Showing posts with label Leadership and Communication Summaries and MindMaps. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Leadership and Communication Summaries and MindMaps. Show all posts
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Chapter 10 LC Leading Through Effective External Relations Summary
CHAPTER 10 LEADING THROUGH EFFECTIVE EXTERNAL RELATIONS
A positive public image or reputation affects a company’s ability to achieve all other measures of success. Reputation Institute says that the companies with the best corporate reputations outperform all others in terms of market share and share value.
Effective external relations require a sound communication strategy. These are the following steps to create a strategy for external audiences:
Clarify your purpose and strategy objectives.
Identify your major audiences or stakeholders:
Community, customers, union groups, retirees, analysis, board, company, etc.
Create, refine, and test your major messages:
Honest, clear, consistent, meaningful
Select, limit, and coach your spokesperson(s):
Legitimate, referent, expert, knowledge, position, title, charisma, rank
Establish the most effective media or forum.
Determine the best timing.
Monitor the results.
Everything a company does influences public opinion and reputation, therefore, every company should look carefully at building, a positive reputation. In Reputation: Realizing Value from the Corporate Image, Charles Fombrun identifies six ways companies can build and maintain a positive corporate image:
Design campaigns to promote the company as a whole.
Carry out ambitions programs to champion product quality and customer service.
Maintain systems to screen employee activities for reputation side effects.
Demonstrate sensitivity to the environment.
Hire internal communication staff and retain public relations firms.
Demonstrate “corporate citizenship”
This list reveals the importance of being proactive and comprehensive in fostering corporate reputation. One mistake in any of these areas can cause repercussions from which a company may never recover.
The mistakes or missteps that tarnish a company’s reputation are most often uncovered and publicized by the news media. To increase chances for favorable treatment, it is important for a company to establish a positive relationship with the media and for every senior manager to know how to work effectively with them.
Since all major newspapers and most TV networks provide coverage of major corporations and are definitely interested in sensational news from smaller companies, every company needs to recognize the importance of the media and take the local media representatives and learn a little about their needs and interests. In addition, companies need to understand the value of positive public relations and realize that establishing a relationship with the media,, either directly or through a public relations firm, can open the door to a tremendous amount of “free” publicity.
Interactions with the media can allow a company to reach a large and globally dispersed audience, present their point of view proactively, and establish a positive public ethos.
Any leader or high-level manager should receive training and, ideally, specific coaching in preparation for an encounter with the media. The training should include the following at a minimum, preparation for the interview, performance during the interview, and steps to take afterward.
Preparation
Performance during the Interview
Steps to Take after the Interview
Although establishing positive relationships with external audiences prior to a crisis will help in all but the most extreme situations, no amount of goodwill can guarantee the positive coverage that is necessary to avoid permanent damage to a company’s reputation.
The following guidelines will help companies respond appropriately in most crisis situations:
Develop a general crisis communication plan and communicate it.
Once the crisis occurs, respond quickly.
Make sure you have the right people ready to respond and that they all respond with the same message.
Put yourself in the shoes of your audience
Do not overlook the value of the Web.
Revisit your crisis communication plan frequently.
Build in a way to monitor the coverage.
Perform a post-crisis evaluation.
A positive public image or reputation affects a company’s ability to achieve all other measures of success. Reputation Institute says that the companies with the best corporate reputations outperform all others in terms of market share and share value.
Effective external relations require a sound communication strategy. These are the following steps to create a strategy for external audiences:
Clarify your purpose and strategy objectives.
Identify your major audiences or stakeholders:
Community, customers, union groups, retirees, analysis, board, company, etc.
Create, refine, and test your major messages:
Honest, clear, consistent, meaningful
Select, limit, and coach your spokesperson(s):
Legitimate, referent, expert, knowledge, position, title, charisma, rank
Establish the most effective media or forum.
Determine the best timing.
Monitor the results.
Everything a company does influences public opinion and reputation, therefore, every company should look carefully at building, a positive reputation. In Reputation: Realizing Value from the Corporate Image, Charles Fombrun identifies six ways companies can build and maintain a positive corporate image:
Design campaigns to promote the company as a whole.
Carry out ambitions programs to champion product quality and customer service.
Maintain systems to screen employee activities for reputation side effects.
Demonstrate sensitivity to the environment.
Hire internal communication staff and retain public relations firms.
Demonstrate “corporate citizenship”
This list reveals the importance of being proactive and comprehensive in fostering corporate reputation. One mistake in any of these areas can cause repercussions from which a company may never recover.
The mistakes or missteps that tarnish a company’s reputation are most often uncovered and publicized by the news media. To increase chances for favorable treatment, it is important for a company to establish a positive relationship with the media and for every senior manager to know how to work effectively with them.
Since all major newspapers and most TV networks provide coverage of major corporations and are definitely interested in sensational news from smaller companies, every company needs to recognize the importance of the media and take the local media representatives and learn a little about their needs and interests. In addition, companies need to understand the value of positive public relations and realize that establishing a relationship with the media,, either directly or through a public relations firm, can open the door to a tremendous amount of “free” publicity.
Interactions with the media can allow a company to reach a large and globally dispersed audience, present their point of view proactively, and establish a positive public ethos.
Any leader or high-level manager should receive training and, ideally, specific coaching in preparation for an encounter with the media. The training should include the following at a minimum, preparation for the interview, performance during the interview, and steps to take afterward.
Preparation
Performance during the Interview
Steps to Take after the Interview
Although establishing positive relationships with external audiences prior to a crisis will help in all but the most extreme situations, no amount of goodwill can guarantee the positive coverage that is necessary to avoid permanent damage to a company’s reputation.
The following guidelines will help companies respond appropriately in most crisis situations:
Develop a general crisis communication plan and communicate it.
Once the crisis occurs, respond quickly.
Make sure you have the right people ready to respond and that they all respond with the same message.
Put yourself in the shoes of your audience
Do not overlook the value of the Web.
Revisit your crisis communication plan frequently.
Build in a way to monitor the coverage.
Perform a post-crisis evaluation.
Chapter 9 LC Estabishing Leadership Through Strategic Internal Communication Summary
One of the major responsibilities of an organizational leader is communication with employees. By communicating effectively with employees, however, CEOs are not simply, creating ambassadors of goodwill for their companies, they are providing direction, establishing a positive and productive working environment, and influencing their bottom lines.
For employee communication to play a strategic role in an organization, the leader must realize its importance in accomplishing the company’s strategic objectives and performance goals and integrate it into the company’s overall strategy and business processes. The communication objectives would be (1) to ensure all business units receive the same corporate message that joint decision making is now a priority and (2) to establish forums (meetings if appropriate) for the joint decision making to occur.
Best ways to accomplish the following basic employee communication objectives:
Educate employees in the company vision and strategic goals.
Motivate employee support for the company’s strategy.
Encourage higher performance and discretionary effort.
Limit misunderstandings and rumors that may damage productivity.
Align employees behind the company’s performance objectives and position them to help achieve them.
To accomplish these goals, your messages need to be clear, consistent, and targeted. Effective employee communication is both the product—the messages that the organization wants to transfer—and the process—the conduit for transferring the messages.
To ensure your internal communication is comprehensive, you will want to use an analytical approach to developing a communication strategy for any of your important communication.
Effective internal communication consists of the following:
Supportive management
Targeted messages
Effective media/forum
Well-positioned staff
Ongoing assessment
Missions, visions, values, and guiding principles make up one category of major strategic messages that most organizations convey to their employees. Your ability to establish and communicate the mission and the vision effectively strengthens your position in leading the organization.
Effective mission and vision statements are important to a company for the following reasons:
Inspire individual action, determine behavior, and fuel motivation.
Establish a firm foundation of goals, standards, and objectives to guide corporate planners and managers.
Satisfy both the company’s need for efficiency and the employees’ need for group identity.
Provide direction, which is particularly important in times of change, to keep everyone moving toward the same goals.
Missions
A mission is a statement of the reason a company exists that is intended primarily for internal use. It should ensure that employees understand the company’s purpose by defining a company’s basic business. It should establish a single, noble purpose and an enduring reality.
