ABSENT PRESENCE
The impact of your absence depends on what you do when you’re physically present: Present presence shapes absent presence. By making sure you always remain mentally alert and responsive to your team when you interact with them, you will greatly improve your impact when you need to tend to business elsewhere. Your vision, ideas, and attributes can continue to drive your team to execute your plans and strategies.
Creating a transformative work environment depends on the quality and effectiveness of a leader’s “absent presence.”
Absent presence helps long-term stability and sustainability because your team no longer relies on your physical presence in order to feel inspired by your leadership. They become less dependent on you. Some organizations still feel the impact and influence of great leaders even years after they have left.
Liz Chandler, a coach on my team, had a profound impact on her client group. They came to rely on her support and ability to help them move forward. When she left the project, the team knew they had to carry on without her. They made up wristbands that said, “WWLD” (“What would Liz do?). She left that project a long time ago, yet they still wear those wristbands to this day. How many of us leave that kind of legacy?
Part of that legacy is always built on understanding and trust. If a leader is accessible, shows genuine interest in how to support his or her team, and acts upon that information in a positive way, the legacy can be strengthened.
25.
Generating Influence
The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.
—Ken Blanchard, author
Showing up really matters, as we saw in the previous chapter. Understanding how you show up matters even more. Many leaders fail to notice how their employees, clients, and stakeholders see them.
Rogue leaders ask themselves, “What happens to my organization as I move through it?” When you can observe the impact you have, you can make a big difference in leadership effectiveness. Consider it a part of emotional intelligence.
Many books and articles explain how to cultivate this kind of self-awareness—suffice it to say that it all hinges on being detached and honest enough to watch yourself in action.
Let’s use a biological analogy: The body undergoes chemical and electrical changes in response to external force fields. Your mere presence will affect the space you are observing. Every action you take changes the relationship between you and the external “force field” that always surrounds you.
Over time, it is possible to create a critical mass of influential employees who will change your organization’s thinking and behavior. Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point (Little, Brown, 2000) explains how this happens. You don’t need everyone on board, just the influencers at every level of your organization.
So how do I know who the influencers are at all levels of my organization? And how do I interact effectively with them?
Power lies in ongoing adjustments. Doing this effectively involves “taking the temperature” of your environment and making course corrections in real time—on the job, not at an event or in some other space external to daily business management.
You want your team to ask questions and/or express concerns or insights every day. When feedback happens constantly, you don’t need to schedule full-on feedback mechanisms like surveys, upward feedback, and 360-degree circles.
I don’t suggest you become a hyped-up feedback machine (that might be too “out-there” for your leadership style). You can attend to feedback quietly. I remember one executive who demanded feedback after every interaction with his team—it felt exhausting at times and therefore lost its impact.
The point: You should seek and receive information constantly in a way comfortable for you. Engage in active listening. The quality of your awareness and emotional intelligence actively affect your team’s growth and development. You will likely find that many little daily steps turn out to be more powerful in changing the culture and performance than any grand initiative.
Here are three methods to get that much-needed input.
1. Stone-Skipping
It makes sense to be purposeful about what you do—or at least be aware of the effect you have on others. Intuitive leaders understand that the energy from their actions continues spreading, even when they no longer notice the effects. This is similar to the ripple effect from throwing a stone in the middle of a pond.
To use stone-skipping in your organization, pick small, unobtrusive, and benign ways to continually test the waters with new ideas. Challenge your team. Like a skipping a stone, you continually create feedback that guides your movement. Pay attention and notice if you encounter any resistance. If so, it might be time to float new ideas (pun intended) and see where it takes you.
2. Pulsing
In a similar, but slightly different way, “pulsing” involves asking for feedback instead of trying something and passively observing reactions and feedback. Like sending out a probe, pulsing directs movement and responses, and when done right it can be non-disruptive and discreet. Open-ended questions work best.
I sometimes hear people ask, “Do you want the truth or do you want ‘the right answer’?” I have heard this time and again, but put like that, the question leaves no real way for the person responding to be candid, because you have given them a binary choice.
Similarly, questions such as “That was a great meeting, wasn’t it?” “People loved my speech, did you?” aren’t designed for feedback, but confirmation. In a legal context, this qualifies as “leading the witness.” Frontloading questions this way will not generate real feedback.
Try these “pulsing” questions on your team:
How did that go over?
What was my message?
What did you hear I was concerned about?
What was your takeaway from the meeting?
What is your understanding?
