Chapter 5

Five Critical Communication Skills for Leaders of the Future

Dianna Booher

In This Chapter

• How communication via social networking media can be useful for decision making.
• The importance of listening to a diverse constituency.
• How to focus on and shape simple, crystal-clear messages.
• Characteristics of persuasive communication.

 

Communication is the soul of leadership: analysis and solid decisions translated into clear messages that influence people to act and feel good about their performance” (Booher 1994). This is truer today than it was 15 years ago when I first published this statement. And it will be truer 15 years from now than it is today. Why? Governments cannot lead. Technology cannot lead. Strategy cannot lead. Only people put all these things in motion through their communication. Leaders drive action with their lives and their lips: clear, focused, persuasive, relevant, and memorable messages.

Tracking Communication Technology

Emphasizing the importance of the human dimension of communication does not mean that technology will grow less important. On the contrary. Not many years ago—before Blackberrys, Palm Treos, and iPhones—a CEO friend of mine said smugly, “I don’t do email. My assistant handles all that.” Today, some executives exhibit the same attitude about social networking media: “I don’t Tweet. Our marketing people do that.” But leaders of the future really must understand the new communication technology and how useful it can be for their decision making, not just sit and watch the tweets go by.

For example, take Twitter. Let’s say an organization wants to find out what consumers think about its new product, service, or policy. A search function on Twitter lets users track tweets mentioning their products or services, then analyze them to spot trends and changes in consumer opinions. This information can help executives make more accurate decisions about whether to increase inventories, put particular items on sale to dump product, abandon an unpopular policy, or even raise pricing on a service that customers currently consider a bargain.

Huaxia Rui, Andrew Whinston, and Elizabeth Winkler (2009), all at the Center for Research in Electronic Commerce at the University of Texas at Austin, have built a model to conduct such research using Twitter. To test their model, they conducted a study to predict box office receipts on given dates for three movies that premiered on the same day. Because Twitter returns only the most recent 1,500 tweets for each keyword-search query, they knew they could miss a sudden surge. To prevent that from happening, they gathered the data on 20 servers running at different times of the day to collect the tweets and then deposit them in one central database.

With the advanced-search function, they analyzed tweets for positive or negative comments (emoticons to represent sad or smiley faces and other positive, negative, or neutral words). The results? Two days before the movies opened, they gathered data. The tweet chatter was low about two of the movies, corresponding to ticket sales on opening day of $1.28 million and $7.13 million, respectively. For the third movie, the tweet chatter was 10 times as heavy as for the other two, and the box office receipts more than doubled, totaling $16.7 million.

The research held true for staying power. For the first two movies, sales peaked on the opening weekend and sharply declined at a rate of 50 percent each week after their release. For one of these first two movies, an analysis of the tweets showed that the comments were mostly neutral. And overall sales proved to be mediocre. The second movie performed slightly better; most tweets after its release also proved to be neutral, but there were decidedly more positive and negative tweets than with the first movie.

But the third movie again had more staying power. Word-of-mouth tweet buzz kept moviegoers interested for a longer time than with the other two movies opening on the same day.

So what does all this have to do with leaders who don’t go to the movies? It’s about the medium: You need to understand the capabilities of the communication media at your disposal so you can make them work for you. Here’s a quick, three-step strategy until you have time to develop your own:

• Listen to customers on social networking media websites.
• Spot the shifts.
• Tee off the trends.

Let’s look briefly at each step.

Listen to Customers on Social Networking Media Websites

Users post frequently on social networking media websites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and blogs. They express their likes and dislikes about products, services, and policies and what they want to see as improvements for next-generation products. They offer their complaints about the competition—your inroad to new opportunities!—and their concerns about the industry.