Visions
A vision statement establishes the company’s aspirations. It describes an inspiring new reality, achievable in a well-understood and reasonable time frame.
To test a mission, the leaders should look for the following characteristics:
Inspirational and suggestive of excellence
Clear, making sense in the marketplace
Stable but flexible enough to last with only incremental changes
Beacons and controls when all else is up for grabs
Aimed at empowering employees first, customers second
To test the vision, the organizational leaders should ask if it does the following:
Suggests goals and provides a direction
Inspires and prepares for the future but honors the past
Applies specifically to the company, providing details that are actionable
The following steps in a leader-led, interactive, employee-involved approach to building a mission and a vision:
Create Initial Draft
Clarify the Meaning
Tell the World in 25 Words or Less What You Are and What You Want to Become
Develop the Strategic Objectives to Make the Vision Specific and Actionable
Hold Cascading Meetings with Employees to Test the Mission and the Vision
The greatest difficulty leaders face in bringing about to change involves the people. To achieve successful change, leaders must confront the challenges of reaching the employees through effective leadership communication before, during, and after any major, companywide programs. Without effective employee communication and a rigorous approach to the leadership communication, a change program has little chance to succeed.
The magnitude of the proposed organizational changes and the effectiveness of the company’s current internal communication practices will determine how comprehensive the communication program needs to be and where you should start, you should assess how effective our company’s current internal communication practices are and decide if they are strong enough to support major change.
A high level action plan needs a very detailed work plan to specify all actions, responsibilities, and deadlines.
· Phase 1: Design Change Communication Strategy and Plan
· Phase 2:Launch Change Communication and Ensure Employee Understanding
· Phase 3: Monitor Results and Make Adjustments
For employee communication to play a strategic role in an organization, the leader must realize its importance in accomplishing the company’s strategic objectives and performance goals and integrate it into the company’s overall strategy and business processes. The communication objectives would be (1) to ensure all business units receive the same corporate message that joint decision making is now a priority and (2) to establish forums (meetings if appropriate) for the joint decision making to occur.
Best ways to accomplish the following basic employee communication objectives:
Educate employees in the company vision and strategic goals.
Motivate employee support for the company’s strategy.
Encourage higher performance and discretionary effort.
Limit misunderstandings and rumors that may damage productivity.
Align employees behind the company’s performance objectives and position them to help achieve them.
To accomplish these goals, your messages need to be clear, consistent, and targeted. Effective employee communication is both the product—the messages that the organization wants to transfer—and the process—the conduit for transferring the messages.
To ensure your internal communication is comprehensive, you will want to use an analytical approach to developing a communication strategy for any of your important communication.
Effective internal communication consists of the following:
Supportive management
Targeted messages
Effective media/forum
Well-positioned staff
Ongoing assessment
Missions, visions, values, and guiding principles make up one category of major strategic messages that most organizations convey to their employees. Your ability to establish and communicate the mission and the vision effectively strengthens your position in leading the organization.
Effective mission and vision statements are important to a company for the following reasons:
Inspire individual action, determine behavior, and fuel motivation.
Establish a firm foundation of goals, standards, and objectives to guide corporate planners and managers.
Satisfy both the company’s need for efficiency and the employees’ need for group identity.
Provide direction, which is particularly important in times of change, to keep everyone moving toward the same goals.
Missions
A mission is a statement of the reason a company exists that is intended primarily for internal use. It should ensure that employees understand the company’s purpose by defining a company’s basic business. It should establish a single, noble purpose and an enduring reality.
Visions
A vision statement establishes the company’s aspirations. It describes an inspiring new reality, achievable in a well-understood and reasonable time frame.
To test a mission, the leaders should look for the following characteristics:
Inspirational and suggestive of excellence
Clear, making sense in the marketplace
Stable but flexible enough to last with only incremental changes
Beacons and controls when all else is up for grabs
Aimed at empowering employees first, customers second
To test the vision, the organizational leaders should ask if it does the following:
Suggests goals and provides a direction
Inspires and prepares for the future but honors the past
Applies specifically to the company, providing details that are actionable
The following steps in a leader-led, interactive, employee-involved approach to building a mission and a vision:
Create Initial Draft
Clarify the Meaning
Tell the World in 25 Words or Less What You Are and What You Want to Become
Develop the Strategic Objectives to Make the Vision Specific and Actionable
Hold Cascading Meetings with Employees to Test the Mission and the Vision
The greatest difficulty leaders face in bringing about to change involves the people. To achieve successful change, leaders must confront the challenges of reaching the employees through effective leadership communication before, during, and after any major, companywide programs. Without effective employee communication and a rigorous approach to the leadership communication, a change program has little chance to succeed.
The magnitude of the proposed organizational changes and the effectiveness of the company’s current internal communication practices will determine how comprehensive the communication program needs to be and where you should start, you should assess how effective our company’s current internal communication practices are and decide if they are strong enough to support major change.
A high level action plan needs a very detailed work plan to specify all actions, responsibilities, and deadlines.
· Phase 1: Design Change Communication Strategy and Plan
· Phase 2:Launch Change Communication and Ensure Employee Understanding
· Phase 3: Monitor Results and Make Adjustments
Chapter 8 LC Building and Leading High-Performing Summary
Building an effective team raises organizational and individual leadership issues. In deciding to use teams across your company, you will want to look closely at the company culture and compensation structure to see if they both support teamwork.
Deciding to form a team is a process very similar to deciding to call a meeting. Both meetings and teams can alienate participants if they are not clearly the best approach.
High-performing individuals working together in a team with a clear objective and the commitment to achieve it can be very effective team despite the environment. Having a supportive environment will simply make your role in leading and managing teams easier.
Once you have decided that a team is the best answer, you will need to look closely at how you will form that team. Companies often decide who should be on teams based on functional responsibilities, for instance. If you have the freedom to select the members, however, you will find Katzenbach and Smith’s team basics framework, the apex topics—performance results, personal growth, and collective work products—represent the outcome of the work of the team.
The other items are the characteristics of what Katzenbach and Smith consider a “real” team:
Complementary skills (problem solving, technical/functional, interpersonal)
Accountability (mutual, individual, and small number of people)
Commitment (specific goals, common approach, meaningful purpose)
Once you have told the selected team members that they are on your team, you should schedule a launch or kick-off meeting. Teams tend to begin their work more effectively if you take the time to hold an official launch. Having a launch, allows you to address many of the team work process steps. Although most teams will probably want to jump right into the work without spending the necessary time on process issues, leading them through development of the purpose, goals, and approach (the commitment side of the team basics framework) will help your team work more efficiently and effectively. The primary causes of conflict in a team are poorly defined goals and purposes and lack of clarity about the approach to the work and problem solving.
One of the first steps for your team will be to create a team charter or contract. A charter usually consists of the following:
Project purpose/goals.
Team member roles and responsibilities.
Ground rules.
Communication protocol.
For a team project of any complexity or length, an action plan of overall phases is useful and a specific work plan of all action items and end products with responsibilities and time lines is essential. Although any plan has to be updated frequently as the project unfolds, creating one at the beginning of the project is necessary for all team members to know exactly what needs to be done, by whom, and by when. It helps avoid duplication of effort, ensures all needed activities are included, and allocates adequate time for the planned actions.
A team’s performance will depend on the team being able to deliver the results of its work. That usually means delivering a presentation, a report, or both. These tasks are often one of the major communication challenges that teams face.
You will want to include all tasks to create and complete your document or presentation in the action steps of your work plan. Teams typically underestimate the time it will take to create and complete a document or presentation as a team. They make this mistake because they do not push far enough into the details of document or presentation creation and completion.
Listing all the steps will ensure the team allows enough time for the creation and completion of their document or presentation. You want to plan for this work just as you do for the research and analysis. Otherwise, you risk not allowing enough time, and the resulting rush may prevent you from delivering the high-quality end product that is characteristic of a high-performing team.
Team members want to learn from the experiences of being on the team, which calls for reflecting on the team work process. Teams working together over an extended period of time should build in periodic process checks. Doing so allows them to determine which processes are working well and which may need to be changed. They should revisit their roles and responsibilities, ground rules, and communication protocol. The team leader will also want to provide feedback on the performance of individual members and ask for feedback on his or her performance as a team leader.
