Welcome to our blog on business leadership, its communication and credibility, and workplace engagement around change and breakthrough performance. If you like what you see here, please bookmark this page, tell your friends and colleagues, and click on the Subscribe button just below the masthead. You'll receive a little note whenever we update, along with a sentence or two describing the new post.
Introduction
A little blog with big ideas, Minding Gaps strives to build strategic engagement by enhancing the way that corporations and other organizations think of, talk about, and act on their purpose, situation, vision, values, direction, progress, priorities, goals, expectations and identity. It is vitally important to remember that all three—thinking, talking, acting—are communication, and that true communication also includes collaboration, listening, and observation.
The more clarity, credibility, and community you can bring to these matters, the more engagement you will see. We will unpack and work through this challenge with you. We'll show you how to build and sustain real engagement. You'll like the result: change and breakthrough performance that are simple, natural, foolproof, and almost inevitable.
Borrowed from the public-address warning in the London Underground (that's the Blackfriars Tube station in the photograph below), our use of "minding the gaps" refers to the need for leaders to close the myriad gaps that compromise the credibility of leaders and leadership. These are gaps between aspirations and reality, between rhetoric and fact, between expectations and experience, between visions and achievement, between official truth and ground truth, and most of all between leaders and followers. Unless and until leaders close these gaps, they cannot lead people to a better, brighter future.
We have hundreds of short essays and dozens of short book reviews on this site, all on the general subject of leadership, engagement, and the clarity and credibility of communication. For those of you new to Minding Gaps, and unable to devote the time to read our entire contents, look for this orange, blue, and white MIND THE GAP sign from the London Underground. It is your indication of an especially relevant post, or essay, that you shouldn't pass by.
We invite you to browse, read, and learn; we ask only that you respect our copyrights and give us full credit for anything printed here. (Please refer to the Permissions Policy in the upper right corner for more information if you wish to quote from this blog.) Our business model depends on providing services and licensing of our intellectual property and expertise, so we guard it closely. You can reach us whenever you wish by calling +1-847-247-2241 or by writing to [email protected]. We would like very much to hear from you.
Kindly note that we reserve the right to revise, refine, and republish prior posts. Corrections submitted to us and verified will be incorporated in a revised post. We also reserve the right to remove and revise material for subsequent publication in books, manuals, and electronic media.
Please also note that our posts appear in reverse chronological order; the most-recent post will always appear immediately below this Welcome message and the Announcements. That may cause some confusion. For example, the two-part conversation with Björn Edlund of Royal Dutch Shell (on January 19-20, 2010) has the concluding installment above the introductory installment. Similarly, the post on strategies for straight talk (on January 14) makes reference to two previous posts (on January 12 and 13) below it.
Thank you, and we hope you will check back often.
Online Education
Webinar Schedule
Let's be honest.
- Are people in your organization, or on your team, confused about strategic priorities or blind to the big opportunities?
- Is your organization introducing a new strategy, policy, or other initiative for which you need employee engagement?
- Do you need your managers to serve as collateral leaders generating support for a leadership vision?
- Do you think communicating as a manager and communicating as a leader are pretty much the same thing?
- Do you yourself need to better understand a leader's ability to influence and inspire?
- Do you know the important techniques of making your message believable, applicable, and memorable?
- Are you clear on the meaning of terms like morale, commitment, alignment, and engagement? Do you think they're all alike? (Hint: Think of alignment as the deliverable of managing, and engagement as the deliverable of leading. See? You're making progress already.)
- Are your organization's PowerPoint presentations cluttered, confusing, and b-o-r-i-n-g?
- Does your organization rely on hit-and-miss cascading to "get the word out" on new initiatives?
- Do employees ever snicker at official statements of intent or policy?
- Do you need a proven process of systematic communication to build employee engagement?
If any or all of these things describe you, your organization, or your team, you will want to register for our revolving series of powerful online learning opportunities. They are an affordable, convenient way to improve your grasp of the clarity and credibility of leadership and the communication that drives it. You don't even have to leave your office.
No company can afford to keep on making the same mistakes it has made for years. If you are serious about change, you owe it to yourself to understand and apply a simple, four-stage process for building employee engagement. It takes the guesswork out of engagement. It makes employee engagement almost inevitable.
