Why Most Leaders’ Communication Fails To Hit The Mark

Got your attention? Spiked your interest? Curious to understand what that headline means? This is an example of a ‘hook’. A way to grab your attention and invite you to continue to read. In the world of the internet this phenomenon is known as ‘clickbait’ - a way to entice the reader in the midst of gazillions of megabytes of information. Frankly, I don’t like the phrase (and often times the examples of clickbait that I see), because they can deceive, distract and disappoint the reader. And yet, the part about clickbait that works so well is that it succeeds in getting people to look further, linger longer and become engaged with the message.

So what?

So leaders today need to take this concept and apply it far more effectively to our verbal communication. I call it a ‘hook’.

We open our mouths to do a number of things, including building rapport, asking questions, providing information, making jokes, challenging others, coaching and supporting our colleagues or team.

• I'm talking about the moments in a conversation when the time has come to influence and persuade. When we need to shift the perspective, mindset, alignment of others in relation to an issue. Too often our commentary lacks a compelling, intriguing, interesting way of getting the audience’s attention right at the start, and as a result, we have already lost them. The audience has disconnected, disengaged and dismissed the value of continuing to pay attention.

Examples of a ‘hook’ include a powerful question, a statistic, a piece of customer verbatim, a quote, a soundbite, an irrefutable fact. The point of a hook is not to be so theatrical that we feel uncomfortable and something of a twit. Instead, it’s about using a natural, relaxed, conversational style to ease a ‘hook’ into the first words that come from our mouths when we need to deliver a structured message for impact.

So next time the moment comes during a discussion when you need to influence and persuade, how can you grab the attention of your audience right at the start?

Pitching To A Democracy

Decisions today are made in groups comprised of individuals who have vested interests, different priorities and often very little meaningful ‘positional power’ over each other. As leaders and influencers, we are tasked with the challenge of being persuasive in front of this audience, driving our agenda and elevating our priorities to get their attention, support and approval. When dialling into their calls or showing up at their meetings, we must share our story and ask clearly for what we want. I call this challenge ‘pitching to a democracy’.

In these difficult political times, whilst I hesitate to use the word democracy, the reality is that this is what we are faced with in business today. And it’s not easy.

I’ve talked many times before about the importance of a clear, concise and compelling message, combined with confident, articulate and engaging communication skills.

And that’s still not enough when faced with a team, because we have to flex to the dynamics which sit behind influencing a group of people, versus dealing with just one person.

So what do we do? Well for starters……

1. Understand the culture of the team

What are some of their behaviours? Language? Preferences that have evolved over time? What’s their ‘style’? Their approach? Their ‘mood’? How are they with each other and with those who sit outside of team? There is a richness and a subtlety to understanding the answers to these questions, which means we need to be able to ‘read the room’ and flex our style to convey that we ‘belong’.

2. Identify the (formal and informal) power structures within the group
These can be obvious and they can also be subtle. Who are the key influencers? Big hitters? Quiet assassins? Naysayers? Technical experts on whom they rely? We need to know ‘who’s who’ so that we can flex our approach in order to target our message at the right person, in the right way, to achieve the right response.

3. Know the quirks that make them unique
I have a client where there is a senior leadership team that talks a lot about the Times crossword. You’d better know the most difficult anagram that everyone is struggling over on that particular day. I have another team that talks about cooking. Yes, cooking. If you don’t know your Nigella from your Delia then you’re not coming in and by the way, some of you won’t understand what I’ve just written. This is exactly my point.

4. Stay On The Right Side Of The Line

Group dynamics by definition create ‘raised stakes’. Every single one of us is wired to save face and knowing how far (and with whom) we can push it is vital. If we get it wrong, we’ve alienated not just the individual, but also the whole team and they’re coming after us. Knowing when to step back, regroup offline and revisit another day is absolutely essential.

5. Get The Learning

Like democracy, groups evolve and nothing remains static. Every time we seek to influence a team it is vital that we learn from it. Good or bad, yes or no, fun or not fun, the absolute worst is not to learn from it. We have to reflect, reinforce and revisit our approach in order to be even more effective in the future.

Our Obligation To Dissent

It seems both timely and ironic that I find myself talking a great deal with clients this month on the topic of disagreement. I have been reminded of an article which I first read two years ago in Harvard Business Review which explored the leadership concept of having an obligation to dissent.

What a superb phrase.

Fundamentally, it means the responsibility of leaders to create a culture that encourages candour both within and across our teams, appreciates those who ‘speak truth to power’, welcomes the challenge from others because we believe it is fundamentally a positive force, and genuinely operating from a place where we lack the hubris to believe that ‘we’re almost always right’.

Now I think that this is really easy to write down, but much harder to 'do in practice’. Why?

