Practical Eloquence Blog

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Brevity and clarity are important for leadership communication, except for some caveats which I cover in this podcast.

Brevity

I will keep this section brief. The need for brevity applies equally to leaders as it does to followers. At any level, it’s good practice not to take any more of your listeners’ time than you need to get your message across, and besides being concise can make you sound more confident and sure of your message, which is important for any leader.

There is one area, though, in which you can and should violate the principle of brevity, and that is repetition. It may seem wasteful to repeat a message that has already been heard; repetition is rework, which implies that the product was not made right the first time.

If you’re asking for a decision or specific action, repetition is wasteful. But leadership communication is more general, such as communicating a vision or setting guidelines that people can follow over time, and that can’t realistically be done in just one shot.

For example, let’s assume you announce a new strategy that you want the whole company to follow. Some people in your audience may enthusiastically commit to it right then and there and will resolve to change how they work. But in real life, not everybody hears it; not everybody understands it; not everybody takes you seriously; not everybody buys into it; not everybody will remember it when they leave. So, if you said it and it did not have its full effect, what you said only once is waste unless you repeat it as often as it takes.

Repetition ensures the message gets through. Any parent knows that saying something once is almost never effective. Value doesn’t happen just because it’s uttered; it has to be heard, understood, agreed and remembered.

Repetition makes sure people take you seriously. I worked for many years with a large company whose leadership was fond of latching on wholeheartedly to the next big idea; they would announce it, incentivize for it, measure progress, and make it the most important thing in everyone’s attention. Everyone soon learned that most times they could smile and agree—and then just go back to what they were doing, because they knew they could ride it out until the next big “flavor of the month” idea came out.

Repetition can serve as a quality check. The higher you rise in an organization, the more layers your message may get filtered through. When you make enough copies of copies, the message can quickly degrade, like a game of telephone. But if you keep repeating the same thing over and over, that’s less likely to happen.

How much is enough—or too much? There are different viewpoints on that. Jack Welch says that a leader has to be relentless and boring. If you think you’ve said it enough times, you probably haven’t. Conventional wisdom says it takes at least seven exposures to an advertising message before in sinks in, but that may just be a message told by the advertising industry to sell more ad time. One formal study done showed that persuasion increased up to three repetitions, and then began to decrease at five or more repetitions.[1]

Add variety to your repetition. Don’t be afraid of repeating yourself, but be smart about it. Repeat the same message but vary the way you say it, or substitute different stories and examples; use different channels—that will help keep it fresh for you and for your followers.

Clarity

You may not always have to be brief, but you always have to be clear. For leadership communication, clarity is at least as important as adding value. That’s because as a leader, you create value through others, so your most important task is to give them the direction and motivation to act towards a common and worthwhile goal. You don’t have all the answers, but by being clear about the big things such as vision, values, priorities and goals, you can enable, empower and encourage others to find the answers.

As Jeffrey Pfeffer says, “A leader’s job is to reduce uncertainty, not create it.”[2] Uncertainty is wasteful. Only about one-half of workers say they know what’s expected of them at work. Imagine how much waste there is when someone does not know where to apply themselves half the time.

Uncertainty saps effort. As James Clear says, “Many people think they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity.” His assertion is backed up by studies in such diverse areas such as medical decisions, investments and buying choices which show that too much choice leads to less action.

Besides reducing waste and increasing effort, clarity can also expose disagreement with your message. This may sound wasteful, but it affords an opportunity to openly discuss differences and resolve them before they get out of hand. But that means that you have to pay close attention to LC Key #6: Candor and Directness.

Candor

Candor is fairly straightforward. In your own communication, you should strive to be as candid and transparent as possible, with one exception. If the situation is especially challenging, you should give your followers the respect of knowing they can handle the truth. But you are perfectly justified in hiding your own fears or lack of confidence. When things were looking bleak for Britain after the fall of France in June 1940, Churchill stiffened the British spine with his famous “we shall fight on the beaches” speech. What people then didn’t realize is that right after he finished the speech, he growled: “We shall hit them on the heads with broken bottles, because that’s bloody well all we’ve got.”

Candor works both ways; if you can dish it out, you have to be able to take it as well. That means you have to make it safe for others to speak up, even when it’s bad news. Fierce Inc. surveyed 1,400 executives and employees and found that while 99% said they valued honesty and openness, 70% did not believe their own organization lived up to that ideal. When people are afraid to speak their minds, problems get hidden, learning is suppressed, poor performance goes unchallenged, and mistrust breeds—all potential sources of waste.