These webinars distill our acclaimed two-day workshop in leadership communication down to five sessions. (More than 95 percent of our workshop participants recommend the experience for their peers and superiors, even after sitting in a windowless room for two straight days. Now that's world class.) You will get all kinds of practical insight and advice that you can use immediately. If your managers have already experienced our program, this is an excellent and inexpensive refresher course.
Here is our series of five webinars. You and your team attend one of each, so you have your choice of three dates for each session. We recommend you retain the order of the five, especially beginning with Communication Is the Energy of Leadership.
Communication Is the Energy of Leadership
(to be scheduled)
A simple, grounded explanation of the differences between managing and leading and of the differences between their deliverables (alignment and engagement, respectively), with a description of the real work that each requires. We will establish that communication is the essential energy of leadership, introduce the five axioms of leadership communication, and describe the archetypes of leadership (e.g., visionary, moral, heroic), with real-life examples of each. We will show you how to reach people not just in their mind but in their heart, and we will flag the common mistakes that new leaders make.
A Systematic Process for Building Employee Engagement
(to be scheduled)
Only 28 percent of employees in the United States, and only 21 percent of employees worldwide, describe themselves as engaged. Active disengagement costs between 2.1 and 2.5 percent of all economic activity, equal to $297 billion to $353 billion per year in the United States alone. (Multiply your own organization's revenue by .021 to see the cost to you.) It also alienates the truly engaged employees, who leave for competing companies with cultures that reward high-performing people. This webinar will explore the challenge of engaging employees. You will get specific strategies that have been proven to work for building sustainable engagement.
Strategic Communication for New Initiatives
(to be scheduled)
An introduction to the powerful Arceil Rainbow model for credible, compelling communication of strategic purpose and priorities. Learn how to avoid mixed, muddled, or mute messaging. We will define strategic communication, introduce the four stages of strategic communication, and explain the three voices with which every organization speaks, explicitly and implicitly, every day. We will show you how to use the Rainbow model analytically, to determine the root causes of confusion and cynicism in your workplace, and strategically, to plan for clear, credible, compelling communication.
The Critical Link of the Front-Line Manager
(to be scheduled)
Just how important are front-line managers supervisors to your organization's success? Put it this way: Everything depends on them. Yet research shows that few front-line managers and supervisors communicate with clarity and credibility, and few understand their role in the overall process of strategic execution. In this powerful webinar, you will see just how front-line managers and supervisors must adapt to the changing needs of the workplace in the 21st century.
New! How Leaders Talk: Words and Phrases That Influence and Inspire
(to be scheduled)
In response to your requests, we have just added a session devoted to the rhetoric of leadership. Here you will learn the big differences between making a presentation and giving a speech, between telling people how things should be and telling them how things can be, between influencing and inspiring. We will show you how the language of leading differs in both style and substance from the language of managing. You will see the big differences between spin and framing. We'll give you a lengthy list of tips to help your next presentation stand out from the others. You will see the importance of avoiding negative phrasing whenever possible, and you will learn tricks, tactics, and techniques to make your leadership message remarkable, memorable, and actionable.
All sessions begin at 2 pm Central Time (noon on the West Coast). Enrollment for all five sessions is just $1,178 per site. You can have as many people on the line as you wish (though we must insist on separate registrations for separate sites). Moreover, clients on our monthly retainers can avail themselves of additional discounts across the board of up to 25 percent.
For typical management teams, that works out to as little as $15 to $25 per person per session. You will also receive a recording of each session to reinforce your learning, and you can watch it over and over. (You attend just one session of each program.)
Organizations outside the United States may inquire about scheduling special sessions at amenable times; we have already provided odd-hour sessions for people in Angola, Australia, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, England, Kosovo, Romania, and Spain. (All sessions are in English.)
Reserve your place now by calling us at +1.847.247.2241 or by writing to us at [email protected].
Hurry, seating is limited. Call today for best availability.
Do, Do, Do Subscribe, and Spread the Word About Minding Gaps
If you find this blog interesting, please subscribe by clicking the button at the top or by signing up for the RSS at the upper right. You will receive a free notification of every new post to this blog. Also, be sure to bookmark this site so you can find it when you need it, and remember to tell your friends and colleagues about us. Come back often now, okay? We're posting no fewer than three times weekly.
Thomas J. Lee
