Sometimes I am just amazed by
what I hear leaders say. Sometimes client will share with me an interaction and
I am just incredulous that a grown-up person actually said that in their outside
voice. I once heard that a leader’s words weigh a thousand pounds which
has me thinking out loud that we need to make sure our words are leveraging
people up and not weighing them down!
Let’s face it, whether you
like it or not or whether you want to believe it or not, when you are in a leadership
role, your words simply carry more weight. Our words and other communications
have more influence and are amplified thus the whole premise of my theme of
Leading Out Loud! We need to understand that often our teams have a difficult time
distinguishing between a mandate or just a suggestion. This is why Jim Collins
in his book Good to Great, encourages us to specifically state what is a
“soft opinion” or a “hard statement”. Very often a leader may think they are
just thinking out loud or brainstorming an idea all of sudden find their teams
scrambling to implement an idea that was originally meant to be just an idle
thought.
The simple fact is that leaders
who are effective are so because they effective communicators – there is just
now way to divorce the two. They communicate to their teams in both written and
verbal formats in a way that allows their teams to not dread an email or voicemails
from you. Crazy as it sounds, they actually look forward to interacting
with you! There are thousands of books, articles, podcasts, etc. focused on
executive communication but allow me to provide 3 simple rules of thumb:
KEEP IT CLEAN – now
I am in no way advocating a “thought police” mentality but you have to admit
that modern vernacular has gotten a bit casual these days. I believe that teams
respect leaders who have the self-control and emotional maturity to not resort
to four-letter words when things get tense, or they are frustrated. Further,
such discipline can go a long way to insure and model appropriate team
interactions so that there is never a question of harassment or bullying.
Besides, you’re not twelve anymore. I think it is time for our words to evolve
out of highschool.
KEEP IT NEUTRAL –
this does not mean that you cannot have an opinion about work related matters.
In fact, as a leader you should have some definitive thoughts about vision,
strategy, and execution. When it comes to very personal issues such as religion
or politics, however, this is a domain where you need to tread very carefully. These
areas are very personal to individuals since they reflect their core values. As
a leader you need to respect that and ensure team members respect their peers. We
need to make sure that no one on a team is marginalized for their beliefs. All forms
of diversity are important including the diversity of beliefs and
the pluralism of ideas.
KEEP IT POSITIVE – as Kouzes
and Posner share in their seminal work, The Leadership Challenge, one of
the most important jobs of a leader is to create hope. There is
nothing worse than having a leader who is constantly critical. They may think
that is an effective strategy, but it really has just the opposite effect of discouraging
team members from doing their best work because they nothing they do will ever
be good enough. Granted, if a team member’s performance is suffering you need
to address that, but you also need to make sure you are not the cause of it! Even
on the organizational level, it is vital that leaders remain hopeful especially
when challenges are mounting. It may not seem like much, but time and time
again one of the key elements of victory or defeat is a hopeful and positive attitude.
Hope can truly be an “odds beater”!
Even in today’s faster than light
world of digital communications, words still matter. In fact, I would
propose that they matter even more since now you can never take them back due
to the fact they are stored indefinitely and shared instantaneously. How many
times how you read that a celebrity or politician had to “walk back” a
statement with a completely disingenuous “this was taken out of context” rationalization?
The point is as leaders, our
words carry weight. Every moment of every day we therefore have a choice. We
can intentionally use our words to weigh people down OR we can use them
to leverage people up. In fact, I would go so far to say that if we are not
doing one, we are doing the other because there is simply no such thing as a neutral
interaction! I know that many of you have hearts of gold and you are leading
for all the right reasons, now just make sure your words are too!
As always if I can help you and
the people you associate with Get Better, Be Ready and LEAD OUT LOUD, I invite
you to contact me.
Yours in leadership,
Bill Faulkner
Independent Coach, Speaker,
and Trainer with the John Maxwell Team TM
Email
= bill@outloudinc.com
For more information on the
John Maxwell Team, please visit
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