Although team members will get to know each other through day-to-day interactions while working together, the team members can shorten the learning curve by discussing the following information at the first team meeting:
Position and responsibilities
Team experiences
Expectations
Personality
Cultural differences
Despite all of the best planning and time spent getting to know each other, teams will likely experience conflict. Some of it will be useful and some not, but the odds are that it will occur.
Internal team conflict will usually be one of the four types:
Analytical (team’s constructive disagreement over a project issue or problem).
Task (goal, work process, deliverables).
Interpersonal (personality, diversity, communication styles).
Roles (leadership, responsibilities, power struggles).
Most teams will use one of the following three approaches to managing conflict:
One on one: Individuals involved work it out between themselves.
Facilitation: Individuals involved work with a facilitator (mediator)
Team: Individuals involved discussed it with the entire team
More and more companies are using virtual teams to connect their personnel in offices around the globe. In fact, research has shown that today “most teamwork is virtual” with it being rare “to find all team members located in one place” in organizations.
Virtual teams are teams whose members are geographically dispersed and rely primarily on technology (telephone, computer, video, or some combination) for communication and to accomplish their work as a team.
Virtual teams provide several advantages for companies today: lowering travel and facility costs, reducing project schedules, allowing the leveraging of expertise and vertical integration, improving efficiency, and positioning to compete globally.
On the other hand, virtual teams also provide challenges, particularly in communications:
Lost in context of communication
Cultural differences
Difficulties in sharing and discussing complex information
Connection and trust difficult to build in a virtual environment
A virtual team needs to have even more structure than a traditional team and must spend even more time on basic good team practices, such as having a clear purpose and objectives, establishing ground rules, creating work plans, and developing team communication protocols.
According to an article in The McKinsey Quaterly, a virtual team needs the following to be successful: (1) shared beliefs, (2) a “storehouse of credibility and trust,” and (3) a shared work space.
The shared beliefs come from the team discussing fundamental questions about how they plan to approach the problems, examining areas of potential conflict, and taking time to resolve any differences. To build a storehouse of credibility and trust, each team member needs to “pay careful attention to the way others perceive them.” In addition, they need to “deliver on their promises, and do so on time; consider other people’s schedules; deal straightforwardly with colleagues; and respond promptly to emails and voicemails.” Creating a work space means that they need to establish a virtual team room through the technology available to them. It should allow them to communicate easily and to share in developing ideas and documents.
Deciding to form a team is a process very similar to deciding to call a meeting. Both meetings and teams can alienate participants if they are not clearly the best approach.
High-performing individuals working together in a team with a clear objective and the commitment to achieve it can be very effective team despite the environment. Having a supportive environment will simply make your role in leading and managing teams easier.
Once you have decided that a team is the best answer, you will need to look closely at how you will form that team. Companies often decide who should be on teams based on functional responsibilities, for instance. If you have the freedom to select the members, however, you will find Katzenbach and Smith’s team basics framework, the apex topics—performance results, personal growth, and collective work products—represent the outcome of the work of the team.
The other items are the characteristics of what Katzenbach and Smith consider a “real” team:
Complementary skills (problem solving, technical/functional, interpersonal)
Accountability (mutual, individual, and small number of people)
Commitment (specific goals, common approach, meaningful purpose)
Once you have told the selected team members that they are on your team, you should schedule a launch or kick-off meeting. Teams tend to begin their work more effectively if you take the time to hold an official launch. Having a launch, allows you to address many of the team work process steps. Although most teams will probably want to jump right into the work without spending the necessary time on process issues, leading them through development of the purpose, goals, and approach (the commitment side of the team basics framework) will help your team work more efficiently and effectively. The primary causes of conflict in a team are poorly defined goals and purposes and lack of clarity about the approach to the work and problem solving.
One of the first steps for your team will be to create a team charter or contract. A charter usually consists of the following:
Project purpose/goals.
Team member roles and responsibilities.
Ground rules.
Communication protocol.
For a team project of any complexity or length, an action plan of overall phases is useful and a specific work plan of all action items and end products with responsibilities and time lines is essential. Although any plan has to be updated frequently as the project unfolds, creating one at the beginning of the project is necessary for all team members to know exactly what needs to be done, by whom, and by when. It helps avoid duplication of effort, ensures all needed activities are included, and allocates adequate time for the planned actions.
A team’s performance will depend on the team being able to deliver the results of its work. That usually means delivering a presentation, a report, or both. These tasks are often one of the major communication challenges that teams face.
You will want to include all tasks to create and complete your document or presentation in the action steps of your work plan. Teams typically underestimate the time it will take to create and complete a document or presentation as a team. They make this mistake because they do not push far enough into the details of document or presentation creation and completion.
Listing all the steps will ensure the team allows enough time for the creation and completion of their document or presentation. You want to plan for this work just as you do for the research and analysis. Otherwise, you risk not allowing enough time, and the resulting rush may prevent you from delivering the high-quality end product that is characteristic of a high-performing team.
Team members want to learn from the experiences of being on the team, which calls for reflecting on the team work process. Teams working together over an extended period of time should build in periodic process checks. Doing so allows them to determine which processes are working well and which may need to be changed. They should revisit their roles and responsibilities, ground rules, and communication protocol. The team leader will also want to provide feedback on the performance of individual members and ask for feedback on his or her performance as a team leader.
Although team members will get to know each other through day-to-day interactions while working together, the team members can shorten the learning curve by discussing the following information at the first team meeting:
Position and responsibilities
Team experiences
Expectations
Personality
Cultural differences
Despite all of the best planning and time spent getting to know each other, teams will likely experience conflict. Some of it will be useful and some not, but the odds are that it will occur.
Internal team conflict will usually be one of the four types:
Analytical (team’s constructive disagreement over a project issue or problem).
Task (goal, work process, deliverables).
Interpersonal (personality, diversity, communication styles).
Roles (leadership, responsibilities, power struggles).
Most teams will use one of the following three approaches to managing conflict:
One on one: Individuals involved work it out between themselves.
Facilitation: Individuals involved work with a facilitator (mediator)
Team: Individuals involved discussed it with the entire team
More and more companies are using virtual teams to connect their personnel in offices around the globe. In fact, research has shown that today “most teamwork is virtual” with it being rare “to find all team members located in one place” in organizations.
Virtual teams are teams whose members are geographically dispersed and rely primarily on technology (telephone, computer, video, or some combination) for communication and to accomplish their work as a team.
Virtual teams provide several advantages for companies today: lowering travel and facility costs, reducing project schedules, allowing the leveraging of expertise and vertical integration, improving efficiency, and positioning to compete globally.
On the other hand, virtual teams also provide challenges, particularly in communications:
Lost in context of communication
Cultural differences
Difficulties in sharing and discussing complex information
Connection and trust difficult to build in a virtual environment
A virtual team needs to have even more structure than a traditional team and must spend even more time on basic good team practices, such as having a clear purpose and objectives, establishing ground rules, creating work plans, and developing team communication protocols.
According to an article in The McKinsey Quaterly, a virtual team needs the following to be successful: (1) shared beliefs, (2) a “storehouse of credibility and trust,” and (3) a shared work space.
The shared beliefs come from the team discussing fundamental questions about how they plan to approach the problems, examining areas of potential conflict, and taking time to resolve any differences. To build a storehouse of credibility and trust, each team member needs to “pay careful attention to the way others perceive them.” In addition, they need to “deliver on their promises, and do so on time; consider other people’s schedules; deal straightforwardly with colleagues; and respond promptly to emails and voicemails.” Creating a work space means that they need to establish a virtual team room through the technology available to them. It should allow them to communicate easily and to share in developing ideas and documents.
Chapter 7 LC Leading Productive Management Meetings Summary
The Seven Deadly Sins of Meetings:
-People don’t take meetings seriously.
-Meetings are too long.
-People wander off the topic.
-Nothing happens once the meeting ends.
-People don’t tell the truth.
-Meetings are always missing important information, so they postpone critical decisions.
-Meetings never get better.