Spot the Shifts

As a leader, your goal in tuning in to the social networking media chatter is not necessarily to change all negative opinions but to watch for trends, hot buttons, and shifts in opinion. If you’ve changed what you thought was an unpopular policy and customers are still complaining, consider that issue a red-herring concern—not the real problem. If you’re working on improving customer service and you notice fewer and fewer negative comments, then that chatter confirms your success. If you launch a new service and notice a flood of negative posts, then you know you need to fix a problem quickly before it wreaks havoc with your stock prices or sends your customers to the competition.

Tee Off the Trends

On its home page, Twitter has a “trending topics” feature to show the 10 most discussed issues. Granted, these could be the latest pop star’s paternity suit or a new peanut allergy. But the list is worth monitoring for topics that may be relevant to your industry or organization. Whether there’s an opportunity or a crisis, you as a leader can react immediately.

Those who understand today’s communication technology earn the right to lead others in analysis and decision making for the future.

Listening to All Constituencies, Not Just the Louder Voice

In the next 20 years, you can expect the organization you lead to grow more, not less, diverse. And the higher you climb in your organization, the harder it will be for you to hear the truth. The reasons for this situation will be understandable:

• Leaders typically think they’ve already heard it all.
• They have already heard much of it.
• Some of what they’ve heard has changed—but nobody thought to tell them and they didn’t think to ask.
• People fear reprisal for giving bad news.
• People fear giving negative information that may imply the leader shares responsibility for a bad situation.
• People withhold bad news about their own mistakes, bad judgment, and poor performance until they have time to “correct the situation” before reporting.
• Listening takes time, and leaders are busy people.

Whatever the reasons, the result can be deadly. The challenge of the future will be to continue to listen to all constituencies for their information, insights, and contributions— the engaged worker, the disengaged worker, all four generations in the workforce, and the global community. The second, closely related challenge will be to listen to what they’re not saying as well as what they’re saying.

Not listening before acting can be as disastrous as pulling out into traffic on a major freeway without checking the rearview mirror. Not only is listening important to leaders as decision makers, but it’s also important for personal credibility. Voltaire said, “The shortest route to a person’s heart is the ear.” Leaders earn followers one by one, as they earn trust and gain buy-in.

Ask citizens why they plan to vote for a particular political candidate, and overwhelmingly they’ll say, “I feel that he is listening to the American people” or “I believe that she reflects my values and opinions.” Nothing gets someone’s attention like listening to them.

As technology tends to isolate people from personal contact with each other, the leader who can still connect warmly one on one has an edge. The best leaders listen as though they care.

Acknowledge that you hear what others communicate to you—both verbally and nonverbally. Rather than interrupting or telling your own story, communicate concern through your words and body language: good eye contact, appropriate facial expression, focused posture. Listening also involves acknowledging what someone says:

• “I certainly understand where you’re coming from on that issue.”
• “That’s a big step you’re taking.”
• “That’s a risky move—you must have second thoughts at times.”
• “You must have felt proud of that accomplishment.”

And it involves probing, clarifying, or confirming with care: n “So tell me your next step.”

• “When do you think that you’ll . . . ?”
• “What do you think caused her to do X?”
• “Why do you think he set that policy?”
• “So you feel that you really made the best decision under the circumstances?”
• “So what would you like to see happen in the next few years here?”
• “In what ways do you think a mentor would help prepare you for promotion?”
• “What kind of outcomes do you think would be in your best interest in a situation like that?”

However, these are not empathic comments—no matter how many times you’ve heard them around the water cooler:

• “It could be worse. We could be announcing a layoff.”
• “Looks like you’ll just have to tough it out.”
• “You think you’ve got it bad—you should hear what we went through last year in my area.”
• “This may be a blessing in disguise.”

Listening means focusing on others with sincere, compassionate interest—not just politely waiting your turn to talk.

Focusing On and Shaping a Single, Simple Message

Every year more noise—more information, more advertising, more videos, more statistics, more opinions, more surveys, more blogs, more ezines—pollutes the airwaves and competes for the attention of your employees, your customers, and your strategic partners. And the more noise, the more likely people will be to tune out. Thus, your challenge for the future: Cut the clutter clamoring for their attention and keep them tuned in.