Directness

Lean communication is biased toward directness, because direct speech is clear speech. Stating a point directly, in as few words as possible, is both efficient and clear, so it definitely reduces waste in communication. In general terms, you want to be as direct as possible.

But when speaking to individual subordinates, there are two good reasons for dialing back direct speech.  First, don’t forget that that’s a human being you’re talking to, and human beings are prey to those pesky things called feelings, especially when their personal status is challenged. If they refuse to listen to your message because they feel slighted, or worse, determine to do the opposite, whatever you’ve gained in efficiency, you’ve more than thrown away in terms of effectiveness.

That’s why I hate the phrase “brutal honesty”, which some leaders seem to brag about as a badge of toughness. When giving feedback, of course you have to be clear. But there’s a huge difference between clarity and brutal honesty. Clarity is about identifying and effectively communicating the gap between actual and desired performance. Brutality is about being savage, cruel, or inhuman, according to my dictionary. Is this what you want to be when giving feedback to others?

Second, as a coach you often get better results from followers when they come up with their own ideas and plans for improvement. So, rather than directly telling them what to do, you indirectly guide them to the right conclusions by asking questions.

In the final podcast of this series, we will examine the importance of dialogue in leadership communication.

[1] Cited in Robert H. Gass and John S. Seiter, Persuasion, Social Influence and Compliance Gaining, p. 200.

[2] Jeffrey Pfeffer, What Were They Thinking? p. 104.

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When you rise to a position of leadership, you need lean communication more than ever.

First, you communicate more than ever before. According to one study, leaders spend 80-85% of their time communicating,  and I suspect that a good part of the remaining 15% is spent thinking about what to say and how to say it.

Second, your position magnifies your power to produce both value and waste. Therefore you have a corresponding obligation to do it more effectively and efficiently than ever before—to pay even more attention to lean communication.

And the general purpose of that communication is still the same: to get things done through others by communicating useful information that they can use to drive effective action and valuable outcomes. As Steve Dakolios, CEO of Federal Packaging told me: a leader’s job is to convert potential energy into kinetic energy. Your communication crucially affects both the measure and direction of that energy.

I will use the next two podcasts to explain how lean communication is different for leaders. In this one, I will talk about delivering value, and use the next podcast to address brevity, clarity and dialogue.

Value

What are a leader’s responsibilities and opportunities when it comes to communicating value? To answer that question, let’s re-visit our value-test checklist:

When you communicate, you deliver value through one or more of the following:

• Improved business outcomes
• Improved personal outcomes
• Relationship is respected

So far, so good. But, what’s different about leadership communication?

Improved business outcomes

As a leader in a business organization, your first responsibility is to improved business outcomes. By definition, the leader is responsible for something bigger than a single person—bigger than any single follower and certainly bigger than yourself. You are the spokesperson and cheerleader for the big picture. If you don’t speak on behalf of the larger purpose and group goals, who will?

In lean terms, that means that you should explicitly explain the WIFU, or “What’s In It for Us?”. What’s the business reason for what you’re telling them? Don’t assume they already know; don’t assume they don’t need to know; don’t assume they don’t care, because they do. And if they don’t, it’s your job to give them reasons to care.

Some leaders play things close to the vest, and tell subordinates only what they need to know to do their jobs. Maybe they buy into the outdated ideas of scientific management, where Frederick Taylor said: “You’re not supposed to think. There are other people paid for thinking around here.” Maybe it’s because they’ve fallen into the ethos trap, and think that “because I said so” is good enough reason. Maybe they think it’s more efficient; because it saves time not having to explain their rationale.

But there are good reasons to share the big picture and provide the “why” in your communications. As I mentioned in the previous podcasts, complex and dynamic environments present novel situations to front-line employees faster than the leader can react, so the person on the spot can benefit from having a clear idea of how their decisions may affect the larger enterprise.

Second, they also feel more connected to the purpose of the enterprise, so they are more likely to put in discretionary effort. It may make the difference between a front-line employee telling a customer it’s not his job, versus taking the initiative to make sure the customer is happy.

Third, when they know your thinking, they may have other pieces of the puzzle which they are more likely to offer up if they know they’re important. As Steve Jobs said, “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”

Improved personal outcomes

Even though WIFU takes precedence, you may still have to appeal to personal self-interest, or WIFM.  It may seem unnecessary, because there is always at least an implication that they will do what you say if they know what’s good for them.