Because on the one hand we worry about our leadership brand, we worry about showing vulnerability and we worry about being seen as credible, current and convincing to our peers, our colleagues, our customers and our board if we invite others to dissent. If that wasn’t enough, we also worry about challenging others - especially across our horizontal leadership team and also to those who are more senior than ourselves. We worry about appearing unsupportive, creating ‘enemies’ and damaging our relationship with others on whom we might need to rely to drive results, or support our next career move.

So, what can we do? 

1. Firstly reframe what we’re talking about. The association of ‘dissent’ is negative, destructive, divisive. We’re not trying to deliberately do any of that in business. Instead we’re trying to be creative, curious, challenging and exacting of what our teams, our business and ourselves can do to move the needle.
2. In addition, we need to delete the belief that because we may not know a great deal about the expertise of a colleague or another team, we cannot therefore add value to the discussion. Wrong. It is precisely because we don’t know the detail and do not have the expertise, that we are able - if we take the leap - to more easily cut to the essence of the discussion through the power of crisp, concise and compelling questions. These are asked to expand thinking, offer support, explore possibilities, challenge ‘group think’ and ensure we make the best decisions as a leadership team.
3. Park our ‘ego’ at the door. All successful professionals have an ego (as do less successful professionals it has to be said). When we are asked questions we need to slow down, reflect, explore the question as a signal of interest and desire to help. We must resist the temptation to see it as a cue to defend our corner, become entrenched and vow to ‘get them back’ in some form later.
4. Talk to our teams - continually - about the importance of their challenge. Great leaders hire people with more expertise than themselves. Our job is to harness it, expand it and leverage it fully. That means we need to welcome - if not demand - the challenge of those who work for us.
5. Finally we should celebrate this kind of dissent, gather stories of the value of that challenge and share them around the organisation. What we talk about is what our teams will care about, so we need to do this - continually - if the behaviour is to become a positive aspect of the culture that we nurture.

My view of leadership and communication is simple: every human being comes into an interaction with the sole intent of leaving it with their self worth intact. It’s not an easy thing to do to encourage others to dissent, but we must - if we are to make the most of the talent across our business.

Why We All Need ‘Remote’ Presence

With the exception of actors, who started their career with the aim of want to live it on screen? Almost no-one. And yet for professional men and women this is where they are spending an increasing proportion of their professional lives. It’s all about being plugged in, camera on, staring at and talking to our computers. With this reality now in play, why should we care? Well, the short answer is: for a whole host of different reasons.

Firstly, as leaders and influencers, being remote from our audience makes our ability to have impact; to be seen, to be heard and to be influential – even more difficult. As if it wasn’t enough already.

• Communicating at a distance takes away the connection made from being in the same space together. It removes that ‘hard to define but we know it if we see it’ sense that rapport exists, and it also makes makes ‘reading the room’ much harder because three dimensions has become two and sometimes we don’t even have visual with which to work.
• For some occasions, the whole experience is based on one communication facet – your voice.
• If that wasn’t enough, being successful in business today means influencing ‘horizontally’; being persuasive with others over whom we have no direct control; who may not be individuals who we see regularly face-to-face; who may not operate in the same time zone as us, nor work in the same department, vertical or organisation as us and who care much less about our priorities than they do their own. You see? I said it wasn’t easy.
• Added to this challenge is the need to rely on the speed and quality of our internet connection which can delay, distract and deter even the most enthusiastic presenter.
• Finally let’s add to the mix, our ability to be distracted by our phones continually, causing all of us to live in what is commonly known as the ‘attention deficit economy’, where most people aren’t listening most of the time. In fact, we are now blatant about it; talking to each other whilst staring at, typing into and scrolling on our devices.

So what do we need?

I call it ‘remote presence’. Quite simply this is: “The ability to effectively communicate, contribute and challenge remotely. Irrespective of the media, demonstrating the skills to ‘reach’ an audience by being persuasive, impactful and compelling with our contributions."

Who amongst us needs to hone our ability to do that?

Relationships Don't Get Built On Email

My clients this month have focused the mind on the importance of relationships. I have the pleasure and privilege of working across a wide range of industries, cultures and countries, and discussions this month have focused on the challenges to building effective relationships around the business. This ranges from connecting with colleagues who are based in the same building, to creating meaningful connections with leaders in different countries, on different time zones and with very different priorities to our own.

Here’s what I notice: relationships don’t get built on email.

We all understand the advantages of technology to enabling greater efficiency, managing a heavier workload and simply maintaining the pace of business today. However it can be an enormous distraction from the critical task of building effective, mutually beneficial relationships around our organisation, which is a critical differentiator for leaders in fast paced, flat, global, matrix organisations. I have been working with several leaders lately who are classical keyboard warriors; massively responsive and efficient, they manage a phenomenal workload and all of them are seen as an asset to their teams. However, their individual challenges include dealing with conflict, pushing back constructively and getting their priorities supported by colleagues whose focus is on something else entirely. Better relationships would undoubtedly help and in the absence of doing this, my clients simply try to run faster, work harder and ‘just get through it’.