How could I have improved that?
What fell flat, if anything?
What were your top three takeaways?
What would you do differently?
Have I missed an important point?
3. Another Source of Feedback: Coaches
Having served as a coach, I do not need to sing the praises of coaching here (it could be perceived as a conflict of interest). Nevertheless, why do we value coaching in sports, yet tend to suspect its efficacy in business?
Many leaders who resist coaching do so because of a perceived stigma attached to having a coach, which incorrectly assumes that the client must be deficient in some way and doesn’t know it all. In reality, of course, no one knows it all (even Einstein would have benefited from coaching in mathematics!). Very few understand that a good coach can help accelerate performance—not merely by correcting errors but also, if not more, by building on skills and strengths. This works as much in the business world as in sports.
Some people fear that by using a coach, their achievements won’t be fully credited, or that somehow, they needed help because their leadership skills lacked something crucial.
If you have the opportunity to use a coach—a thinking partner—grab it immediately. View it as a rare opportunity.
You might say, “I can’t afford to hire a coach.” In that case, find a mentor or someone outside the organization willing to give you candid, tough feedback. If you think you know it all, you have much to learn.
Whatever you choose, at the end of the day, find a good feedback source. Again, I firmly believe getting a good coach works best, but you can generate feedback many other ways if you truly can’t invest in a coach.
It’s now time to look at the fuel for creating presence and influence: clear communication.
Recap
Part 5: Showing Up with Purpose
Connect with your people authentically.
Obse
rve and get feedback continually.
Be flexible as the environment changes.
Know your story and tell it well.
Be willing to probe, take risks, and adjust if necessary.
Ask open-ended questions.
Create common ground.
PART 6
COMMUNICATING WITH SIMPLICITY
To successfully communicate a message of any complexity in this digital age you must understand that audiences are swimming in excessive data. You must be kind to them and throw them a life preserver.
—Frank Pietrucha, author, Supercommunicator: Explaining the Complicated So Anyone Can Understand
26.
The Art of Communication
The art of communication is the language of leadership.
—James Humes, author
The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
—George Bernard Shaw, playwright
My client looked at me and said, “I sent them an email. Why didn’t they do what I asked them?” Yep: a bad case of “they are the problem.”
Blaming others for our own inadequacies happens a lot, especially in the business world. For example, if you send an email expecting some action in response, simply “checking the box” that you sent the email won’t get the results you want—unless you specifically make a request. You must take responsibility for not only checking items off your to-do list, but also making sure you communicate clearly.
Being clear brings powerful meaning to your message. Would you be inspired by something like this: “We need to ask ourselves how we can contribute to our country and society, instead of waiting around for the government to help and assist us”? Zzzzz. JFK had a much different delivery: “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” Direct and effective.
It might seem like a paradox, but simple communication allows us to express complex ideas more easily. It also is effective for motivating others as well as sharpening our focus and objectives, so people know what we want to achieve. In short, words do matter a great deal.
You have probably seen the iconic graphic for communication depicting a sender and receiver with a signal channel or line connecting them. The image usually also shows some “noise” on the line that blocks clear transmission of the signal. A communication breakdown!
Obviously, this applies to all sorts of communications—from phones to radio transmissions—as well as direct mouth-to-ear communication. It’s not enough to speak and be heard—we also need to speak with clarity and intent to avoid any unintended “noise” that distorts what we have to say.
Even though talking face-to-face isn’t perfect, it helps us avoid the many pitfalls that occur with other modes of communication. Memos, statements, and so on can work—especially when dealing with officials such as lawyers or accountants or keeping the stakeholders happy—but nothing works like face-to-face. Period.
Social media channels can be useful for sending out a consistent message, but they can’t replace the in-person, interactive conversations. Unfortunately, posts, tweets, and other forms of social media exchanges are passive, so we often don’t know how our communication landed.
We need to keep in mind the difference between “active” and “passive” communication, and the difference between simplicity and unnecessary complexity.
My mom had become part of an improvisational theater group that supported a mime (who shall remain nameless). He said his grandmother told him that he had only a limited amount of words in life, and that once he used them up he would have no more—and so he became a mime. Aside from the fact that he was full of BS, I liked the story. It was a reminder that we should always chose our messages with care and take the time to do so.
To communicate effectively, you first need to establish a connection. Most of us don’t take the time to do it or to do it well. Too often, we broadcast whatever comes to mind and then don’t even check to make sure the signal gets through.