My most frequently retweeted message ever posted is this: “If you can’t write your message in a sentence, you can’t say it in an hour.” Unfortunately, this must resonate with many meeting attendees sitting in conference rooms, befuddled and bemused by ramblers.

Executives often call our office to give a quick briefing about a senior manager they’re sending for coaching: “He’s very technically competent—in fact, brilliant. But when speaking to clients or presenting information in a board meeting, he gets far too detailed. And with questions, he can easily get sidetracked. He just has so much information, and it’s difficult for him to stay focused on the key points that we need to drive home to the audience.” So I listen to the executive vice president’s briefing as if it’s the first time I’ve heard such a comment.

Then the senior manager arrives for coaching. He delivers the presentation to me, and I discover his boss’s assessment to be true. So we start to work to reshape the message.

“What is it that you really want to say to these people?” I ask.

The manager begins to stumble, sputter, and stutter. Looking guilty, he flips through the slides. “Way too many, huh?”

I nod.

“My XYZ supervisor sent these six slides to me from his deck. And my team lead pulled these three slides from her presentation last week. Then John added these four slides from the presentation he gave in his standard briefing.” He begins to see the problem. “So I guess I have too much information here, right?”

I nod. “So what’s your real purpose and point? Today. For this audience? What’s their interest in all the information you just told me? What do you want them to know, believe, buy, consider, approve, buy into, do about all this?”

He finally gives me an awkward sentence or two. We reshape it to make it a simple, single, complete message. He nods.

It’s at about this point that a big grin spreads across his face, and I hear some version of this comment: “You know, I demand this from my own people all the time. When they burst into my office and ramble all over the place, I cut them off. I demand that they cut to the chase. But for some reason, I don’t seem to be able to do it myself.”

Hmmm.

In any communication—whether a speech, email, report, meeting, cafeteria poster, or trade show hospitality suite—identify your purpose: to inform, persuade, inspire, coach, commend, warn, entertain, introduce, address concerns, or answer questions.

The ability to cut through the extraneous details to the core message, problem, solution, situation, or issue is a critical leadership skill. Say it in a sentence so it’s crystal clear to all. Focus and prioritize. Make that summary your road map for the remainder of your message.

Make Your Facts Tell a Story

Have you ever researched a “fact” on the Internet and then found contradictory data? The fact is that “facts” can be false, wrong, misleading, or misinterpreted—purposefully or accidentally. According to Mark Twain, writing in his autobiography, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Even if a statement or “fact” happens to be correct, it doesn’t always double as a reason. Facts are just facts, until you interpret them as reasons “for” or “against” something. Track facts, keep score, call a winner.

The only thing worse than stacking your speech, slides, emails, or reports with fact after fact after fact is not shaping them to tell your story. What story do your facts tell? What trail do the facts leave?

Tell how your division exploded with the introduction of the new widget, and your head count climbed from three to 68 engineers in the first two years in business. Then tell how you grew lax in your quality control. Tell about your reject rates. Show how the customer satisfaction numbers plummeted. Show how orders started dropping off as fast as they were logged onto the computer screen. Then circle back to the layoff of 58 engineers three years later. Then out of the ashes came. . . . Well, you get the picture. . . . Drama. Dialogue. Climax. Denouement.

Set the scene at the trade show. How many competitors were there? How many attendees? Of those, how many did your booth attract? Why? What was the attraction—or nonattraction? What did the competitor do to drive customers your way? What kind of lead follow-up or closing ratio do you have to do after the trade show to make your competitors eat dust?

Music, lights, camera, action. Facts alone will never feed the mind—at least for long.

Take a Point of View

Having been hired to help an investment company develop and shape its message, I listened to four executive vice presidents as they presented their segments of the “official” company overview. The general counsel presented his overview of real estate investing and the new laws and regulations related to them. When he finished, I asked him, “Do you think real estate is a good investment for high-net-worth individuals today?”