Communication purpose and strategy should come first in planning meetings, as in all communication situations. You need to define a clear purpose and analyze your audience to determine whether a meeting is the best forum for what you want to accomplish. Use the following questions to direct you in deciding to meet or not:
What is the purpose? What do I hope to accomplish?
Will a meeting accomplish that purpose more efficiently? More effectively?
Can I describe exactly the outcome I am seeking from the meeting?
Is our group more productive when we meet?
Leaders often have assistants to handle the details associated with their meetings but you will need to decide about the purpose, outcomes, agenda, setting, timing, and materials. To ensure your meetings are productive, you must conduct the necessary planning by answering the following questions:
What is the purpose and expected outcome?
What should be included on the agenda?
Who should attend?
What is the best setting?
What is the best timing?
What information will now need for the meeting?
To ensure a productive meeting, you will want to manage expectations by communicating to your attendees before or just after the meeting starts what the decision-making procedure will be. Your approach may be so pervasive and well understood that you will not need to bring up the subject in a meeting; however, you may want to use different approaches for different types of meetings or problems, so you should make your approach clear for each meeting.
You should define the meeting roles and responsibilities before or after the meeting starts. The roles recommended for most meetings are as follows:
Leader
Facilitate
Note taker
Timekeeper
Example Ground Rules for Virtual Meetings
Introduce yourself when you join the meeting
State your name prior to your comments throughout the call
Avoid any side conversations since not all participants can hear them
Keep the speakerphone close to the person who is talking to avoid background noise
Avoid tapping pens or shuffling papers since these sounds may be exaggerated on the other end.
Common analytical tools that work well in many different types of problem-solving meetings are as follows:
Brainstorming
Ranking or rating
Sorting by category (logical grouping)
Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats.
Opposition Analysis
Decision trees
From/to analysis
Force-field analysis
The matrix
Frameworks
MANAGING MEETING PROBLEMS AND CONFLICT
Problem
-Confused Objectives and Expectations
-Unclear Roles and Responsibilities
-Confusion between Process and Content
-Drifting off Topic
-Data Confusion or Overload
-Repetition and Wheel Spinning
-Time Violations
Management Approach
-Create an agenda that includes objectives as well as end products.
-Send agenda out ahead of time and review it at the beginning of the meeting.
-Communicate roles and responsibilities with agenda or establish at the beginning of the meeting.
-Separate the leader and the facilitator role.
-Call time-outs for process checks as soon as confusion is expressed.
-Stop and review meeting objectives. If digression continues, suggest
Discussion continue after meeting
-Topic be placed on agenda for next meeting
-Topic be tabled, stored for future (write topic down for all to see and make sure it is discussed at end of meeting if time allows or at an agreed future date)
-Control handouts to ensure all have the same version.
-Create simplified data packs specific to meeting
-Exclude any data not directly relevant to objectives
-Control the discussion by reminding attendees of objectives
-Start on time. Allowing delays at the beginning of meetings cuts efficiency and sends the message that the leader is flexible on time
-Have a timekeeper. If time limits are repeatedly violated, reevaluate agenda topics and time limits and build in cushion time
When the common meeting problems turn into direct conflict, perhaps because of personality or factions within the group, facilitators may need to be more aggressive in their tactics. One popular technique often used by negotiators calls on the individuals involved in the conflict to apply different levels of assertiveness and cooperation. They can approach the problem by competing, collaborating, avoiding, or accommodating.
None of these modes seem the best for the situation, the facilitator may want to try one of the following methods of conflict management to calm the situation so that the meeting can continue:
Turn the question to the group.
Use the is/is not approach or a pro/con format.
Try listing points of agreement and disagreement.
Attempt to get an underlying assumption.
Shift the discussions to the facts (put on the white hat).
ENSURING MEETING LEAD TO ACTION
Assign specific tasks to specific people.
Review all actions and responsibilities at the end of the meeting
Provide a meeting summary with assigned deliverables included.
Follow up on action items in a reasonable time.
Chapter 6 LC Delivering Emotional Intelligence and Cultural Literacy to Strengthen Leadership Communication Summary
Leaders need strong interpersonal skills and an understanding of and appreciation for cultural diversity. Without these skills, leaders cannot communicate with and manage others effectively. Interpersonal skills have gained recent recognition among business leaders under the name of “emotional intelligence.” Emotional intelligence (EI) is the capacity to understand your own emotions and those of other people.
The company’s culture reflects the emotional intelligence (or lack) of the company leaders, and the company leaders reveal that emotional intelligence through their communication ability and style.
Reuven Bar-On, who developed the concept of emotional quotient in 1988, provides a technical definition of emotional intelligence. Emotional quotient (or intelligence) is emotional and social knowledge and the ability to:
Be aware of, understand, and express yourself.
Be aware of, understand, and relate to others.
Deal with strong emotions, and control your impulses.
Adapt to change and to solve problems of a personal or a social nature.
In Primal Leadership, Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee argue that leadership styles fall into six broad categories: (1) visionary, (2) coaching, (3) affiliative, (4) democratic, (5) pacesetting, and (6) commanding. These last two may have negative impact to the organization.
Personal Competence: These capabilities determine how we manage ourselves
Self-Awareness
Self-Management
Social Competence: These capabilities determine how we manage relationships.
Social Awareness
Relationship Management
The first-step toward emotional intelligence is self-awareness. What is important to realize is that you can develop your emotional intelligence and by doing so improve your leadership communication ability, but you need to understand your strengths and weaknesses first.
Psychological testing can help you gain insight into your behavior and how you interact with others, and also how others interact with you. You can benefit from knowing yourself better and identifying characteristics that may hinder your ability to interact effectively with others. With this knowledge, you can work toward modifying unproductive behaviors and perhaps, at a minimum, understand better why others respond to you as they do.
The MBTI consists of four dichotomies in 16 combinations. The dichotomies are as follows:
· Introvert (1) vs. Extravert (E)—indicates how are energized
· Sensing (S) vs. Intuitive (N)—suggests how you interpret or understand the world.
· Thinking (T) vs. Feeling (F)—shows how you make decisions.
· Judging (J) vs. Perceiving (P)—suggests your approach to life and work.
Many assessments are available on the Web, although some require a fee and psychologists to contact you with the results. You can take MBTI for free online, and you receive your score and a report immediately. It is particular useful in relating the test to the workplace and in explaining how different types handle different jobs and team situations.
This approach will allow you: (1) to assess your strengths and weaknesses, (2) to obtain feedback from others on your strengths and weaknesses, (3) to establish your goals, (5) to map out a plan to achieve those goals.
Categories of Nonverbal Communication
Appearance
Paralanguage
Kinesics
Occulesics
Proxemics
Facial expressions
Olfactics
Chronomics
The Following Suggestions to Improve Your Nonverbal Communication Skills
Learn as much as possible about any culture in which you will be interacting.
Do not judge someone’s actions out of context or leave the actions unexplored when important to you or the organization.
Develop your understanding or sensitivity to nonverbal cues.
Assess your own use of nonverbal communication.
Leaving: “listening out of any discussion of communication” means leaving out at least 40 to percent of the communication process. Good listening skills are essential, and the lack of them hinders many people’s careers. If you are not sure whether you are a good listener, you should take an inventory of your listening habits, either by making a list on your own, asking someone you trust to give you feedback, or taking a listening assessment. A little self-awareness will help you realize if improvement is needed and how much.
The mentor and the protégé must establish together an approach for working with each other and, if appropriate, set up a development plan with agreed upon objectives. They will also need to communicate regularly, but the protégé should be mindful of the mentor’s time commitments and be realistic in his or her expectations. Mentors, on the other hand, owe it to protégés not to commit to more than they can deliver and to establish boundaries.
The following steps should work effectively when providing feedback in most business situations:
Be well prepared for the feedback session.
Create a receptive environment.
Assume a comfortable demeanor.
Start by setting the context for the meeting.
Move quickly into your main objectives, which should not be so numerous they overwhelm.
Ensure throughout that the receiver understands your points
Be very specific about the actions you expect the receiver to undertake as a result of this feedback session and the timing for completing them.
