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The traditional communication approach follows this sequence:
Define the problem ► Analyze it ►Recommend a solution
This approach appeals to reason and has been a revered intellectual tradition in organizations since the ancient Greeks. It works well when the aim is to pass on information to people who want to hear it, or who are obliged to comply and follow without question.
But if your aim is to get people to change their behavior and act in some fundamentally new ways with sustained energy and enthusiasm, old-school communication has two flaws:
1. It doesn’t work.
2. It often makes the situation worse (negative impact).
People who disagree with you or have other ideas and habits won’t respond well to your list of reasons to change. In fact, lecturing them on your beliefs will often lead to greater entrenchment in their long-held approaches and behaviors.
Confirmation Biases
A significant body of research shows that asking people to change often drives them more deeply into opposition. In study after study, people display a phenomenon called confirmation bias.
Confirmation bias is a tendency to search for or interpret new information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions and to irrationally avoid information and interpretations that contradict existing beliefs. All of this happens instantaneously in the part of the brain that’s responsible for emotional reactions.
This explains why traditional persuasion techniques fail, especially when delivered too early in a presentation. You risk speaking to a skeptical, cynical and/or hostile audience whose confirmation bias has been activated.
Effective Leadership Language
How can the language you use facilitate enthusiastic, energetic implementation? What does it take to transmit bold new ideas to people who don’t want to hear them?
· Generate enduring enthusiasm for a common cause
· Present innovative solutions to solve significant problems
· Catalyze shifts in people’s values and ideologies
· Demonstrate a willingness to sacrifice personal interests for the greater good
· Help others get through crisis moments
· Inspire people to want to change, creating a positive energy that sustains the change
· Generate followers who will ultimately become leaders
The what of transformational leadership is reasonably clear. It’s the how that’s usually obscure.
ð How do leaders communicate complex ideas and spark others into enduringly enthusiastic action?
ð What words do they use to inspire others to become new leaders?
ð Why are some leaders able to accomplish the feat while others fail miserably?
Stephen Denning, a senior scholar at the University of Maryland’s Burns Academy of Leadership, makes the case for transformational communications in his book The Secret Language of Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2007). More than anything, it’s what leaders say — and the way they say it — that generates sustained energy and exponential results.
How do you lead change?
Many experts proclaim that leadership is solely an issue of inner conviction: You must find the leader deep within yourself.
Other experts encourage you to:
· Become the person others will want to follow
· Increase your self-awareness, self-regulation and authenticity
· Become emotionally and socially intelligent
· Visualize to materialize
· Be true to yourself, and change will happen
If leaders’ own inner commitment to change is to have any effect at all, they must communicate it to those they aspire to lead. Leaders’ actions speak louder than their words, but in the short run, it’s what leaders say — or don’t say — that has an impact.
The right words can create:
· A galvanizing effect
· Enthusiasm
· Energy
· Momentum
· Sustainable motivation
The wrong words, or even words said in the wrong sequence, can undermine your best intentions and plans, killing an initiative on the spot.
Toxic Financial Institutions
Since the onset of the financial crisis ten months ago, the federal government has burrowed its way deep into the workings of American capitalism which has created many unintended consequences. Tucked away on banks' books, a familiar problem remains: bad loans and the other toxic assets that plagued the markets for so long. That's terrible news for the economy.
A House of Cards; Credit Cards, that is
The big fear, say analysts, is a repeat of last summer when Lehman Brothers failed and the bad assets tumbled in value as the banks burned through their newly raised capital. With bank's capital depleted, the government had to come to the rescue. That problem hasn't changed.
By the end of 2008, households were on the hook for $13.8 trillion in debt (they owed roughly 130% of disposable income)--nearly matching the $14.3 trillion output of the entire U.S. economy, not adjusted for inflation, that year. Households are now shedding debt; they're just not doing it very quickly. "Without stronger financial underpinnings, growth will likely be narrowly based and not dynamic, and deflationary undercurrents will persist," Citigroup economist Robert DiClemente recently wrote.
"You and I do what many dream of, all their lives."
John G. Agno, Editor, mailto:johnagno@... ...or... Join me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/johnagno
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