“Absolutely,” he said. “The best. For several reasons.” And he listed them for me.

“Why didn’t you include those reasons in your presentation?” I asked.

“I did.”

“I missed them.”

“Maybe they didn’t come across as reasons. But the facts were there. The investor could have drawn that conclusion.”

“But why would you leave it to the listener to draw that conclusion?”

“Well, I’m a lawyer. I didn’t want to come across as a used car salesman.”

For the next hour, we discussed the difference between hype and a persuasive presentation. After all, his organization spent several million dollars annually flying in estate planners, financial advisers, brokers, and potential clients to persuade them to invest in real estate. Why would he not want to lead them to a conclusion?

Be clear about your purpose. If you’re asked just to dump information, do it. But far more often than not, you’re expected to take a point of view about the information you provide. That point of view involves what I call the four Ss of persuasion to make sure your listeners arrive at the same destination: solid facts, sound logic, straightforward language, and strong structure.

Make Your Bottom Line Your Opening Line

If you’re telling a joke, directing a screenplay, or writing a TV sitcom, your audience will give you a few minutes to interest them before they walk away, walk out, or flip the channel. Business colleagues aren’t always that patient.

Audiences for your email, your briefing, or your proposal want your bottom line up front, for several reasons:

• It’s difficult to understand the details if you don’t have a summary of the big-picture message first.
• Attention wanes quickly. You’ll need to grab listeners fast before they exit, sleep, or text-message their spouse.
• People expect applicable messages. With more than 500 TV channels to select from; thousands of newspapers, magazines, and ezines; hundreds of headlines; and blogs and tweets popping online faster than popcorn, people expect choices.

Whether the news is good or bad, competent communicators understand the value of getting to the point. Get attention by summarizing and shaping your message succinctly. Then follow up with the details that shape your story.

Be Direct with Bad News

And what if you’re message is negative? Decide to be direct. Whatever the difficult conversation, announcement, issue, or situation—defensiveness, emotional immaturity, poor performance, fear of losing star performers, fear of admitting personal mistakes, disgruntled customers—honest communication can lead to change.

Kind people sometimes confuse circuitous communication with courtesy. But direct language doesn’t necessarily mean being blunt, brash, or harsh. You can be clear but still courteous and respectful. Direct communication embraces rather than evades the truth, involves clear words, and focuses on the facts. Consider these principles for communicating reality in a reassuring way:

• Break the silence: Start talking. Just because you’re not talking about the situation doesn’t mean others aren’t talking about it. It just means that you, your information, your viewpoint, and your positive influence are not part of the conversation.
• Acknowledge mistakes—your own or those of your organization—and how those have contributed to the bad situation.
• Stop the sugarcoating: This doesn’t mean you must agree with the doom and gloom around you. It just means that others will reject glib comments. Instead, say it like it is and invite others to do the same. Invite them to express fears openly and honestly in front of the group. Otherwise, others will be doing it in the parking lot, in the cafeteria, and on Twitter.
• State the reality of the unknown future—that things may or may not work out for the better. Nobody knows what the future holds, and you will lose credibility if you pretend that you do. Acknowledging chances that things can go either way sends the message that you know you’re talking with reasoning adults, not children.
• Outline positive choices for dealing with the future: State your faith in your colleagues or staff as competent and committed people. Acknowledge the fear, the risk, and the difficulty—and then the rewards of overcoming the situation with the positive choices they can make to improve it.

What’s the good news in delivering bad news? It’s that straight talk in tough times can build bridges in ways that motivational hype in good times never can. Communicating clear, direct messages creates a climate of trust. And this trust pays big dividends in a competitive environment.

Remember: Your most important job as a leader is to help others cut the clutter clamoring for attention and communicate the crystal-clear, priority message of the moment.

Articulating a Vision Understandable to a Less-Educated Workforce

A few weeks ago, coupons landed in my mailbox for “$10 off a purchase of $30 or more” at a national department store chain. Because I was going to that store anyway, I took the coupons along. At the checkout counter, I presented the coupons with my seven items. I said to the cashier, “This adds up to more than $60, so would you use both coupons please.”

