No one enjoys having difficult conversations, but as a leader you’ll have to have them. No way around it. As parents, siblings, friends, co-workers; we need to embrace having those difficult conversations instead of avoiding them.
Tag Archives: Communication
Strategy that sticks
How do you talk about your business’s strategy so that your employees get it?
Any strategic planning session eventually needs to deliver a robust strategy, one that anyone can understand and execute. The truth is this rarely happens, as most strategic plans end up in a binder somewhere, and confuse more than enlighten people.
What business leaders want to avoid at all costs is confusion, which leads to inaction. So, how do we solve this challenge?…
So what? Finding a hook for your idea is an innovation imperative
Innovative ideas, initiatives, products, culture transformations, have little chance to succeed if they aren’t enabled by smart communications. And it all starts with a simple and easily understood message.
I’m in the process (pre-production) of co-producing a film with a Director friend of mine. The idea for the film wasn’t mine, so one of the first things I asked him after I read the script was: what’s the hook?
That was at the end of October last year. To this day, that question remains unanswered. And as we’ve been casting for the last two weeks, most of the actors have asked us the same question: what’s the hook?…
Innovators must embrace conflict, not avoid it
in Innovation, Leadership
How do you change someone’s mind if you think you are right and they are wrong?
Ah yes, a situation us innovators find ourselves in all the time. Yesterday I tweeted a link to an article on Mind Hacks about the best way to win an argument. Basically, it comes down to explaining yourself:…
Your strategy should help tell a story
in Leadership, Strategy
A leader’s most important responsibility is identifying the biggest challenges to forward progress and devising a coherent approach to overcoming them. In contexts ranging from corporate direction to national security, strategy matters. Yet we have become so accustomed to strategy as exhortation that we hardly blink an eye when a leader spouts slogans and announces high-sounding goals, calling the mixture a “strategy.” – Richard Rumelt
Strategy, strategy, strategy. It matters. Yet, most of the time, we get it wrong. Why? Let’s start with the basics…
One of the problems with implementing a strategy, is nobody cares about it. And the reason nobody cares, is because nobody understands it. And the reason nobody understands it, is because it isn’t clearly articulated. And a clearly articulated statement or name such as “low-cost airline”, will do wonders to help communicate your strategy.…
3 Questions to help you take charge of change
in Leadership
This is a guest post from John Baldoni. John is an internationally recognized leadership consultant, coach, author and speaker. This excerpt is adapted from his newest book, The Leader’s Pocket Guide.
One reason we fear change is because we feel a loss of control. And while you cannot control the change process, you can control how you and your team react to it.
Assert your ownership. Doing so shifts the emphasis from something being done to you to something over which you have control. Consider these three questions to help you take charge:
- What do we do now? Understand that you have a choice; you can opt out and not accept the change. Of course you may feel that for financial reasons you cannot do this, but understand that, unless you have been sentenced to jail, you are free to decide what to do. Making decisions to stay for whatever reason means that you have made a decision. Likewise, if you decide to leave, that is your decision.
- What do we do next? Make your teammates aware of what you have decided to do. If you are staying in, you want to make certain your boss knows that you are still part of the team. If your disappointment is evident, as it might be with a loss of promotion, acknowledge it but do not dwell on the negativity. Reassure the boss that you are still in the game and want to be considered as a contributor. Such behavior will mark you as one who has a strong sense of self and can deal with disappointment.
- How can we make this work for us? Consider how you can turn the situation to your advantage. Look for ways to turn the change into new opportunities. Find ways to assert your can-do spirit. Be proactive. Look for ways to make a positive difference.
Owning the change process and making it work for you is critical to demonstrating resilience as well as an ability to move forward. It is very definitely a mark of leadership.
P.S. I highly recommend my readers to get Mr. Baldoni’s Leadership pocket book guide because it is full of useful to the point advice like this on a variety of leadership and management topics.