The following lists show the different ways our communications can be received by others (it depends on the quality of our delivery) if we focus only on our message:
Positives:
They understood what you said/communicated (objective achieved).
Negatives
They might not understand.
They might not pay attention.
They interpreted the message differently.
They took offense to a word you used.
They didn’t like it.
They went home and ranted on Facebook.
They trolled you later.
They talked about you at their next therapy session.
Note: There is one positive outcome and a lot of negative potential outcomes. And yet we continue to talk/blog/post/email without paying attention to how we are being received.
In Frank Pietrucha’s stellar book Supercommunicator: Explaining the Complicated So Anyone Can Understand (AMACOM, 2014) he describes some guidelines worth repeating here:
Guidelines for Effective Communication
Put your main idea up front.
Write short sentences and short paragraphs.
Use active voice.
Use conventional words.
Be correct, credible, and complete.
Keep it brief.
Tips for effective verbal communication follow a similar pattern.
Most of all, as covered earlier in chapter 21, “Stand-Up Leadership,” regardless of the type of communication, you need to understand your audience. Choose words that resonate with them.
27.
The Tarzan Principle for Simple Communication
“Me No Like Big Words”
Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding?
—Philip Roth, author
Simple communication, unburdened by excess words and jargon, is much more powerful. Yet we often ignore that truth. Here are seven compelling reasons why we do so at our peril.
1. Focus on clarity. Like oil in an engine, clarity “lubricates” communication. Know what you want in clear simple terms and communicate as such. Remember, “less is more.” The likelihood that your message will get misconstrued increases the more you add to it—as happens when it goes through layers of staff. “I hear she asked us all for alignment” can become “I hear she wants to institute solitary confinement.” Monty Python captured the humor of the “telephone effect” in Life of Brian: “Blessed are the cheese makers and makers of all dairy products”—which started out as “Blessed are the peacemakers.”
2. Avoid trophy words. A colleague of mine once used the term “asymptotic” during a meeting. I found a way to get it inserted into his annual review, and it passed our leadership without question. I am positive no one knew what it meant, but no one was going to admit they didn’t know. But I asked.
3. Control your messaging. Like it or not, in the world of social media—for example, tweeting and texting—you have to keep it short and crisp. You control messaging by being concise. Think of it as “short is the new black.” But you still must choose your words carefully—especially when using fewer of them. Make every word count.
4. Simplify. How’s this for simplicity? “Evaluate the current environment with regards to the plethora of inputs that are being processed by your neuro-sensors, and thusly creating thoughts, which are generated in milliseconds transposed across your referent learning system to generate a response through the activation of words or activity as expressed by psycho-motor functionality, based on correct environmental conditions linked to your desired outcome.” Hard to follow and understand, eh? Much more effective to simply say, “Pay attention before speaking.”
5. Go one-on-one. Personalize as much as you can. Go
speak to the person. They won’t bite—usually.
6. Be authentic. Don’t hide behind clichéd phrases—they tend to depersonalize communication. Take, for example, the phrase “emotional capital.” Instead of telling your staff “The balance of our emotional capital has trended downward slightly this quarter,” you could say, “We’ve had a challenging quarter.” Some examples of other overused words: “key,” “alignment,” “integration,” “robust,” “outcomes.” More often than not, these can ring hollow when they obscure what you really want to say—whether intentional or not.
7. Stay consistent. Repeat the same (or similar) words when expressing the same message. Repetition helps people remember important words. Used wisely, they can act like a mantra that burrows into the unconscious. The advertising industry has honed this skill to perfection.
28.
Simplify Externals
You Can Handle the Truth
My whole premise has been, right from the beginning, that it would take me a lifetime to learn to explain myself as an artist. As you grow older, you learn what to do and what to leave out. You kind of simplify your work and get the same thing done with fewer strokes. It’s pretty interesting to me.
—Tony Bennett, singer
Not only does simplifying your communication get your point across more easily, but it helps simplify your life-simplifying is the only way to survive the barrage of stimuli and be effective.
Don’t fall into the trap of pretending you can handle it all. You can’t.
We all want to be heroes and show how well we can multitask; many leaders complicate their lives so much they become ineffective at everything.
As a business leader, you need to constantly ask, “What levers will drive my business forward?” To simplify, decide on three important issues instead of trying to make progress on twenty. Learning to prioritize takes practice and work, but once you master it, you will find yourself able to accomplish more with less effort.
Rogue Leadership Page 9