself to gauge its culture on each of the eight hallmarks.

Today we take up constructive purpose and effect. Strategic communication should help grow the enterprise. It should build, not diminish, the organization and the people of the organization.

Here are some of the questions I like to ask to get a sense of these issues of communication around strategic direction and work-place priorities:

 

• Is a communication process an integral part of any business plan?
• Is good communication regarded as essential to the success of any new strategy, initiative, policy, or program?
• Does the company properly distinguish between alignment and engagement of employees?
• How well do senior executives rise to the challenge of sharing a vision, of conveying news about the marketplace and competition, of inspiring camaraderie and performance through the ranks? Is it a claim on their time?
• Is the vision of the enterprise unique to the industry and products? Can employees relate to it? Does it waffle about commitment? Does it use grandiose, impersonal language that renders it remote and abstract?
• Are negative words--no, not, never, nothing, nowhere, none, neither, nor--common in formal discourse, or does the company try its best to be positive?
• Are employees reluctant to speak up about issues and problems for fear of recrimination by management?
• Does the company convey substantive information about its competitors?
• Is the attitude toward competitors one of respect or hostility?
• Are relevant metrics of performance widely shared?
• Does communication have enough of the big picture to be inspiring and enough detail to be instructive and helpful?

 

We would be happy to help your organization assess and improve

its culture of communication. Just call us at +1-847-247-2241

 or write to us at info@arceil.com.

 

(c) 2010 Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.

How Compelling Is the Communication in Your Organization?

  

 

(Fifth in a Series.)

by Thomas J. Lee

Last week we introduced the concept of a culture of communication. (Click here to read the November 24 post).

Then we explored each of the eight hallmarks of a healthy communication culture: clear, credible, compelling (or cogent), constructive, continuous, collaborative, civil, and concise. (Click here to read the November 26 post.)

We're taking a look now at diagnostic questions a company should ask itself to gauge its culture on each of the eight hallmarks.

Today we take up compelling, or cogent. Here are some of the questions I like to ask to get a sense of the cogency—the power and the energy—of communication around strategic direction and work-place priorities:

• Does the organization rely on hit-and-miss cascading important strategic information down through the ranks one level at a time?
• How much information ultimately gets through?
• How problematic is the erosion of context and rationale around messages as a result of cascading?
• On introducing a new initiative or program, does senior management think through the day-to-day implications on the work performed by rank-and-file employees?
• How does it convey those implications and expectations?
• Is the passive voice common?
• Are strategic messages put in proper context, and do they carry an explicit rationale and explanation?
• How often does the organization repeat itself on mission-critical messages? Are the challenges of social noise and the curse of knowledge fully appreciated?
• Does management shift focus frequently as new programs are adopted or periodically re-emphasized?
• Is management communicating more than a few strategic priorities?
• Are you providing front-line supervisors with adequate information to explain strategies and critical principles?
• Are senior leaders manifestly preoccupied with the strategies? 

 

We would be happy to help your organization assess and improve

its culture of communication. Just call us at +1-847-247-2241

 or write to us at info@arceil.com. 

 

(c) 2010 Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.