Management Information |
Turn Your Speech Into A Leadership Talk
My experience working with thousands of leaders world wide for the past two decades teaches me that most leaders are screwing up their careers. On a daily basis, these leaders are getting the wrong results or the right results in the wrong ways. Interestingly, they themselves are choosing to fail. They're actively sabotaging their own careers. Leaders commit this sabotage for a simple reason: They make the fatal mistake of choosing to communicate with presentations and speeches -- not leadership talks. In terms of boosting one's career, the difference between the two methods of leadership communication is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. Speeches/presentations primarily communicate information. Leadership talks, on the other hand, not only communicate information, they do more: They establish a deep, human emotional connection with the audience. Why is the later connection necessary in leadership? Look at it this way: Leaders do nothing more important than get results. There are generally two ways that leaders get results: They can order people to go from point A to point B; or they can have people WANT TO go from A to B. Clearly, leaders who can instill "want to" in people, who motivate those people, are much more effective than leaders who can't or won't. And the best way to instill "want to" is not simply to relate to people as if they are information receptacles but to relate to them on a deep, human, emotional way. And you do it with leadership talks. Here are a few examples of leadership talks. When Churchill said, "We will fight on the beaches ... " That was a leadership talk. When Kennedy said, "Ask not what your country can do for you ... " that was a leadership talk. When Reagan said, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" That was a leadership talk. You can come up with a lot of examples too. Go back to those moments when the words of a leader inspired people to take ardent action, and you've probably put your finger on an authentic leadership talk. Mind you, I'm not just talking about great leaders of history. I'm also talking about the leaders in your organizations. After all, leaders speak 15 to 20 times a day: everything from formal speeches to informal chats. When those interactions are leadership talks, not just speeches or presentations, the effectiveness of those leaders is dramatically increased. How do we put together leadership talks? It's not easy. Mastering leadership talks takes a rigorous application of many specific processes. As Clement Atlee said of that great master of leadership talks, Winston Churchill, "Winston spent the best years of his life preparing his impromptu talks." Churchill, Kennedy, Reagan and others who were masters at giving leadership talks didn't actually call their communications "leadership talks", but they must have been conscious to some degree of the processes one must employ in putting a leadership talk together. Here's how to start. If you plan to give a leadership talk, there are three questions you should ask. If you answer "no" to any one of those questions, you can't give one. You may be able to give a speech or presentation, but certainly not a leadership talk. (1) DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE AUDIENCE NEEDS?Winston Churchill said, "We must face the facts or they'll stab us in the back." When you are trying to motivate people, the real facts are THEIR facts, their reality. Their reality is composed of their needs. In many cases, their needs have nothing to do with your needs. Most leaders don't get this. They think that their own needs, their organization's needs, are reality. That's okay if you're into ordering. As an order leader, you only need work with your reality. You simply have to tell people to get the job done. You don't have to know where they're coming from. But if you want to motivate them, you must work within their reality, not yours. I call it "playing the game in the people's home park". There is no other way to motivate them consistently. If you insist on playing the game in your park, you'll be disappointed in the motivational outcome. (2) CAN YOU BRING DEEP BELIEF TO WHAT YOU'RE SAYING? Nobody wants to follow a leader who doesn't believe the job can get done. If you can't feel it, they won't do it. But though you yourself must "want to" when it comes to the challenge you face, your motivation isn't the point. It's simply a given. If you're not motivated, you shouldn't be leading. Here's the point: Can you TRANSFER your motivation to the people so they become as motivated as you are? I call it THE MOTIVATIONAL TRANSFER, and it is one of the least understood and most important leadership determinants of all. There are three ways you can make the transfer happen. * CONVEY INFORMATION. Often, this is enough to get people motivated. For instance, many people have quit smoking because of information on the harmful effects of the habit * MAKE SENSE. To be motivated, people must understand the rationality behind your challenge. Re: smoking: People have been motivated to quit because the information makes sense. * TRANSMIT EXPERIENCE. This entails having the leader's experience become the people's experience. This can be the most effective method of all, for when the speaker's experience becomes the audience's experience, a deep sharing of emotions and ideas, a communing, can take place. There are plenty of presentation and speech courses devoted to the first two methods, so I won't talk about those. Here's a few thoughts on the third method. Generally speaking, humans learn in two ways: by acquiring intellectual understanding and through experience. In our schooling, the former predominates, but it is the latter which is most powerful in terms of inducing a deep sharing of emotions and ideas; for our experiences, which can be life's teachings, often lead us to profound awareness and purposeful action. Look back at your schooling. Was it your book learning or your experiences, your interactions with teachers and students, that you remember most? In most cases, your experiences made the most telling impressions upon you. To transfer your motivation to others, use what I call my "defining moment" technique, which