Realizing the value of cultural differences is a key component of emotional intelligence. Only by understanding and appreciating cultural diversity can you know how best to communicate with all of the different audiences that form the complexion of most of the world’s corporation today.
Culture is learned and shared equally by others of the same culture whereas personality is highly individual and influenced by our genes and our environment.
Cultures and professions can be arrayed on a spectrum ranging from low context to high context. Low context cultures depend relatively little on existing relationships for meaning in communication and rely instead on explicit verbal messages. High context cultures rely more extensively on relationships to understand meaning and place less importance on verbal messages.
The importance of context in a culture, high or low, influences how individuals approach exchanges of information and determines how messages flow between people and levels of organization.
Time is a commodity and is meant to be measured and managed, conserved or wasted, spent wisely or foolishly. Events are sequentially, one at a time, and this schedule takes precedence over relationships and people.
Language has been described as the “central influence on culture and one of the most highly changed symbols of a culture or a nation. All cultural levels have language differences: industries, professions, functions, and even genders.
Cultures differ tremendously in how they view power and equality. Some believe in strict hierarchies with clear distinctions between levels and formalized respect for people at the higher levels of an organization. In other words, for some cultures, titles and position matter more than they do for other cultures.
The company’s culture reflects the emotional intelligence (or lack) of the company leaders, and the company leaders reveal that emotional intelligence through their communication ability and style.
Reuven Bar-On, who developed the concept of emotional quotient in 1988, provides a technical definition of emotional intelligence. Emotional quotient (or intelligence) is emotional and social knowledge and the ability to:
Be aware of, understand, and express yourself.
Be aware of, understand, and relate to others.
Deal with strong emotions, and control your impulses.
Adapt to change and to solve problems of a personal or a social nature.
In Primal Leadership, Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee argue that leadership styles fall into six broad categories: (1) visionary, (2) coaching, (3) affiliative, (4) democratic, (5) pacesetting, and (6) commanding. These last two may have negative impact to the organization.
Personal Competence: These capabilities determine how we manage ourselves
Self-Awareness
Self-Management
Social Competence: These capabilities determine how we manage relationships.
Social Awareness
Relationship Management
The first-step toward emotional intelligence is self-awareness. What is important to realize is that you can develop your emotional intelligence and by doing so improve your leadership communication ability, but you need to understand your strengths and weaknesses first.
Psychological testing can help you gain insight into your behavior and how you interact with others, and also how others interact with you. You can benefit from knowing yourself better and identifying characteristics that may hinder your ability to interact effectively with others. With this knowledge, you can work toward modifying unproductive behaviors and perhaps, at a minimum, understand better why others respond to you as they do.
The MBTI consists of four dichotomies in 16 combinations. The dichotomies are as follows:
· Introvert (1) vs. Extravert (E)—indicates how are energized
· Sensing (S) vs. Intuitive (N)—suggests how you interpret or understand the world.
· Thinking (T) vs. Feeling (F)—shows how you make decisions.
· Judging (J) vs. Perceiving (P)—suggests your approach to life and work.
Many assessments are available on the Web, although some require a fee and psychologists to contact you with the results. You can take MBTI for free online, and you receive your score and a report immediately. It is particular useful in relating the test to the workplace and in explaining how different types handle different jobs and team situations.
This approach will allow you: (1) to assess your strengths and weaknesses, (2) to obtain feedback from others on your strengths and weaknesses, (3) to establish your goals, (5) to map out a plan to achieve those goals.
Categories of Nonverbal Communication
Appearance
Paralanguage
Kinesics
Occulesics
Proxemics
Facial expressions
Olfactics
Chronomics
The Following Suggestions to Improve Your Nonverbal Communication Skills
Learn as much as possible about any culture in which you will be interacting.
Do not judge someone’s actions out of context or leave the actions unexplored when important to you or the organization.
Develop your understanding or sensitivity to nonverbal cues.
Assess your own use of nonverbal communication.
Leaving: “listening out of any discussion of communication” means leaving out at least 40 to percent of the communication process. Good listening skills are essential, and the lack of them hinders many people’s careers. If you are not sure whether you are a good listener, you should take an inventory of your listening habits, either by making a list on your own, asking someone you trust to give you feedback, or taking a listening assessment. A little self-awareness will help you realize if improvement is needed and how much.
The mentor and the protégé must establish together an approach for working with each other and, if appropriate, set up a development plan with agreed upon objectives. They will also need to communicate regularly, but the protégé should be mindful of the mentor’s time commitments and be realistic in his or her expectations. Mentors, on the other hand, owe it to protégés not to commit to more than they can deliver and to establish boundaries.
The following steps should work effectively when providing feedback in most business situations:
Be well prepared for the feedback session.
Create a receptive environment.
Assume a comfortable demeanor.
Start by setting the context for the meeting.
Move quickly into your main objectives, which should not be so numerous they overwhelm.
Ensure throughout that the receiver understands your points
Be very specific about the actions you expect the receiver to undertake as a result of this feedback session and the timing for completing them.
Realizing the value of cultural differences is a key component of emotional intelligence. Only by understanding and appreciating cultural diversity can you know how best to communicate with all of the different audiences that form the complexion of most of the world’s corporation today.
Culture is learned and shared equally by others of the same culture whereas personality is highly individual and influenced by our genes and our environment.
Cultures and professions can be arrayed on a spectrum ranging from low context to high context. Low context cultures depend relatively little on existing relationships for meaning in communication and rely instead on explicit verbal messages. High context cultures rely more extensively on relationships to understand meaning and place less importance on verbal messages.
The importance of context in a culture, high or low, influences how individuals approach exchanges of information and determines how messages flow between people and levels of organization.
Time is a commodity and is meant to be measured and managed, conserved or wasted, spent wisely or foolishly. Events are sequentially, one at a time, and this schedule takes precedence over relationships and people.
Language has been described as the “central influence on culture and one of the most highly changed symbols of a culture or a nation. All cultural levels have language differences: industries, professions, functions, and even genders.
Cultures differ tremendously in how they view power and equality. Some believe in strict hierarchies with clear distinctions between levels and formalized respect for people at the higher levels of an organization. In other words, for some cultures, titles and position matter more than they do for other cultures.
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Monday, October 09, 2006
Leadership Communication--Chapter 5 Summary
CHAPTER 5 USING GRAPHICS AND POWERPOINT FOR A LEADERSHIP EDGE
Leaders need to know how and when to use graphics. Graphics improve presentations and documents, particularly if the material is primarily quantitative, structural, pictorial, or so complicated that it can be illustrated more efficiently and effectively with a visual aid than with words alone. Graphics will contribute to the success of your oral and written communication.
RECOGNIZING WHEN TO USE GRAPHICS
Specifically, graphics should serve the following purposes:
1. Reinforce the message.
2. Provide a road map to the structure of presentation.
3. Illustrate relationships and concepts visually.
4. Support assertions.
5. Emphasize important ideas.
6. Maintain and enhance interests.
SELECTING AND DESIGNING EFFECTIVE DATA CHARTS
For data charts to add to your presentation or document, you first need to clarify your message and then you can determine the type and content of the graph that will add to, support, or explain that message best. Although you may have someone to help design your graphics, particularly if you have reached a high level in an organization, you will find it useful as you manage others and oversee the creation of your presentations to possess some knowledge of the best types of graphs, as well as the best designs, to ensure the clarity and accuracy of the different kinds of data you will be conveying to your audiences.
Edward Tufte, a Yale University statistician and author of several books on graphic design, provides the following best practice guidelines for creating data charts. Excellence in statistical graphics consists of complex ideas communicated with clarity, precision, and efficiency. Graphical displays should:
Leaders need to know how and when to use graphics. Graphics improve presentations and documents, particularly if the material is primarily quantitative, structural, pictorial, or so complicated that it can be illustrated more efficiently and effectively with a visual aid than with words alone. Graphics will contribute to the success of your oral and written communication.
