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Duck Tales

July/August 2004

A Trusted Message

As a leader, you must be a good communicator. That doesn’t mean you have to be a smooth public speaker, brimming with star quality and charisma. Your goal is to get your message across and inspire trust. Your listeners don’t have to like you or agree with you, but they do need to respect you and trust your message.

As we gear up for another election this fall, we might learn something from the politicians. What are they doing right when they speak at a convention or a debate or give a stump speech? And what are they doing wrong? Usually the best, most memorable speeches are those from the heart—speeches spoken with passion and conviction in straightforward, concise terms.

Your job is to showcase your ideas and vision and to inspire people to take action. Now if you can do that, the politicians will have a thing or two to learn from you!

Your Leadership Voice

The vast majority of leaders (90 percent) believe they communicate effectively. However, a mere 30 percent of their employees agree. What’s happening here? Sixty percent of leaders are getting it wrong by making four faulty assumptions. They assume that their followers (1) understand what they say, (2) agree with what they say, (3) care about what they say, and (4) will take appropriate action. Too often, there is only an illusion that communication takes place. What’s the remedy?

Boyd Clarke and Ron Crossland, authors of The Leader’s Voice, have studied the communication gap and have concluded that the best communicators use three channels to convey their meaning. Poor communicators tend to focus on just one channel. Here’s a look at all three:

Facts. The secret to this channel is not the facts themselves, but reporting them in a logical and organized way. Leaders need to create a compelling, memorable representation of what the facts mean, so their listeners will understand too.
Emotions. Leaders must reveal their own emotions while also understanding and articulating their listeners’ emotions. The best of leaders will foster passionate alignment around these shared feelings and aspirations.
Symbols. Leaders tend to shy away from telling stories and using analogies when speaking publicly. But telling stories to communicate important messages about brand, vision, values, and strategy is crucial for getting your message across. Clarke and Crossland say that listeners will interpret messages through symbolic channels whether leaders want them to or not. The real question is, “Do you want to pick the symbols or leave it up to your listeners?”

In All Honesty

When’s the last time you attended a meeting and heard statements like these: “I don’t know,” “This makes no sense to me,” “I’m having a tough time with this and need help,” or “I’m stuck.” If you’ve heard any of these statements recently, congratulations. Your organization is a rare bird indeed, one that encourages people to freely express themselves. The majority of companies only hear such phrases when the business reaches some kind of crisis point and complete honesty is the only option. But imagine how different things would be if people always voiced their thoughts.

Ford Motor Company once hired Peter Senge to elevate the contribution of one of its teams. After attending a few meetings, Senge suggested that, during the following six months, each team member voice a question or concern as soon as it occurred to them. In six months’ time, the team showed dramatic improvements in each of its performance measures.

Here are some other ways to encourage open communication: Ask for frank self-assessments of progress and disappointments; openly discuss necessary adjustments that involve all team members (i.e., who needs to do what differently; what needs to be stopped or delayed); make it a habit to ask for feedback and help; and renew the team’s commitment to doing great work.

The Power of We

Everyone’s been there at some point: You arrive at a crossroads where you face a tough decision. You have few resources, you feel depleted and unsure. During such times, you can either continue going it alone or you ask others for help. Unfortunately, the choice is not clear for many leaders.

Old-style leaders believe they should have all the answers and handle challenges on their own. Certainly, this makes the situation even more difficult. But something else happens here—their people are taught to expect solutions from the top, to wait for directives before taking action. Fortunately, more and more leaders understand that they don’t have to have all the answers. They know that sharing their difficulties is not a sign of weakness but actually an opportunity for the company to grow. They know that open communication fosters trust, builds community, and encourages employees to come up with their own solutions instead of waiting for directives.

Judith Glaser, author of Discovering the Power of We, calls these new-style leaders “wecentric leaders.” They know that feeling connected to others, instead of feeling isolated or disconnected, is one of the best motivators for excellence. Glaser cites three dynamics that are keys to succeeding at we-centric leadership: managing your own reactions; putting your ego behind you; and building healthy relationships with others. If you can accomplish these, she says, “You establish a positive context for change by engaging people in an ongoing conversation to develop into the best company ‘we’ can become.”

It’s All in the Delivery

Long, long ago, a king dreamed that all his teeth had fallen out. The dream worried him so much that he sent for a soothsayer to interpret the dream. The soothsayer listened to the dream, stroked his beard for several minutes, then answered. “Your Royal Highness, the dream means that your relatives will die and you will be left all alone.” Furious at the interpretation, the king demanded that the soothsayer be removed from the premises at once. The next day the king summoned a second soothsayer for his interpretation of the dream.
This soothsayer listened to the dream, thought for a moment, and then delivered his pronouncement: “Rejoice, Your Majesty, the dream means you will have a long life. In fact, you will outlive all your relatives. Long live the king!” The king was so pleased with this interpretation, that he gave the soothsayer a bag of gold coins and had him escorted home in the royal carriage.

In reality, the two soothsayers made essentially the same prediction. The difference, however, was in how they delivered their message—one saw the negative, while the other focused on the positive. Consequently, there was a big difference in how the king received the message. The moral is clear: It’s not necessarily what you say, but how you say it that matters.

The Loveliest Music of All

A symphony orchestra conductor from Eastern Europe had just been released from prison where he spent years in isolation because of his political beliefs. A young writer, interviewing him, asked the maestro several questions about politics and economics. Then the journalist turned to music. “In your opinion, what is the most beautiful piece of music ever written?” he asked. The conductor thought about this for awhile but did not answer. The young reporter didn’t give up. “When you were in isolation, what did you want to hear most?” he asked. “What music do you consider the most beautiful?” The conductor looked up at the eager young man.

“The most beautiful music in the entire world?” he asked. “Exactly,” replied the reporter. With tears in his eyes, the maestro answered. “The most beautiful music in the whole world is the sound of another voice.”

Face to Face

E-mail, voice mail, and memos may save workers dozens of hours of face-to- face contact, but not everyone is convinced that’s a good thing. When you replace human contact with the wonders of technology, something called the “human moment” is diminished. Edward M. Hallowell, a psychiatry instructor at Harvard
Medical School, coined the term, which refers to the physical presence as well as the emotional and intellectual attention of two or more people. In other words, in a human moment, people are actually meeting and listening to one another.

Hallowell says as the workplace experiences fewer and fewer human moments, distrust, disrespect, and dissatisfaction continue to grow. Workers doubt themselves more, become more abrasive, and, consequently, productivity and morale suffer. That doesn’t mean employees must revert to long and frequent meetings; effective human moments can be brisk and businesslike. The most important advantage of a human moment is that it energizes employees.

Face-to-face contact activates mental acuity and creates a synergy between employees. Hallowell says electronic communication removes natural cues that diminish worry. When people meet face to face, they are aware of body language, tone of voice, and facial expression. In human moments, misunderstandings can be quickly remedied simply by reading these cues or asking for clarification. However, with electronic communication, such as e-mail, employees are more apt to “misread” a message, which can create needless worry and misunderstandings.