“Oh, sure, no problem,” she said. “But we have to ring it up on two separate tickets of at least $30 each.”

My turn to say, “No problem.” I waited.

She pulled three items into one pile and the other four into another pile, and then she rang the first group up. “This won’t work. This group comes to a total of only $29.28 without the tax. You can’t use the coupon.”

“Okay,” I said. “Then switch one of the items, so that both groups add up to $30.”

“Oh,” she said. “I didn’t think of that.”

She started over on the ticket. On the second go-round, she started with the second pile and then said, “Oh, this doesn’t work either; this pile is less now. “This adds up to only $28.92.”

“Okay, then.” I tried to be helpful. “You switched the wrong item. You have a bath towel that cost the same in each group. Leave it. You have a washcloth that cost the same in each group. Leave it. That means a $12 item and a $4 item and an $8 are dissimilar. Switch those to different piles so that the more expensive item is in one pile and the two cheaper items are in the other pile. The seventh item can go in either pile.”

“Oh,” she said, “I get it now.”

She didn’t get it. I reached across the counter and stacked up the piles for her. She finally managed to check me out on the fourth try.

This is not an isolated incident. Today’s workforce is less educated than ever before, and the situation is likely to grow worse in the near future. You walk into fast food places where pictures have replaced numbers on the cash registers. The correct change is made automatically. Operating instructions for equipment are written in the simplest form. The average newspaper in the United States is written at the fifth-grade reading level.

Consider what this means for you as a leader, communicating with a diverse group of employees at all educational levels. Take this situation to heart as you speak with your employees, your customers, and the media. Remember the same issues when you blast out emails of policy, commendation, or change.

And it’s not just the lower-ranking employees you address who’ll want, need, and demand more clarity.

Translate concepts like “vision,” “strategy,” and “initiatives” into specifics. If you’re writing to or speaking with an audience larger than one and using these vague terms, people are going to have different tasks in mind for their next week’s to-do list. “Vision” in Asian corporations often refers to plans to be executed 20 to 50 years into the future, whereas vision in American companies may refer to next quarter.

Political candidates receive as much criticism for vagueness on implementing their campaign promises as they do for their positions on controversial issues. People demand the particulars. Give them what they need to get the job done for you.

Here’s a reminder from Friedrich Nietzsche on this subject: “They who know that they are profound strive for clarity; those who are not strive for obscurity.”

Make Your Message Memorable

Consider the slogans from some of the most memorable advertising and political campaigns in recent history:

• “Where’s the beef?”
• “It’s the real thing.”
• “We’ll leave the light on for you.”
• “Are we there yet?”
• “Just do it!”
• “Real men don’t . . . X.”
• “Show me the money!”
• “Smile. Be happy.”
• “I love New York.”
• “Don’t mess with Texas.”
• “What happens here—stays here.”
• “Man Law.”

How important are structure and word choice for these slogans? What if we changed these slogans slightly? Consider these changes:

• From “Where’s the beef?” to “Where’s the hamburger patty?”
• From “It’s the real thing!” to “It’s the old product we love.”
• From “We’ll leave the light on for you” to “Our hotels and hospitality make you feel like you’re at home.”
• From “Are we there yet?” to “I’m tired of traveling—have we arrived?”
• From “Just do it!” to “Act now—stop delaying.”
• From “Real men don’t . . . X” to “Prove you’re a man by . . .”
• From “Show me the money!” to “I don’t do anything until I get paid.”
• From “Smile. Be happy” to “Life is easy. Relax.”
• From “I love New York” to “New York is a great place to live.”
• From “Don’t mess with Texas” to “Don’t litter across Texas.”
• From “What happens here—stays here” to “You’ll have a great time in Las Vegas.”
• From “Man Law” to “This is an axiom generally accepted by men in all situations.”

Take the time to make your point memorable.

