CRA Inc

28 Jan 05 @ 11:27 am

Albright On Communication

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.

On “letting somebody else have your way”:

It was standard practice for you to have one-on-one conversations with fellow Cabinet members or ambassadors before important meetings. What’s the value of conducting these premeeting meetings?
You want to do as much as you can ahead of time. It’s part of the preparation for a meeting. It helped me find out who was where, who would be my ally in something. Sometimes [the goal was to get someone else] to present an idea that we had so that it wasn’t the United States saying this in a foreign negotiation.

You used this approach in the effort to replace Boutros-Ghali with Kofi Annan as Secretary General of the United Nations by urging various African nations to champion Annan as an alternative.
I call that “letting somebody else have your way.” It’s a very important thing. The other thing that is very important is that you can’t take credit for everything. You have to let somebody else get the kudos sometimes, and ultimately it gets back to you.

posted in category(s): Coaching Points