Thought leadership

I’m sensing an increasing premium on thought leadership at the moment. We’re living at a time of significant change. A time of opportunity surely, but also danger.

Anything that supports and develops better and more creative thinking should be encouraged. There’s a lot more value in thinking differently at the moment. There’s a lot more value in thinking for ourselves. That’s why I love Twitter as a channel for connecting with a wider perspective on what’s happening in the world. Individual ‘tweets’ may be low value, but hearing how others are thinking makes you think differently. Valuable thoughts emerge from the diverse and potent mix of stimulating ideas. It can’t be premeditated though! You just need to let it happen.

In this spirit, here is an intriguing conversation with  Robert Sapolsky (a Stanford neurobiologist) about Toxo!

http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge307.html

It probably has very little to do you’re day job. Unless you’re a neurobiologist!

But I hope it makes you go “wow”. I hope it makes you think about how little we know. I hope it creates an openness to different ideas. I hope it stimulates a curiosity to learn more. I hope it helps you to be a stronger thought leader. And I hope you find it stimulating enough to subscribe to edge.com.

Influence Strategies

One of the most powerful aspects of leadership is the ability to influence others. It is also one of it’s most illusive.

It may be useful to think first about your Influence Strategy.

Here are four possible Influence Strategies

1. The Direct Strategy – used when the relationship is strong, your proposal is within the range of acceptable options and opposing proposals are relatively weak.  Build a strong rational case with the supporting evidence needed to convince your audience. Focus on the benefits of your proposal in relation to your audience’s values.
2. The Indirect Strategy – used when other options may be better positioned than your proposal. Put your specific proposal aside and focus on changing the ground rules for discussion. Change the agenda. If the agenda is rational, make it emotional or political. If the agenda is Process Improvement, make it Customer or another agenda that makes your proposal a stronger option.
3. The Divide & Conquer Strategy – used when parts of your proposal are acceptable and others aren’t. Focus on convincing your audience about those aspects that are likely to be accepted. Build from agreement and a stronger track record. Alternatively, focus on those parts of your audience who can be convinced.
4. The Hold Strategy – used when the timing of your proposal isn’t good. Stop influencing and focus on building a relationship of mutual understanding. The right proposal and timing will emerge.

I’ve always felt that most mistakes start at the beginning. Choosing the right Influence Strategy at the start –  can save time, money and reputations later on.

 

 

Frames

Been thinking a little about influence without advocacy.

I was reminded of an old story of a long ago US presidential campaign. I think it was Roosevelt. The story goes that millions of campaign posters were printed with Roosevelt’s photo. Unfortunately no-one had obtained permission from the photographer. Instead of seeking permission and negotiating a fee with the photographer. Someone suggested approaching the photographer with an opportunity to have his photo on millions of campaign posters. How much would the photographer pay? They accepted his first offer!

I’m not commenting on the ethics!  But it’s interesting how reframing the problem resulted in a significantly different outcome. The frame influenced the choice that was made. Different frames, different choices

There are two frames worth thinking about:

• buy or sell eg. Roosevelt story
• life or death (positive or negative)

eg. Tversky and Kahneman  (1981) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_effect_(psychology)

Others might be:

• simple or complex
• quality or quantity
• vision or execution
• individual or group
• change or status-quo

More soon…

Influence without Advocacy

I had a boss once who was a master of making you think it was your idea.

George was able to create the right  context. To get you thinking. To wait to recognise behaviours and conversations that seemed to be heading in the direction he wanted. He would ask great questions, which although leading didn’t appear to be driven by his agenda. He’d tell stories and leave them hanging, without explaining. He’d let others join the dots. But would take care in where the dots were. He built great relationships and others admired and respected him.

He didn’t lead with his position and agenda. When others would have. He could influence without advocating a position or agenda. He had them, but didn’t advocate them. He let others arrive at his conclusions. They were always their positions and their agendas. Without obvious positions and agenda, he was irresistable!

George made  subtlety work. With great questions and illuminating stories.

I’ve seen examples recently where well-meaning and genuine advocacy has polarised stakeholders.

Is advocacy as an influencing tool losing its effectiveness? Is it time for subtlety?

Concrete specificity

For a quick start like me, building sustainable momentum is a bit of a challenge.

Earlier in my career, one of my bosses used to drive me crazy with her decision making. She was slow. She seemed to take an excessive time to come to a decision. Sometimes up to 20-40 minutes! That’s not long, but it was to me. I’d make an in-principle decision very quickly. Maybe in 2 minutes. She would ask question after question and I’d get frustrated. We would come to the same conclusion mostly. But the real difference came  when taking action. She was ready to start, I wasn’t.