Create Impact with Stories

Captain Charlie Plumb—a jet fighter pilot who was shot down, parachuted into enemy hands, and was held as a prisoner for nearly six years during the Vietnam War—tells a fascinating story. Several years after he was released from the prisoner of war camp, he accidentally ran into the man who had packed his parachute! His story makes the point that none of us ever knows the impact we are having on the lives of others. And the point is so powerful that audiences remember it for years—even recapping it to their friends on the Internet and calling him years later to tell their own tales.

Whatever your message, stories will make it stronger—communicating courage, determination, commitment, persistence, customer service, vision, caution, and change. Consider all the stories that have created the rich cultures and legendary CEOs. There’s the story about the employee who made a costly mistake at IBM that cost the company $10,000, and walked into CEO Tom Watson’s office to offer his resignation. Watson’s famous line: “Why would I want your resignation? I just paid $10,000 for your education.”

Then there’s the Disney story of Walt himself walking the theme park, picking up trash. There’s the story of Sam Walton driving to work every day with his lunch in a brown bag. There’s the story of the Marriott bell captain giving his hotel guest his own shoes to wear for his early morning job interview.

As a teenager, in my first job at the Six Flags Over Texas theme parks, I heard stories about hosts and hostesses being sent home from work if they got a drip of chocolate ice cream on their white tennis shoes. You can be sure we didn’t show up with dirty shoes or disheveled hair if we wanted to be issued a uniform for the day and keep our summer jobs.

Such culture-creating stories still surface during my consulting projects. Perry, a financial adviser and now regional manager of a large brokerage house, encourages his trainees to use more stories in their sales presentations with clients by telling his own story of an earlier lost account. He was competing with another brokerage house for the 401(k) funds at a large hospital system in the Northeast. The hospital invited both him and a competitor to make presentations to the group of employees, after which the employees could choose where to invest their 401(k) funds.

Perry walked in with all the facts on his side—better yields, better customer service ratings, wider fund choices, more flexibility in the plans. His competitor walked in with a better presentation. She focused on a few stories of how her company got involved in the lives of its clients, helping them to achieve their personal goals, particularly in times of crisis.

She walked away with 92 percent of the employee accounts; Perry, with 8 percent. He attributed the loss solely to his competitor’s use of stories to make her points memorable.

A few years ago, I heard Colin Powell address an audience in Chicago, where he captivated the crowd—not with platitudes, statistics, and studies about leadership but with stories of leadership and what makes America great. He ended with a story about a Chicago restaurant owner and a group of foreign exchange students who couldn’t pay their dinner bill for the evening. Powell’s point was that the generosity of America would be demonstrated to the world individual by individual rather than through acts of government.

Drive your point home with a well-chosen story. On the other hand, never use a $100 story in a three-minute time slot to make a nickel point. Make sure the point deserves a story. If so, create, shape, and deliver it accordingly.

Use Analogies and Metaphors to Evoke Emotion and Deepen Understanding

Analogies lead to a conclusion based on a specific comparison. Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, used this analogy in a report to shareholders:

Long-term thinking is both a requirement and an outcome of true ownership. Owners are different from tenants. I know of a couple who rented out their house, and the family who moved in nailed their Christmas tree to the hardwood floors instead of using a tree stand. Expedient, I supposed, and admittedly these were particularly bad tenants, but no owner would be so shortsighted. Similarly, many investors are effectively short-term tenants, turning their portfolios so quickly they are really just renting the stocks that they temporarily “own” (quoted in Booher 2007).

We talk about “prime real estate” in referring to the home page of a website or placement above the fold in a newspaper or product catalog. Many human resources managers talk about “cafeteria” benefits with their employees. With just one word, this analogy implies that employees have a “menu” of benefits from which to select, that a “parent” has agreed to cover the “total” invoice up to a certain amount, and that employees can select according to “taste or preferences” from that menu.

Such comparisons as these don’t exactly solicit an emotional response; they simply clarify a complex concept.