RECOGNIZING WHEN TO USE GRAPHICS
Specifically, graphics should serve the following purposes:
1. Reinforce the message.
2. Provide a road map to the structure of presentation.
3. Illustrate relationships and concepts visually.
4. Support assertions.
5. Emphasize important ideas.
6. Maintain and enhance interests.
SELECTING AND DESIGNING EFFECTIVE DATA CHARTS
For data charts to add to your presentation or document, you first need to clarify your message and then you can determine the type and content of the graph that will add to, support, or explain that message best. Although you may have someone to help design your graphics, particularly if you have reached a high level in an organization, you will find it useful as you manage others and oversee the creation of your presentations to possess some knowledge of the best types of graphs, as well as the best designs, to ensure the clarity and accuracy of the different kinds of data you will be conveying to your audiences.
Edward Tufte, a Yale University statistician and author of several books on graphic design, provides the following best practice guidelines for creating data charts. Excellence in statistical graphics consists of complex ideas communicated with clarity, precision, and efficiency. Graphical displays should:
- Show the data
- Induce the viewer to think about the substance rather than methodology, graphic, design, the technology of graphic production, or something else.
- Avoid distorting what the data have to say.
- Present many numbers in a small space.
- Make large data sets coherent.
- Encourage the eye to compare different pieces of data.
- Reveal the data at several levels of detail, from a broad overview to the fine structure.
- Serve a reasonably clear purpose:description, exploration, taulation, or decoration.
- Be closely integrated with the stastitical and verbal descriptions of data set.
MAKING THE MOST OF POWERPOINT AS A DESIGN AND PRESENTATION TOOL
Top ten Guidelines for Using Graphics and PowerPoint for a Leadership Edge
1. Decide on your message, determine what information or data best supports it, and then decide how best to show that data graphically.
2. Use graphics for the right reasons, such as to reinforce your message, to provide a road map of your presentation, and to support assertions.
3. Select the right kind of graph to illustrate your message.
4. Use integrity in selecting and designing all graphics. making sure any graphs do not distort the data.
5. Keep your graphic simple. The graphic should make your message easier to understand, not more difficult; however, make sure it is meanigful and actually says something.
6. Use a title that captures the "so what?" of your slide so that your audience sees immediately the message the graphs is communicating.
7. Create your own PowerPoint template or modify the standard ones Microsoft provides so that the presentation reflects your personality or that of your company.
8. Make the font size and any graphics images large enough for the audience to see even from the back of the room.
9. Be careful with your color selections; go for contrast but conservative.
10. Avoid overusing or misusing animation.
Leadership Communication Chapter 4 Summary
CHAPTER 4 DEVELOPING AND DELIVERING LEADERSHIP PRESENTATIONS
PLANNNG YOUR PRESENTATION
In the planning phase of developing your presentation, you need to:
(1) determine your strategy;
(2) analyze your audience;
(3) select the medium and delivery method;
(4) organize and establish your logical structure and;
(5) Round-Table Presentations. You should select the round-table approach any time you want to achieve one of the following: -Encourage an informal, interactive discussion.
-Receive input from audience members.
Stand-Up Extemporaneous Presentations
One of the most popular deliver methods for business presentations is still the stand-up extemporaneous presentation. It is the most difficult but also the most effective form of presentation if structured and delivered correctly. Extemporaneous presentations offer three major advantages over any other method. They allow you to:
1. Maintain eye contact and rapport with your audience.
2. Make adjustments based on the audience's response.
3. Appear confident and knowledgeable.
Impromptu Presentations
Many of the presentations you will deliver will be impromptu, which means you are called on to deliver them without much, if any, warning. This is the classic "elevator speech," in which you only have the time the elevator takes to go between floors to answer the questions.
Establishing a Logical and Effective Presentation Structure
The organization or structure of a presentation proceeds from the needs and interests of the audience, your purpose, and the demands of the subject matter. When you start to outline or map out your presentation, you will refer first to the analysis of your audience to determine the most effective structure. In most cases, it works best to stated the conclusions or recommendations and then provide the supporting data; however, if your audience will be resistant to your conclusions or recommendations, then you may want to build our argument and present the evidence first.
As you amp out your preliminary plans for the organization of the presentation, remember that in a speech the audience cannot go back and look at the preceding message as they might in a document. You thus need to make sure that each point is logically related to the ideas that precede it and the information that follows, and that you use adequate, even obvious, transitions from point to point.
When creating and organizing a presentation as a team, you should establish the format first, and since most presentations routinely use PowerPoint templates, you should select one that meets your needs.
PREPARING A PRESENTATION TO ACHIEVE THE GREATEST IMPACT
After you have analyzed your audience, developed your communication strategy, and determined the overall structure, you are ready to start preparing the actual presentation. The preparation consists of developing the introduction, body, and conclusion; creating the graphics; testing the flow and logix; editing and proofreading; and practicing.
Presenting Effectively and with Greater Confidence
When it comes time to present, you should concentrates on your delivery style, focusing particularly on eye contact, stance, speech, and overall effect. You want to appear comfortable, confident, enthusiastic, and professional. Since much of the success of your presentation will be determined by how your audience perceives you right at the beginning, you should be prepared to establish your expertise and your value to the audience immediately and maintain that posistive ethos throughout.
The best way to project a positive ethos is to believe in what you are saying and to be fully prepared. As obvious as it may sound, nothing will take the place of preparation. To deliver presentation, you must be prepared.
To appear confident and project a positive ethos when presenting, you need to do the following:
1. Focus your energy on your audience.
2. Create and maintain rapport.
3. Adopt a secure stance.
4. Establish and maintain eye contact.
5. Project and vary your oice.
6. Demonstrate your message with gestures.
7. Adjust pace of delivery based on the audience response.
PLANNNG YOUR PRESENTATION
In the planning phase of developing your presentation, you need to:
(1) determine your strategy;
(2) analyze your audience;
(3) select the medium and delivery method;
(4) organize and establish your logical structure and;
(5) Round-Table Presentations. You should select the round-table approach any time you want to achieve one of the following: -Encourage an informal, interactive discussion.
-Receive input from audience members.
Stand-Up Extemporaneous Presentations
One of the most popular deliver methods for business presentations is still the stand-up extemporaneous presentation. It is the most difficult but also the most effective form of presentation if structured and delivered correctly. Extemporaneous presentations offer three major advantages over any other method. They allow you to:
1. Maintain eye contact and rapport with your audience.
2. Make adjustments based on the audience's response.
3. Appear confident and knowledgeable.
Impromptu Presentations
Many of the presentations you will deliver will be impromptu, which means you are called on to deliver them without much, if any, warning. This is the classic "elevator speech," in which you only have the time the elevator takes to go between floors to answer the questions.
Establishing a Logical and Effective Presentation Structure
The organization or structure of a presentation proceeds from the needs and interests of the audience, your purpose, and the demands of the subject matter. When you start to outline or map out your presentation, you will refer first to the analysis of your audience to determine the most effective structure. In most cases, it works best to stated the conclusions or recommendations and then provide the supporting data; however, if your audience will be resistant to your conclusions or recommendations, then you may want to build our argument and present the evidence first.
As you amp out your preliminary plans for the organization of the presentation, remember that in a speech the audience cannot go back and look at the preceding message as they might in a document. You thus need to make sure that each point is logically related to the ideas that precede it and the information that follows, and that you use adequate, even obvious, transitions from point to point.
When creating and organizing a presentation as a team, you should establish the format first, and since most presentations routinely use PowerPoint templates, you should select one that meets your needs.
PREPARING A PRESENTATION TO ACHIEVE THE GREATEST IMPACT
After you have analyzed your audience, developed your communication strategy, and determined the overall structure, you are ready to start preparing the actual presentation. The preparation consists of developing the introduction, body, and conclusion; creating the graphics; testing the flow and logix; editing and proofreading; and practicing.
Presenting Effectively and with Greater Confidence
When it comes time to present, you should concentrates on your delivery style, focusing particularly on eye contact, stance, speech, and overall effect. You want to appear comfortable, confident, enthusiastic, and professional. Since much of the success of your presentation will be determined by how your audience perceives you right at the beginning, you should be prepared to establish your expertise and your value to the audience immediately and maintain that posistive ethos throughout.
The best way to project a positive ethos is to believe in what you are saying and to be fully prepared. As obvious as it may sound, nothing will take the place of preparation. To deliver presentation, you must be prepared.