The documentary I’m planning to film proves the point. I’ve enrolled people but struggled with action and momentum. I wasn’t specific enough about what I wanted to say. So taking action was hard. Finding the right people was hard. I’ve had to go back to the story I want to tell, and get a lot clearer about it. Make it a lot more specific. I’ve now done this by writing a high-level script. I’m ready to re-engage.

It seems one of the challenges of leadership is crafting the right level of specificity into a meaningful mission and communication. Too little and it’s difficult to take action. Too much and people don’t engage. But what is the right amount of specificity?

I enjoyed reading Chip and Dan Heath’s “Made to Stick” last year. It’s worth reading if you haven’t already. One of their concepts is that of ‘concreteness’. Language by nature is abstract, but life isn’t. Their suggestion is to avoid expertise language and talk about specific people doing specific things. That make’s your message concrete. I think that’s a useful idea for leaders as communicators.

Enrolling others

The first parts in my leadership framework are – knowing self and creating relevance. Both allow us to enrol others – the third part.

Woody Allen said “80% of success is showing up”. To succeed as leaders we need to have enough people show up. But not just in the sense of physically showing up. The work of change needs energy, so people need to show up completely. To bring all of themselves to the task at hand.

Goffey and Jones in their “Why would anyone want to be lead by You” book, talk about communicating with care. And, it takes care to totally engage and enrol others. There are some useful tools that help:

• Sensing the context of the situation so that the meaning that emerges from your communication, is the meaning you intend.
• Give consideration to the objective of your communication.
• Developing appropriate messages.
• Using story telling to subtly influence others.
• Using some theatre to make the communication more impactful.

It’s doesn’t matter how insightful our sense of self, or our ability to create relevance. If we can’t enrol others, we are not leading.

Caring less

Confession time.

A week ago I wrote about the challenge of communicating so people “get me”. So that people get my meaning, not just hear what I’m saying. Of course, it’s easier when I’m clear about what I really mean in the first place.  And getting clear for me, is often about interacting with others. Meaning has a way of evolving through interaction over time.

But, I have to confess that I don’t just want people to “get me”.

I want people to “agree with me”!  And that’s a big problem. 

As I grow older, I think I’m only just learning to care less about the outcome of my communication. And just focus on what I mean. And how I can communicate that.

If I care less about the outcome, I’m more open to exploring my meaning when others have different points of view.  I get clearer on what I mean, and hopefully others do too!

Amen.

Getting me!

It is easy to say things, isn’t it.

But do people really get it? Or do they just hear what I’m saying?

Alfred Korzybski used to say – the map is not the territory. He meant an abstraction derived from something is not the thing itself. Our thinking and ideas are the territory of communication. But the communication itself is only a map.

We want people to get the territory, but we give them a map. And they’ll holding it upside down!

The first step in helping others to get our territory is to get it ourself.

If I want them to get me, I need get me.

Are you getting me?

The group goes west

I was involved in a facilitation recently. There was a point in the facilitation where it was obvious the facilitator had a clear direction.  The group wanted to go in a different direction. It wanted to go west and the facilitator wanted to go east. The facilitator pushed and group pushed back. The facilitator conceded. We went west. In fact we went so far west, we ended up east!

It was a reminder of the power of going with the flow. But staying aware of the ultimate objective. A great outcome was achieved. Albeit by taking a different path. Well done and thanks Barbara.

Whether facilitating, influencing or leading – start with the direction your audience wants to go. It’s probably easier and you can still get a great outcome.

assuming they’re remember

I was running late today to catch a bus. In the front of my mind was how little time I had left myself to get where I needed to be. As I rounded the corner, the bus sailed past. I knew I had 100 metres to sprint to get to that bus-stop. And I hoped that there were enough people waiting so that the bus would still be there when I got there. I was in luck. I’d got my timing perfect. For someone in a hurry, I’d lost no time waiting for a bus!

Unfortunately while timing was perfect, there was another criteria that was just as important – destination! That’s right, I got on the wrong bus. Now, I know destination is important. I know buses at that bus-stop take different routes. But, it wasn’t front of mind when I made the decision to get on.

I’ve talked earlier about the dangers of assumption when it comes to communication. It’s dangerous to assume others think like me. It’s dangerous to assume others have the same values/motivations to me. It’s dangerous to assume that others know what I know. It’s dangerous to assume others will react how I expect them to react. It’s dangerous to assume others will draw the same meaning/conclusion as I do. A useful discipline is to always test our assumptions. Don’t assume, find out.

But here’s another dangerous assumption. It’s dangerous to assume that others will remember what they already know! When leading or seeking to influence others don’t ignore what your audience already knows. They may be forgetting it’s relevance to this specific situation. Don’t assume they’ll remember, remind them. You may need to be explicit. Not because they don’t know it. But because you want it at the front of their mind when you’re communicating. Particularly if it’s important to your objective and message. Don’t assume they’ll remember. They may get on the wrong bus!