Metaphors, however, imply a comparison and typically evoke an emotion and a mindset. Both comparisons can be succinct yet powerful ways to manage how people think about an idea or situation.

If you wanted to make the point that someone was not fully engaged with his or her colleagues in a mission, you might use a war metaphor: “John ducks into his cubicle as if it were a foxhole. He needs to stick his head out occasionally and help the rest of us fight the war. Otherwise, the parent company is going to take over the entire department.”

If you wanted to talk about how indifference to quality customer service could destroy your business, you might put it in these terms: “Our poor customer service has become a cancer eating away at our business. I see customers walk in here and wait 10 minutes before being greeted. Then once we do help them locate what they need in the store, they have to wait again at checkout. Then they wait again at the loading dock. The longer a customer stays in our store, it’s like our cancer metastasizes rather than goes into remission.”

If you were making a point to your colleagues about the importance of living a balanced life, you might use a sports metaphor: “Most of us would agree life has many dimensions or tracks, all important to our overall well-being: mental, physical, spiritual. But some of us are spending all our time on one track and ignoring the rest, thinking we’re going to find satisfaction and fulfillment along the way. It’s not going to happen. That’s like entering a triathlon and practicing only the bicycling for the three months before the race.”

Metaphors and analogies, by their very selection, create a powerful way of thinking about an issue and often evoke a strong accompanying emotion that makes ideas memorable.

Planning a Persuasive Case for Skeptical Employees, Customers, and Shareholders

Winston Churchill once remarked, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” Today, people call it spin. And with current technology, I’d revise Churchill’s quip this way: “Spin gets around the world before the speaker leaves the stage.”

As we move further into the future, our audiences will have become even more skeptical, cynical, and thus expert at fact-checking, double-checking, and slicing and dicing as people speak. Their skepticism and cynicism will be the “new normal,” considered a good attitude and high employee morale.

As a leader, get used to it. Prepare by understanding what it takes to meet this challenge.

Consider those people you know personally today. Do you always believe and trust what they say? Recall conversations with your financial adviser, for example, a person with whom you have an ongoing trust relationship. After all, you tell him or her your salary, net worth, lifelong goals and dreams, matters of wills and estates.

Imagine saying to your adviser, “I’m getting a sizable bonus at the end of the year. Where do you recommend that I invest it?”

Without batting an eye, your adviser responds, “Life settlements. Most people don’t know much about them, but they’re a great alternative to the stock market. Basically, you buy life insurance policies from elderly people who need the cash. This kind of investment helps you manage your risk and protects you from the volatility of the stock market. You can pretty much count on a return of about 15 to 18 percent—year in, year out, and often much, much better. They’re based on actuary tables of life spans just like life insurance companies use—good hard statistical data. The only downside is that they’re not very liquid unless you’re in a pool with other investors.”

Would you buy? The adviser’s making a strong, logical case. Or, in a similar situation, would you be thinking, I wonder what her commission is on this product she’s trying to sell me? What’s lacking in such a conversation about the life settlements? What would increase your confidence in the adviser’s recommendation on life settlements as a good investment? Knowing the adviser has your best interest above her best interest? What if you knew she got no commission at all on this investment?

Consider the credibility Bernie Madoff and Allen Stanford created with their multitudes of investors whom they persuaded to give them millions year after year. Bernie Madoff, the manager of a hedge fund, Ascot Partners, pulled off a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, the largest fraud in history. The Texas financier Allen Stanford, operating both within the United States and in the Caribbean, persuaded more than 30,000 investors to give him $7 billion before the Securities and Exchange Commission rang his doorbell.

Clearly, these two financial wizards mastered the secrets of influence. So obviously, these attributes and skills can be learned. But influence doesn’t just boil down to skills, suits, status symbols, and stature. Mother Teresa was as welcome and comfortable in the world’s boardrooms as Bernie Madoff. At just five feet tall, dressed in her traditional habit, with few earthly possessions to call her own, Mother Teresa had one secret that Bernie Madoff and Allen Stanford lacked. And unfortunately, this one—or its absence—takes awhile to surface: character.

