3 Aug 07 @ 2:28 pm
Leaders Lost In Translation
I’m often asked to collect feedback for leaders. And a large part of my day is spent telling people things that others are unwilling to say (as you can imagine, some days are better than others). But there’s a critical moment in most of my conversations (and these are my better days) when, after hearing what people think of them, these leaders realize that their good intentions are often lost in translation.
In that moment, they start to realize how important the little things really are. And by paying more attention to how they say what they say, they’ll get better results. The CEO of a major Wall Street firm who was begrudgingly put through the feedback exercise recently described his enlightened reaction after hearing his own feedback, and I think it’s worth sharing:
“ …. The first thing that struck me is that leaders are defined by how they are perceived as much as, if not more than, by what they actually do. Public perception almost entirely depends upon getting people both inside and outside the organization to understand where you’re going and why. I became acutely aware of every leaders need to carefully modulate every personal interaction, in terms of not only the quality of the information being transmitted but how it is being perceived …”
posted in category(s): Miscellaneous
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