In CIO Magazine’s Albright On Communication, Information And Negotiation, “former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright shares her secrets for persuading people even tougher than Larry Ellison to do what you want.” For instance:
CIOs sometimes have to deliver bad news to their bosses or boards of directors that could threaten their careers. What’s the best way to deliver bad news effectively?
If you have a tough message to deliver, you have to deliver it straight. You have to make sure that the message, whatever it is, is clearly received. Otherwise, invariably, somebody will come back and say, “Well, that isn’t what I got out of what you said.” You need to make sure that there is no question about what it is you actually said.
How would you do that?
For the most part, you try to get the person in subsequent conversations to repeat what you said. Not by saying, “Repeat to me what I just told you,” but you go back to the subject to see if they fully understood. If they start acting like the relationship still goes on as it was before, then you know they didn’t understand.
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As a person interested (obsessed) with business, leadership, and human behavior, I admit to watching The Apprentice. It’s like having a free human behavior lab on call, and with the wonders of TiVo, I can go so far as to watch non-verbal micro-behaviors in slow motion (to test my ability to, say, detect deception).
Great fun … if you’re a bit odd, like me.
Regardless, last night it struck me that, especially in the early stages, the show is a gold mine of “what not to do” coaching points for emerging leaders. So without any promise of consistency or quality, here are my observations from last night. If you’re a new manager or director, take note.
The first set fall under a category I’ll call “Don’t Be A Todd”:
* Take Responsibility: Todd, the striking and perfectly-dressed (with one exception that I’ll highlight in a moment) sales manager was dismissed last night, with cause. His leadership was terrible in general, but in particular he refused to take immediate responsibility for the failures of his team. He violated the “buck stops here” rule, a cardinal rule of earning credibility and trust. (What’s worse, he actually went so far as to shift blame elsewhere, a death move if you ever need to work in teams or influence without authority.)
* Never Place Yourself Above Any Task Performed By Others: Todd refused to be trained on the core restaurant tasks as were his team. This not only made him appear elitist, when his team needed him on the line he couldn’t pitch in. Great managers earn respect by being better at line tasks than their crew. Great leaders never place themselves above any task the people beneath them have to perform. Todd blew both.
* If You’re Male, Know What Shoes To Wear: I was impressed by Todd’s dress until the last minute of the show, when I saw he was wearing brown shoes with his dark grey suit. Men: Grey, navy, or black suit … black shoes. Brown or earthy suit … brown shoes, and sometimes a blue suit if they’re dark and of high quality. Slate … can go both ways. With what can you wear cordovan? A navy suit if the shoes are well polished; otherwise earth tones, and never black or grey.
The other observations fall under a general category:
* Don’t Be Afraid To Reflect Your Principles: When everyone else was piling on Danny as the problem (and scapegoat), Kendra , when asked, laid responsibility at the feet of Todd. Her point: No matter how bad Danny might have been, Todd’s job is to lead someone like Danny, and he couldn’t do it. It wasn’t the popular thing to do at the moment, nor the most expedient in terms of her own survival, but it reflected her personal view on leadership. It was a principle-based comment, and because it wasn’t the popular view, it was noticed by Trump.
* Only Dress Like A Danny If You Want The Role Of A Danny: If you’ve not seen the show, Danny is the iconoclast of the group, with creative, artsy dress among the sea of his very corporate-looking competitors. Last night Trump asked the others if his dress was appropriate. They all said “no.” But it was a trick question: The answer is, “It is if you’re a Danny.” What do I mean? Danny is an exec for a marketing firm that uses the web to market client’s wares. And I guarantee you that not only are his clients un-phased by his dress, they expect it. They expect a guy who looks creative/geeky to walk through the door. If he didn’t his initial credibility would suffer. So: if you ARE a Danny, you should dress like a Danny. My answer to Trump’s question: “He is if you want him to lead your web/creative function, but not if you want him to lead anything else.” The flipside: If Danny aspires to something different, his dress is a limiting factor. That’s not fair, and it’s not noble, but it’s the way it works.
We’ve coached a lot of folks in how to communicate credibility through their nonverbal behavior. You can learn to read nonverbals just as well, and when you’re really good at it, it helps you become a mind reader of sorts.
I recently stumbled on a site that summarizes much of the available data: DataFace: Facial Expressions, Emotion Expressions, Nonverbal Communication. Read it before your next performance review, or, perhaps, your next poker game.
The New Yorker’s Battle Lessons examines organizational learning within the Army. Some elements are specific to the Army’s culture:
For efficiency of conversation, Army officers are tough to beat. Trained to convey critical information under stress, they enunciate like radio announcers, in complete, unhesitating sentences. Moreover, they tend to be good listeners, with a refreshing ability — and willingness — to get to the nub of a difficult issue. Ask an Army officer a painful question and he or she will answer it, provided it doesn’t involve secrets, with a kind of Boy Scout candor all but unknown in, say, the corporate or political realm.
Some are more universal:
I asked Saul what lessons the Army has learned in Iraq, and he said, “Not much, because lessons learned, in past tense, means you’ve modified behavior. Until you demonstrate changed behavior, you haven’t learned a lesson.”
Until you demonstrate changed behavior, you haven’t learned a lesson. The same can be said of communication in general: if you haven’t changed the audience’s behavior, have you communicated anything?
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Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point popularized economist Thomas Schelling’s work on social networks — with snappy terms like connectors, mavens, and salesmen.
His latest work, Blink, tackles the snap decisions we make every day. Fast Company’s The Accidental Guru shares an example:
The impetus for Blink started with Gladwell’s hair (as did his brief splash in the gossip pages when he got “a little too close to some candles” and it ignited during a recent literary event, according to the New York Post’s Page Six). For most of his adult life, he had worn it closely cropped, but several years ago decided to let it grow out into a woolly Afro. “The first thing that started happening was I started getting speeding tickets. . . . I wasn’t driving any faster than I was before, I was just getting pulled over way more.” Then there was the day Gladwell was walking around New York and cops surrounded him, mistaking him for a rape suspect. “I’m exactly the same person I was before,” recalls Gladwell, who’s half black (his mother, a therapist, is Jamaican). “But I just altered the way someone makes up very superficial, rapid judgments about me.” Rather than merely grouse — legitimately enough — about prejudice, Gladwell, who has the tendency to look in on his own life as a case study, was inspired to try to understand what happens beneath the surface of rapidly made decisions. “The idea that something that is extraordinarily harmful in society could be exactly the same in its form as something that’s incredibly useful is really interesting to me.”