I describe fully in my book, DEFINING MOMENT: MOTIVATING PEOPLE TO TAKE ACTION. In brief, the technique is this: Put into sharp focus a particular experience of yours then communicate that focused experience to the people by describing the physical facts that gave you the emotion. Now, here's the secret to the defining moment. That experience of yours must provide a lesson and that lesson is a solution to the needs of the people. Otherwise, they'll think you're just talking about yourself. For the defining moment to work (i.e., for it to transfer your motivation to them), the experience must be about them. The experience happened to you, of course. But that experience becomes their experience when the lesson it communicates is a solution to their needs. (3) CAN YOU HAVE THE AUDIENCE TAKE RIGHT ACTION?Results don't happen unless people take action. After all, it's not what you say that's important in your leadership communications, it's what the people do after you have had your say. Yet the vast majority of leaders don't have a clue as to what action truly is. They get people taking the wrong action at the wrong time in the wrong way for the wrong results. A key reason for this failure is they don't know how to deliver the all-important "leadership talk Call-to-action". "Call" comes from an Old English word meaning "to shout." A Call-to-Action is a "shout for action." Implicit in the concept is urgency and forcefulness. But most leaders don't deliver the most effective Calls-to-action because they make three errors regarding it. First, they err by mistaking the Call-to-Action as an order. Within the context of The Leadership Talk, a Call-to-action is not an order. Leave the order for the order leader. Second, leaders err by mistaking the Call as theirs to give. The best Call-to-action is not the leader's to give. It's the people's to give. It's the people's to give to themselves. A true Call-to-action prompts people to motivate themselves to take action. The most effective Call-to-action then is not from the leader to the people but from the people to the people themselves! Third, they error by not priming their Call. There are two parts to the Call-to-Action, the primer and the Call itself. Most leaders omit the all-important primer. The primer sets up the Call, which is to prompt people to motivate themselves to take action. You yourself control the primer. The people control the Call. The primer/Call is critical because every leadership communication situation is in essence a problem situation. There is the problem the leader has. And there is the problem the people have. In many cases, they are two different problems. But leaders get into trouble regarding the Call-to-action when they think it's only one problem, mainly theirs. For instance, a leader might be talking about the organization needing to be more productive. So, the leader talks PRODUCTIVITY. On the other hand, the people, hearing PRODUCTIVITY, think, YOU'RE GOING TO GIVE ME MORE WORK! If the leader thinks that productivity is the people's problem and ignores the "more work" aspect, h/she's Call-to-action will probably be a bust, resulting in the people avoiding committed action. Let's apply the primer/Call dynamic to the productivity case. The leader talks PRODUCTIVITY: but this time uses a PRIMER. The primer's purpose is to establish a "critical confluence" - the union of your problem with the problem of the people. In this case, the leader creates a critical confluence by couching productivity within the framework of MORE MEANINGFUL WORK. The primer may be: LET'S GET TOGETHER AND SEE IF YOU CAN COME UP WITH AN ACTION PLAN THAT WILL ENSURE THAT THE PRODUCTIVITY GAINS YOU IDENTIFY AND EXECUTE WILL ENABLE YOU TO WORK AT WHAT'S REALLY MEANINGFUL TO YOU. Note what we've done: The primer is LET'S GET TOGETHER AND SEE IF YOU CAN COME UP WITH AN ACTION PLAN. The actual Call is from the people to themselves: LET'S INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY BY WORKING AT WHAT'S MEANINGFUL. With that Call, the leader moves from just getting average results (YOU MUST BE MORE PRODUCTIVE: i.e., you're going to solve MY problem) to getting great results (YOU COME UP WITH WAYS TO TIE PRODUCTIVITY INTO MEANINGFUL WORK: i.e., you're also going to solve your problem.) So, here's what the leadership talk Call-to-action is truly about: It's not an order; it's best manifested when the people give themselves the Call; and it is always primed by your creating the "critical confluence" -- they'll be solving their problem as well as yours. The vast majority of leaders I've worked with are hampering their careers for one simple reason: They're giving presentations and speeches -- not leadership talks. You have a great opportunity to turbo charge your career by recognizing the power of leadership talks. Before you give a leadership talk, ask three basic questions. Do you know what the people need? Can you bring deep belief to what you're saying? Can you have the people take the right take action? If you say "no" to any one of those questions you cannot give a leadership talk. But the questions aren't meant to be stumbling blocks to your leadership but stepping stones. If you answer "no", work on the questions until you can say, "yes". In that way, you'll start getting the right results in the right way on a consistent basis. 2004 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved. ===================================================== PERMISSION TO REPUBLISH: This article may be republished in newsletters and on web sites provided attribution is provided to the author, and it appears with the included copyright, resource box and live web site link. Email notice of intent to publish is appreciated but not required: mail to: brent@actionleadership.com The author of 23 books, Brent Filson's recent books are, THE LEADERSHIP TALK: THE GREATEST LEADERSHIP TOOL and 101 WAYS TO GIVE GREAT LEADERSHIP TALKS. He is founder and president of The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. - and has worked with thousands of leaders worldwide during the past 20 years helping them achieve sizable increases in hard, measured results. Sign up for his free leadership ezine and get a free guide, "49 Ways To Turn Action Into Results," at http://www.actionleadership.com