To appear confident and project a positive ethos when presenting, you need to do the following:
1. Focus your energy on your audience.
2. Create and maintain rapport.
3. Adopt a secure stance.
4. Establish and maintain eye contact.
5. Project and vary your oice.
6. Demonstrate your message with gestures.
7. Adjust pace of delivery based on the audience response.
Thursday, October 05, 2006
Leadership and Communication Chapter 3 Summary
CHAPTER 3 USING LANGUAGE TO ACHIEVE A LEADERSHIP PURPOSE
Leaders lead and inspire others to action through their effective use of language. In The Art of Framing:Managing the Language of Leadership, Gail Firhurst and Robert Sarr argue that "leadership is a langugage game, one that many do not know they are playing. Even though most leaders spend nearly 70 percent of their time communicating, they pay relatively little attention to how they use language as a tool of influence." The in troduction in this text discussed how leaders use language as a tool of influence every day. Their ability to influence their audience positively, overcoming barriers to effective communication, is the essence of leadership communication. The goal is to helph you create a positive ethos through the effective use of language--the use of the right words in the right way to achieve the outcome you intend. You reveal your ethos through the laguage you use. As a leader, you want your audience to perceive a positive ethos in your tone, to see you as confident, and to trust and believe you.
ACHIEVING A POSITIVE ETHOS THROUGH TONE AND STYLE
To project a confident tone when you speak and when you write, you need to posses confidence not only in your knowledge on the subject but also in your ability to capture the content in the right words used in the right way. You want to sound confident and speak with authority. You want to be clear and crisp in your language yet not sound too harsh or brusque. The words you select and how you decide to combine them in sentences create your style as your tone, and through that tone, they make assumptions about your ethos. The tone, or what your readers perceive as your attitude toward them or toward the subject, influences the success of your message to such a great extent that you must always be aware of its impact.
COMMUNICATING CONCISELY
One way to make your writing clear is to make it concise. Clear writing is direct, to the point, and free of jargon, pomposity, and wordy constructions. To achieve conciseness in your writing, you may need to break old habits of wordiness that you do not even realize you have. Writing concisely requires practice and a critical eye for your own style.
Following the ten guidelines below will help you achieve greater conciseness and a style that is more direct and forceful.
1. Avoid the Overuse of the Passive Voice--The Actor Should Usually Come First in the Sentence.
2. Avoid Expletives, Such as "There Is" or "It Is"--Watch for the "It is...That" Constrcution is Particular
3. Avoid the Use of Prepositional Idioms
4. Avoid the Overuse of Relative Pronouns--"Who, "Which", and "That"
5. Avoid the Repetition of Words and Ideas.
6. Do Not Overuse Descriptive Words, Particularly Adverbs (-ly Words)
7. Avoid Weasel Words, Ambigous Noncommital Words (e.g, almost, as much as, can bem like, things, up to, feel, look, help)
8. Be Aware of Jargon (Language Used in Particular Disciplines) and Other Kinds of Gobbledygook.
9. Avoid Nominalizations (a Jargon Word Used by Linguistists That Means Turning Verbs into Nouns by Adding-tion)
10. Avoid Redundancies
USING BUSINESS LANGUAGE CORRECTLY
A concise and confident style and an appropriate tone contribute to a positive ethos. In addition, studeies have found that the correct use of language affects ethos as well.
Correct use of language in business communication is indeed important. For a leader, it is crucial. Your credibility as a leader, your ability to represent yourself and your company, and your ethos all depend on using language carefully. Careless errors are potentially damaging to a company. Error-prone writers might, for example, inadvertantly obligate themselves or their firms financially, compromise themselves or their firms ethically, or erode their own and their firms' credibility.
The Language Rules That Matter
The rules that govern the English anguage are numerous; however, some are more important thatn others and, according to survey findings, matter more than others in contemporary business communication. What follows is a brief overview of the roles that matter to business professionals today and a guide to traditional business grammas (as opposed to journalism or other contemporary usage). If you see yourself as very strong in standard business grammar, you could skip the short review. If you are unsure, you might want to pause before reading the next section to complete the "Usage Self-Assessment".
Surveys of executives and of memebers of the Association for the Business Communication have identified and the types of errors that business professionals find most bothersome:
1. Sentence Fragment
2. Unpunctuated Parenthetical Expression (Interrupter)
3. Run-On Sentence
4. Faulty Parallel Structure
5. Dangling Modifier
6. Apostrophe in Plural Noun
7. Comma Splice
8. Use of Reflexive Pronoun When Objective Case Is Needed
9. Use of Less for a Count Noun
10. Use of Nominative Case Pronoun in Compund Indirect Object
11. Use of Between for More Than Two
12. Adverbial Clause as Complement to Linking Verb
13. Its/It's Confusion
14. Use of Adverb "Badly" with State-of-Being Verb "Feel"
15. Mispelling of "Principle"
26. Lack of Apostrophe in Possessive Noun
17. Starting a Sentence with "But"
18. "Which" Used to Refer to Entire Preceding Clause
19. Use of Plural Pronoun to Refer to Singular Noun
20. Use of Plural Verb with Either/Or Subject Structure
The Power of Punctuation
Why does punctuation matter? It allow us to follow the complete thoughts embodied in sentences and distinguish between them. Punctuation makes reading easier and can lead to misreading if used incorrectly.
The strongerst marks of punctuation are the end marks (? !.), and the weakest are commas (,) and dashes (-). Confusion usually comes over what to do with the marks in between--the colon (:) and the semicolon (;). The colon is used to introduce lists or to signal that what follows exlains or elaborates what has come before. The semicolon is used to separate closely related independent clauses not joined by a coordinating conjunction (and, or, but, for, so, yet, not); to separate the independent clauses joined by conjunctive adverbs (accordingly, also, besieds, consequently, further, however, moreover, nevertheless, then, therefore, thus, etc.);or to separate a series of phrases or clauses containing numerous commas.
EMPLOYING EFFICIENT AND AFFECTIVE EDITING TECHNIQUES
Editing is an important skill that requires discipline and practice. It is particularly difficult to edit your own work. Many business wirters are not sure what it is that they need to watch for besides the obvious types and spelling. The advanced editing techniques shown here works well for leadership communication. Try it or develop your own method based on what you know are your particular strentgh and weaknesses. The key is to develp a method of some sort; otherwise, your editing will lack focus and may become haphazard.
The following acronym will help you remember this editing method: "Do Save Money."
D= Document (overall coherence, organization, formatting, tone)
S= Sentences (structure, clarity, conciseness)
M= Mechanics (typos, spelling, usage, diction)
Leaders lead and inspire others to action through their effective use of language. In The Art of Framing:Managing the Language of Leadership, Gail Firhurst and Robert Sarr argue that "leadership is a langugage game, one that many do not know they are playing. Even though most leaders spend nearly 70 percent of their time communicating, they pay relatively little attention to how they use language as a tool of influence." The in troduction in this text discussed how leaders use language as a tool of influence every day. Their ability to influence their audience positively, overcoming barriers to effective communication, is the essence of leadership communication. The goal is to helph you create a positive ethos through the effective use of language--the use of the right words in the right way to achieve the outcome you intend. You reveal your ethos through the laguage you use. As a leader, you want your audience to perceive a positive ethos in your tone, to see you as confident, and to trust and believe you.
ACHIEVING A POSITIVE ETHOS THROUGH TONE AND STYLE
To project a confident tone when you speak and when you write, you need to posses confidence not only in your knowledge on the subject but also in your ability to capture the content in the right words used in the right way. You want to sound confident and speak with authority. You want to be clear and crisp in your language yet not sound too harsh or brusque. The words you select and how you decide to combine them in sentences create your style as your tone, and through that tone, they make assumptions about your ethos. The tone, or what your readers perceive as your attitude toward them or toward the subject, influences the success of your message to such a great extent that you must always be aware of its impact.
COMMUNICATING CONCISELY
One way to make your writing clear is to make it concise. Clear writing is direct, to the point, and free of jargon, pomposity, and wordy constructions. To achieve conciseness in your writing, you may need to break old habits of wordiness that you do not even realize you have. Writing concisely requires practice and a critical eye for your own style.