Timing is everything. As I write, we are approaching the end of the month and the end of the first quarter of this year; and this is a particularly busy time for one of my clients in the retail sector. Clearly, inviting them to take time out to ‘build relationships’ now would not be met with a printable response. However what it highlights is that if we don’t make regular time to strategically, intentionally and consistently focus on doing this, it is incredibly difficult to get meaningful support when the going gets tough.

Leaders with executive presence make time to:

• Lift their heads up from the screen
• Identify and plan who are critical stakeholders to their business
• Set relationship goals (not task goals) for their key influencers
• Defend time to talk/meet to understand their issues/priorities/challenges
• Ask ‘how can my team help with that?’
• And do so regularly, iteratively, intentionally.

As leaders we are all in a relationship business, irrespective of the industry, country or function in which we work. That means we need to make time to build relationships, using the best asset at our disposal – ourselves – not our email.

Let Your Hands Do The Talking

During the first two months of 2019, I have had the pleasure and privilege of visiting twelve countries for work in Europe, the Middle East and South America, and part of the joy of what I do is the chance to be immersed in the culture and traditions of different worlds, and explore the challenges and opportunities in supporting professional men and women who work there. A focus this month has been how we use our hands when communicating, and my fascination in this area has been heightened by understanding how regional and cultural differences manifest themselves around the world. In addition, irrespective of where we come from, the reality that for all of us, it is in our hands that we experience stress. It is after all our hands that sweat and shake, rather than say - our elbows. Our hands reveal our inner emotional state and we can fall into the trap of multiple, small distraction movements in our hands (fiddling, twiddling, pen clicking etc.) that detracts and deflects from the power of our message.

I have also come across some fascinating research conducted by anthropologist Markus Koppensteiner which has explored the impact of hand movements on an audience, and their perception of a speaker’s message. Quite simply, when we use our hands to support our message we convey more energy, more enthusiasm and more conviction. So what? So the audience likes it - a lot. Our ability to be expressive using our hands supports a more positive response from those listening, and a fun fact is that the most popular TED talk speakers use twice as many hand gestures as those speakers who are less popular. It is the signalling of our enthusiasm and communicating of our passion for the topic which reaches our audience, is engaging and persuasive to them.

Leaders who are powerful communicators already know and do all this. The rest of us have to learn the skills, which means that when I say ‘let your hands do the talking’, what I mean is:

• Keep hands on show, because ‘visible hands’ convey confidence and authority.
• Be deliberate, relevant and emphatic with hands to reinforce key points.
• Avoid fiddling, twiddling, pen clicking and the like with hands. These ‘micro gestures’ are massively distracting, diminish our impact and dissuade our audience.
• Imagine a rectangular space in front of us going from our shoulders to our midriff. This ‘box’ is the area in which should use our hands and show movement.
• Beware of defensive gestures (especially when standing) which include hands folded, placed in front of us covering the groin area, hands behind our backs and hands in pockets. All of this says “I am really uncomfortable”. Naturally this is not a message that inspires.

Always remember that when it comes to executive presence, exquisite communication or whatever term you wish to use; the theory is easy but the execution is much harder.

Have fun whilst you practice.

Avoiding the ‘blah, blah, blah’

Given that February is the shortest month of the year, there is a gorgeous symmetry between this fact and the focus for my conversations this month; namely how to say less; but have more impact.

The reality of business today is simply this - all too often I hear messages, answers, contributions and pitches that go on... and on... and on. There’s confusion and complication in answers and we’ve all stopped listening a long time ago; but that doesn’t mean that others have stopped talking - unfortunately.

Avoiding what I call the ‘blah, blah, blah’ in our communication has been the focus of conversations this month with managers who are at, what I call, a ‘pivot point’ in their leadership growth. By that I mean that they are making the switch from focusing on developing their technical skills to focusing on developing their skills of influence and compelling communication.

Not a bad shift to make because interestingly LinkedIn Learning published some research in January 2019 which reinforced the top two soft skills needed for professionals to succeed at work - creativity and persuasion. That’s what sits at the heart of avoiding the ‘blah, blah, blah’ as I call it and being a crisp, concise and compelling communicator.

So the question is: where to start?

The first and most important concept to embrace is the narrative structure. This is the over arching ‘chapter headings’ of our message or story. All great authors write this first, and then get into the detail. Narrative structures are simple, logical and divided into 3 parts. Much like any story with a ‘beginning, middle and end’, this is what we need to decide and be clear on before we get into the detail of the message. Narrative structures set us free. If we get this right first, filling in the rest is then so much easier, crystal clear for our audience and encourages more precise, concise messages.

The other beautiful thing about narrative structures is the sheer number that we can create to support our story. I offer only three:

Situation, Complication, Resolution
What It Is, What It Does, Why It Matters
What We Want, What We Don’t Want, So Where To Go From Here

…and yet there are simply too many to list here. An easy, conversational language style is my approach and always remember that we should embrace narrative structures and start here first if we are to avoid the ‘blah, blah, blah’.