Surely you’ve noticed that most conference calls, video conferences, e-mail threads and virtually any other form of virtual communications pretty much stink. Why is that and what can we do about it? Dr. Nick Morgan, author of Can You Hear Me? has the answers.
Before we go any further, this is not a post about the 2016 presidential election. I have nothing to add
As you enter into countless live and virtual conversations this week, here’s a question to consider. Are you the firehose or the nozzle? Here’s a quick description of each and a few ways to tell the difference. To get the mental picture of a firehose, imagine the real thing hooked up to a fire hydrant on a summer day. The water is turned on full force and is just gushing everywhere and in no particular direction. There’s a lot of waste and, other than getting the street soaked, very little is being accomplished.
One of the things I love about my work is getting to meet and learn from some very talented top executives. That happened again recently when a senior vice president in a Fortune 500 client company stopped by for a lunch conversation with participants in our Next Level Leadership® development program. She was one of the clearest thinkers and communicators I’ve met recently. Her organization is responsible for billions of dollars in sales so, as you might imagine, she has a very full plate. Recognizing that her time and attention is a limited resource that she must deploy as effectively as possible, she’s come up with three productivity hacks that help her determine where she needs to focus. They’re simple, effective and can be applied by leaders at any level in any organization. Here they are:
There’s a famous quote that’s often attributed to Mark Twain but actually originated with the French mathematician and philosopher, Blaise Pascal – “I would have written you a shorter letter, but I didn’t have the time.” That Pascal was one smart guy. A full five hundred years before the information flood that all of us face today, he understood that brevity is important and that it takes work to be brief. If you want to learn more about why you should be brief and how to do it, check out a new book, “Brief: Make a Bigger Impact by Saying Less” by marketing expert Joe McCormack. (Audio)
One of the theories about what makes comedy funny is when the bit does such a great job of describing everyday reality that you laugh out loud in recognition. That’s what made Jerry Seinfeld a wealthy man and it’s what makes this video on the seventh circle of Hell known as a corporate conference call from comedy duo Tripp and Tyler so hellaciously funny.
In case you missed it, here’s a link to a great article by the Washington Post’s Alexandria Petri in which she describes how Hillary Clinton attempted to make a connection in a recent speech to the National Association of Automobile Dealers. She shared a story that since the last time she drove a car in 1996, the Secret Service hasn’t allowed her to get behind the wheel. The response, apparently, was confused crickets.
Not to get all Dickensian on you but it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. That was the case at a conference I attended recently. To accommodate the schedules of two high powered CEOs who agreed to speak during the lunch session, the meeting organizers scheduled two keynote addresses during the meal. That’s a risky agenda move but one that could work if both speakers rock the house. Unfortunately that was not the case.
Well, here we are again. This week’s Federal government shutdown is the latest in a series of sad and maddening examples of a leadership class that’s disconnected from the people it’s supposed to lead and serve. There are plenty of commentators from across the spectrum who are offering their opinions on the issues and the politics behind the shutdown so I won’t go into that here. That’s not the purpose of this blog anyway. Instead, I want to call out something I’ve noticed in the story that can be both a pitfall for leaders and a warning sign for the people they lead. It’s the go to word or catch phrase that a leader uses when they don’t want to say what’s really going on. It’s known as the verbal tell.
This weekend, President Obama will host the new president of China, Xi Jinping, for two days at a resort called Sunnyvale in Rancho Mirage, California. As reported in the New York Times and other outlets, the two leaders will spend a lot of time in relaxed and unscripted conversations with the goal of getting to know each other better.
While there are risks involved in such an approach, they seem to be outweighed by the potential rewards of the leaders of the world’s two biggest superpowers better understanding each other. Their approach holds a lesson for leaders in all walks of life who, like Obama and Xi, find themselves simultaneously collaborating and competing with their peers.
Does the thought of a brief conversation with the top executive in your organization stir up the butterflies in your stomach? If it does, you’re not alone. It’s basically a form of corporate stage fright that lots of people experience.
A big part of my job as a coach is delivering colleague feedback summaries to my executive coaching clients. Sometimes the feedback is hard for them to hear. I have sympathy for them. I was once a corporate executive and, in one particular case, got some blistering 360 feedback that had me licking my wounds for a month or two before I finally gathered up the gumption to act on it.