But there are three levels of agreement: compliance, commitment, and leadership. Compliance means that they go along with your idea. They may say yes, or agree not to block your efforts. At the next level, they take an emotional and personal interest in the idea and commit to seeing that the idea gets implemented become enthusiastically committed to it. This is the difference between following the letter of your request and promoting the spirit as well. At the highest level, they make the idea their own and take an active leadership role in promoting and extending it.

If simple compliance is all you’re after, it would be wasteful to say anything more, but if you want more, you need to address their self-interest, both extrinsic and intrinsic.

It’s easy to appeal to your listeners’ extrinsic self-interest; you’ve got plenty of sticks and carrots at your disposal. But appealing only to extrinsic motivators can actually create more waste in the long run, in the sense that you may be leaving a lot of effort, engagement, and creativity on the table if that’s all you rely on.

As a leader it makes much more sense to appeal to intrinsic motivation than pure extrinsic self-interest. It‘s the difference between having followers who are “coin-operated” vs those who are self-motivated. It’s the difference between transactional leadership and inspirational leadership. Leaders who inspire through their communication are about as lean as can be, because they create more value through motivating greater effort, and they greatly reduce the need to constantly keep communicating, checking and reminding people what they should be doing.

Relationship is respected

Business and personal outcomes are about results, and relationships are about people. Leaders can benefit from the proper balance between the two. According to a survey of over 60,000 employees, leaders who were primarily results-focused were rated as “great” 14% of the time; people-focused leaders 12% of the time; leaders who focused equally on both, 72% of the time! If that sounds obvious to you, reflect on the estimate by David Rock that only 1% of all leaders do this.[1]

Relationships based on mutual trust and respect create value in two ways. First, everyone feels happier and more engaged, and second, because that translates into better business performance in general. A study by Gallup reported that companies in the top quartile of engagement are 21% more profitable and 17% more productive than companies in the bottom quartile. (Of course, if you need studies to convince you to treat people well, you’ve probably already stopped reading by this point.)

Sharing information about the big picture and appealing to your followers’ self-interest show respect to your followers and enhance the relationship in and of themselves. But there are also so many ways to foster good relationships that it would take many more articles than this one. I just want to mention one very useful approach that is easy to remind yourself to do: try to always bring a social gift to every communication opportunity.

There are three social gifts that you can bring to every communication opportunity: appreciation, connection and elevation.

Appreciation: Make people feel important. You can do this easily by simply paying attention to them, soliciting their input, praising them sincerely and specifically, and giving generous credit for success.

Connection: Connect with people on a personal level and find things you have in common. Some companies, such as Southwest Airlines, make this feeling of “family” a powerful part of their culture.

Elevation: One thing about leadership is that you can’t not communicate. Even when you’re not saying anything, people are watching you closely and reading your mood. There is such a thing as emotional contagion, but it usually works in only one direction: from the more powerful to the less powerful. As Daniel Goleman reminds us: “Everyone watches the boss. People take their emotional cues from the top…even when leaders are not talking, they were watched more carefully than anyone in the group.”[2]

You have to take special care to project an upbeat, elevated attitude even when you don’t feel like it—especially when you don’t feel like it!

See also:

Lean Communication for Leaders Part 1: The Ethos Trap

Lean Communication for Leaders Part 2: Empathy Erosion

Lean Communication for Leaders Part 3: The Control Paradox

[1] Travis Bradberry, Results or People: Where Should a Leader Focus?, Forbes 12/23/16.

[2] Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, Annie McKee, Primal Leadership, p. 8.

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One of the hardest communication skills to master may be to know how to refrain communicating when necessary. In other words, knowing when to shut up.

Being a leader has never been easy, but in some ways it’s tougher than ever today because of the complexity and dynamism of our environment. When the task is simple, and you have a pretty good idea of what future conditions will be like, you can specify very clearly what you want people to do and expect that they’re not going to encounter many exceptions. If they do, they can ask for direction and you’ll have plenty of time to make the appropriate adjustments.

But when too many changes or unexpected events happen at once, that comfortable system can quickly break down—particularly when a more nimble competitor is behind some of the unexpected events.