MORE RESOURCES: Unable to open RSS Feed $XMLfilename with error HTTP ERROR: 404, exiting |
RELATED ARTICLES
Hiring Tip -- Picking The Best Candidates I often hear leaders from all types of organizations ask questions about hiring the right person. Their questions usually sound like these:? What if their resume looks great but they have a bad attitude?? What if they put on a good act and then don't work hard?? How can I tell how they will perform after I hire them?A great way to answer these questions starts with a well-defined interview process. CEOs Are Great, Top CEOs Are Greater People in leading positions are often in a dilemma: on one hand they are supposed to give great performances, make the right decisions and so forth; on the other hand, they have to fill the role of a very confident and self-assured manager. This may be considered a dilemma because CEOs are expected to be almost supernatural, and asking for assistance in what is supposed to be their core competence (leadership!) simply does not fit the picture, no matter how necessary it may be. Leading Bad Actors To Be Good Performers A successful leader told me, "The biggest challenge I've had in my career is dealing with bad actors. Brent, do you have tips on how to do it?"First, before we can deal with "bad actors", we must define the term bad actors. Better Management Performance - The Easy 3-Step Way Managers make three mistakes when they try to run businesses. They do too much, they don't trust their people and they don't have enough skills. Muggers in Our Midst - When Rumour and Gossip Pay You a Visit 'I heard it on the grapevine' the old song goes. But the grapevine has the potential to cause your business strife, misunderstanding and ruin! In effect the rumour mill and gossip are dangers you cannot ford to ignore. Business Innovation - Ignoring Content Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation.There are other useful definitions in this field, for example, creativity can be defined as consisting of a number of ideas, a number of diverse ideas and a number of novel ideas. The Power in Praising People One of the keys to success is to have successful relationships. We are not islands and we don't get to the top by ourselves. Saying "No" Gracefully to Customers and Colleagues Envision the scenario: You've just been asked at the last minute by Chris, the organizer of your local networking group, to replace the scheduled speaker at next month's meeting. You already have too many commitments on your plate. Project Management - I Want It ALL The knee-jerk response to prioritizing requirements is to mark everything as a must-have . "I need everything before the product becomes generally available. Training Managers and New Trainers Training managers use many of the same interpersonal and analytical skills that other types of departments use. In particular, they need to be good communicators, and highly skillful in interpersonal relations. Quality Staffing: Stop Placing the Wrong People in the Wrong Jobs You can possibly teach a turkey to climb a tree - but it is a lot easier to hire a squirrel. Quality staffing means selecting the right people with the right skills for the right jobs and at the right time. Intercultural Management The role of a manager is evolving in response to the needs of companies operating on the international stage. The complexities of globalisation brought to the area of management are great and require the 21st century manager to adapt in order to offer modern solutions to modern problems. Delegation - The Basic Steps To Reducing Your Workload And Creating A Successful Team If you have a task greater than you can handle on your own, then you need to delegate. Not a choice many of us choose to make, but one we can all learn. Knowledge Management - Capturing And Structuring Knowledge Into Reusable Assets Many organizations have an approach for identifying and recording lessons learned, perhaps as part of a post-project review or similar process. Unfortunately, lessons learned reports have a tendency to end up on a shelf gathering dust, or lost in the un-chartered corner of a fileserver somewhere. Faith is the LIFE-blood of Your ACTIONS before the Benefit - Nothing has changed. Your ancestors lived by faith. Delegate Tasks to the Right Person SELECTING THE RIGHT PERSON: To whom should tasks be delegated? Selecting the right subordinate to do the work is an evaluative process, and managers must be able to identify individuals both capable and willing to handle responsibility.DETERMINING EMPLOYEE RESPONSIBILITY: A careful review should be made of past assumptions about personnel. Dont Get Caught With Your PR Down Why risk the embarassment when with a little basic PR training, you as a business, non-profit or association manager can always be ready for battle?Never again will you fail to do something positive aboutthe behaviors of those important outside audiences ofyours that MOST affect your operation.Never again will you fail to create external stakeholder behavior change leading directly to achieving your managerial objectives. Assessing Managers for International Competence How do you select staff for international assignments? It's an important question because, no matter how effective and successful your employees may be at home, they cannot be guaranteed the same performance in a different culture-unless, that is, they can demonstrate some key competencies. But beware, these may be quite different from the competencies they need to succeed in their own environment. ISO 9001 the Process Approach to Quality Assurance What is the Process Approach to Quality?The ISO 9001 2000 standard is designed to manage and improve organizations processes. There is a great deal of misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the meaning of the process approach to Quality. Tales from the Corporate Frontlines: The Role of Character in Leadership This article relates to the Senior /Top Level Management competency, designed to measure satisfaction levels regarding top-level management at your organization. AlphaMeasure defines senior management as the team of individuals at the highest level of management who have the day-to-day responsibilities of operating the organization. |
home | site map | contact us |