For 45 years, armed with little but her integrity, her tongue, and her ability to make CEOs feel the plight of the poor, Mother Teresa persuaded them to finance orphanages, hospices, leper houses, hospitals, and soup kitchens. By the time of her death in 1997, 610 missions in 123 countries on six continents had felt her presence.

I’m convinced that Mother Teresa studied Aristotle because back in the fourth century, he identified these same three essentials of persuasion:

• logical argument (the ability to articulate your points clearly)
• emotion (the ability to create or control emotion in your listeners)
• demonstration of character (the ability to convey integrity and goodwill).

And that turned out to be a big deal.

In the Greek world of Aristotle’s day, the ability to persuade with such arguments carried high social status. Winning a war of words paralleled the warrior’s victory on the battlefield. Recall, from college assignments, the great debates between the main characters in the Iliad and the Odyssey, interspersed between the war scenes. The battle of wits became as fierce as the battle of brawn.

Times haven’t changed all that much. Being a persuasive communicator still grants social status and power. Think how often pundits and voters alike extol a candidate’s speaking ability—or lack thereof. Not only do we expect our presidents and celebrities to speak well; that has become the expected norm in the boardroom, the conference room, and the community. Persuasive communication is the key to leadership in politics and in the corporate world, both now and in the future.

To lead change, to sell an idea, to raise funds, to win a contract, to strike a partnership, to shore up investor confidence during a stalled economy, to improve employee morale—all such endeavors create the need to build a persuasive case for a skeptical audience. Your success as a leader demands it.

Last Thoughts

Communication makes the “top three” in many lists today—the most vital skill in job-interviewing success, the most frequent complaint employees cite as their reason for leaving an organization, the most frequent reason top talent joins a new team, the biggest challenge leaders experience in times of change and upheaval. Communication makes leadership possible.

Further Reading

Dianna Booher, E-Writing: 21st Century Tools for Effective Communication. New York: Simon & Schuster / Pocket Books, 2001.

———, Speak with Confidence: Powerful Presentations to Inform, Inspire, and Persuade. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003.

———, The Voice of Authority: 10 Communication Strategies Every Leader Needs to Know. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007.

Paul Chaney, The Digital Handshake: Seven Proven Strategies to Grow Your Business Using Social Media. New York: John A. Wiley & Sons, 2009.

Rober Cialdini, The Psychology of Influence and Persuasion. New York: HarperCollins, 2006.

Danny Cox, Leadership When the Heat Is On: 24 Lessons in High-Performance Management. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007.

John C. Maxwell, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007.

Reference

Booher, D. 1994. Communicate with Confidence: How to Say It Right the First Time and Every Time. New York: McGraw-Hill.

———. 2007. The Voice of Authority: 10 Communication Strategies Every Leader Needs to Know. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Rui, Huaxia, Andrew Whinston, and Elizabeth Winkler. 2009. Follow the Tweets: By Monitoring Comments on Twitter, Companies Can Predict Where Next Week’s Sales Are Heading. Wall Street Journal, November 30. http://online.wsj.com/article/ SB1000 14240529 7020473180457439 11022219 59582.html# articleTabs%3Darticle.

About the Author

Dianna Booher works with organizations to increase their effectiveness through better communication—oral, written, interpersonal, and organizational. The CEO of Dallas–Fort Worth communication training firm Booher Consultants, she is also the author of 44 books, published in 23 countries and in 16 languages. Her most popular books include Speak with Confidence, E-Writing, Communicate with Confidence, The Voice of Authority, and Booher’s Rules of Business Grammar. Several have been selected by major book clubs. She has been interviewed on critical workplace issues by Good Morning America, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The New York Times, USA Today, Bloomberg, and NPR, and Successful Meetings magazine named her to its list of “21 Top Speakers for the 21st Century.”