In an uncertain environment, the first casualty is clarity. People are less sure of what to do, so the natural tendency for the leader is to step in and tell them. In other words, the reaction to uncertainty is additional detail: “when this happens, do this.” It’s meant to be helpful, but clarity and detail are not synonymous, nor is there a direct linear correlation between them. Sometimes additional detail helps, especially when it gives concrete direction, but too much detail can obscure meaning by overwhelming the person on the spot who is trying to figure out how to react to the novel situation; it can be hard to figure out what’s relevant at that particular moment. It may be an extreme example, but I’m reminded of the recent tragic picture of pilots rapidly thumbing through a loose-leaf manual as their 737 pitches up and down violently and seemingly randomly—and we all know how that scene ended.

As a leader, you value predictability. That’s what plans are for. You plot your moves, forecast their results, and communicate them to the people who have to execute.  But there is a lot of room between intentions and results. When you say do X because you expect Y will happen—but instead Z happens, or Q or K or some totally unexpected such letter, you feel a loss of control. When the situation is slippery, your impulse is to tighten your grip; you put in tighter controls.

But tighter controls require more metrics, which means more reporting, which means less work creating value, while at the same time sending a message to followers that you don’t trust them to use their own judgment, which stifles initiative, which causes you to impose even tighter and more stringent controls. Eventually the control system may require more attention and activity than the environment you’re supposed to be operating in. You become more internally focused, and activity becomes more important than output. In lean terms, more and more of the work you do does not contribute to value for the end customer, who doesn’t care about your policies, processes and KPIs. Eventually the system collapses under its own weight, or you get your clock cleaned by nimbler and more efficient competitors.

The control paradox is that you begin to focus on preventing waste and lose sight of creating value. It also means that reporting replaces dialogue as a means of communication; it makes you—not the end customer—the arbiter of what constitutes value, and thus violates the most important principle of lean.

The drive for control means well, because it’s meant to prevent waste, but reducing or preventing waste, while extremely important, is never the main reason for doing anything; creating value for a customer is.

How to avoid the control paradox

You may find it surprising to learn that the cure for the control paradox comes from an organization that most people don’t know for their flexibility: the military. But it does make sense: what other organization operates in such a chaotic and competitive environment than the military?

Comparisons between military and business operations are often way overdone, but in both fields, an organization attempts to achieve certain goals in a competitive environment. Businesses strive to increase their share value by achieving profit and growth objectives. Their plans, however don’t act on inert objects. They run up against the independent will of customers and competitors, not to mention suppliers, regulators, legislators, general public opinion, changing technologies and even nature itself in a world that is ever more tightly connected and changeable. All of these impact each other in innumerable feedback loops, creating complexity that makes it impossible to plan with precision.

Carl von Clausewitz, a Prussian military officer, introduced the concept of friction, his term for all the “uncertainties, errors, accidents, technical difficulties, the unforeseen and their effect on decisions, morale, and actions.” In other words, a general can plan in meticulous and brilliant detail how a campaign will go, but things will always deviate from the plan, and an organization must have the capacity to adapt to changed circumstances.

The 19^th century Prussian army, under the tutelage of Helmuth von Moltke, worked out an approach to communication to allow the organization to adapt and avoid the control paradox, and its methods have permeated military planning in the US today to address what writer Stephen Bungay[1] calls performance gaps, but which we can also see as sources of waste:

Knowledge gap: As a leader, you  do not have all the information you need to decide on the best course of action. Or you have too much information, much of which is simply noise.

Alignment gap: Your instructions may not be correctly understood or interpreted by lower levels, or they may not act on them as expected.

Effects gap: Even if everything is done as planned, it does not always have the intended effect, especially when competitors or customers don’t do what we want.

To deal with the knowledge gap, von Moltke said, “Do not command more than is necessary or plan beyond the circumstances you can foresee.” Rather than detailed plans and orders, the leadership communicates its strategic intent, that is what needs to be achieved and why. They set the direction, not the exact path, and let followers figure out the how.

Address the alignment gap by: “Communicat(ing) to every unit as much of the higher intent as is necessary to achieve the purpose.” Make sure that each level clearly understands the intent of two levels above. Thus, when subordinates have to make a quick decision in a new situation, they ask themselves: “What would my boss tell me to do if he knew what I know now?”

Finally, because the top can’t react immediately when actions don’t have the intended effects, “Everyone retains freedom of decision and action within bounds.”  The person on the spot is in the best position to decide what to do.

In other words, the paradox of control is that the only way to retain control is to give it up.

[1] See my previous post recommending his excellent book, The Art of Action.