Following the ten guidelines below will help you achieve greater conciseness and a style that is more direct and forceful.
1. Avoid the Overuse of the Passive Voice--The Actor Should Usually Come First in the Sentence.
2. Avoid Expletives, Such as "There Is" or "It Is"--Watch for the "It is...That" Constrcution is Particular
3. Avoid the Use of Prepositional Idioms
4. Avoid the Overuse of Relative Pronouns--"Who, "Which", and "That"
5. Avoid the Repetition of Words and Ideas.
6. Do Not Overuse Descriptive Words, Particularly Adverbs (-ly Words)
7. Avoid Weasel Words, Ambigous Noncommital Words (e.g, almost, as much as, can bem like, things, up to, feel, look, help)
8. Be Aware of Jargon (Language Used in Particular Disciplines) and Other Kinds of Gobbledygook.
9. Avoid Nominalizations (a Jargon Word Used by Linguistists That Means Turning Verbs into Nouns by Adding-tion)
10. Avoid Redundancies
USING BUSINESS LANGUAGE CORRECTLY
A concise and confident style and an appropriate tone contribute to a positive ethos. In addition, studeies have found that the correct use of language affects ethos as well.
Correct use of language in business communication is indeed important. For a leader, it is crucial. Your credibility as a leader, your ability to represent yourself and your company, and your ethos all depend on using language carefully. Careless errors are potentially damaging to a company. Error-prone writers might, for example, inadvertantly obligate themselves or their firms financially, compromise themselves or their firms ethically, or erode their own and their firms' credibility.
The Language Rules That Matter
The rules that govern the English anguage are numerous; however, some are more important thatn others and, according to survey findings, matter more than others in contemporary business communication. What follows is a brief overview of the roles that matter to business professionals today and a guide to traditional business grammas (as opposed to journalism or other contemporary usage). If you see yourself as very strong in standard business grammar, you could skip the short review. If you are unsure, you might want to pause before reading the next section to complete the "Usage Self-Assessment".
Surveys of executives and of memebers of the Association for the Business Communication have identified and the types of errors that business professionals find most bothersome:
1. Sentence Fragment
2. Unpunctuated Parenthetical Expression (Interrupter)
3. Run-On Sentence
4. Faulty Parallel Structure
5. Dangling Modifier
6. Apostrophe in Plural Noun
7. Comma Splice
8. Use of Reflexive Pronoun When Objective Case Is Needed
9. Use of Less for a Count Noun
10. Use of Nominative Case Pronoun in Compund Indirect Object
11. Use of Between for More Than Two
12. Adverbial Clause as Complement to Linking Verb
13. Its/It's Confusion
14. Use of Adverb "Badly" with State-of-Being Verb "Feel"
15. Mispelling of "Principle"
26. Lack of Apostrophe in Possessive Noun
17. Starting a Sentence with "But"
18. "Which" Used to Refer to Entire Preceding Clause
19. Use of Plural Pronoun to Refer to Singular Noun
20. Use of Plural Verb with Either/Or Subject Structure
The Power of Punctuation
Why does punctuation matter? It allow us to follow the complete thoughts embodied in sentences and distinguish between them. Punctuation makes reading easier and can lead to misreading if used incorrectly.
The strongerst marks of punctuation are the end marks (? !.), and the weakest are commas (,) and dashes (-). Confusion usually comes over what to do with the marks in between--the colon (:) and the semicolon (;). The colon is used to introduce lists or to signal that what follows exlains or elaborates what has come before. The semicolon is used to separate closely related independent clauses not joined by a coordinating conjunction (and, or, but, for, so, yet, not); to separate the independent clauses joined by conjunctive adverbs (accordingly, also, besieds, consequently, further, however, moreover, nevertheless, then, therefore, thus, etc.);or to separate a series of phrases or clauses containing numerous commas.
EMPLOYING EFFICIENT AND AFFECTIVE EDITING TECHNIQUES
Editing is an important skill that requires discipline and practice. It is particularly difficult to edit your own work. Many business wirters are not sure what it is that they need to watch for besides the obvious types and spelling. The advanced editing techniques shown here works well for leadership communication. Try it or develop your own method based on what you know are your particular strentgh and weaknesses. The key is to develp a method of some sort; otherwise, your editing will lack focus and may become haphazard.
The following acronym will help you remember this editing method: "Do Save Money."
D= Document (overall coherence, organization, formatting, tone)
S= Sentences (structure, clarity, conciseness)
M= Mechanics (typos, spelling, usage, diction)
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
CHAPTERS SUMMARY OF LEADERSHIP AND COMMUNICATION
Chapter 1
LEADERSHIP AND COMMUNICATION
Leaders need to consider strategy in communication just as they do in other areas of their business. As traditionally defined in business, strategy consists of two pieces: (1) determining your goals and (2) developing a plan to achieve them. The same definition applies to communication strategy.
ESTABLISHING A CLEAR PURPOSE
Leaders recognize that communication has consequences; you need to be sure the results you produce are those you intend. To achieve your intended results, you first need to establish a clear purpose. The three general purposes:
- To inform—transferring facts, data, or information to someone.
- To persuade—convincing someone to do something.
- To instruct—instructing someone in process
Clarifying Your Purpose
Just as leaders need to determine a strategic vision or a clearly stated direction for their companies, you need to establish a clear purpose or direction for your communication.
Generating Ideas
Once you determine your specific purpose, and sometimes while you are determining it, you can begin to come up with the supporting words and ideas and explore your thoughts about the subject.
There are four ways useful in helping you to push your thinking:
1) Brainstorming
2) Idea Mapping
3) The Journalist’s Questions: Who? What? Why? When? Where? How?
4) The Decision Tree
DETERMINING YOUR COMMUNICATION STRATEGY
Once you have clarified your purpose, you are ready to engage in the tactical side of communication strategy. Effective communication—whether a simple e-mail or memo, a complex report, a meeting, or a presentation—requires going beyond clarity of purpose to the plan for accomplishing your purpose, the second essential step in any good strategy.
ANALYZING YOUR AUDIENCES
Analyzing an audience is fundamental to any communication strategy since the characteristics of audiences will determine your approach and shape your targeted messages.
Leaders need to communicate to audiences with a range of expertise from the layperson or non-expert to the technical or highly specialized individual/
In addition, when you seek a decision from your audience, you might want to consider their decision-making style to ensure that you use a communication approach that will be persuasive with them.
In ay situation, internal or external to your organization, knowing how your audiences make decisions will help you target your message.
ORGANIZING WRITTEN AND ORAL COMMUNICATION EFFECTIVELY
Once you have clarified your purpose, conducted your audience analysis, and created a strategy, you are ready to select the best structure for organizing your communication in your early thinking about how best to present your ideas to your audience.
You can pose the following questions to determine the best approach to organizing your communication:
- What is the most effective way to begin the document or presentation with this audience?
- How should I organize the content to ensure that the audience can follow the argument easily and understand the main ideas?
- What is the most effective way to conclude?
Selecting Organizational Devices
The following methods to organize individual sections and even the entire document or presentation:
1. Deduction
2. Induction
3. Chronological
4. Cause/Effect
5. Comparison/contrast
6. Problem/solution
7. Spatial
Using the Pyramid Principle
Using the Pyramid principle helps you structure a complete and logical argument. As you create the pyramid, you can easily see gaps in your evidence, establish the balance of your argument, and determine if each level logically supported the next.
Creating a Storyboard
Another technique for working out the structure of your communication is a storyboard. A storyboard is particularly useful if you are working in a team ti prepare a presentation. It allows everyone to see the logical flow and encourages you to think the individual slides you need to support each section.
Chapter 2
CREATING LEADERSHIP DOCUMENTS
SELECTING THE MOST EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION MEDIUM
As with any effective leadership communication, you need to clarify your purpose, analyze your audience, and develop a communication strategy before you put pen to paper or fingers to the keyboard to create a document.
If you have a complete freedom to select the medium and are not limited by the chain of communication or the practices in the organization, you should select the medium best suited for the context and your message.
CREATING INDIVIDUAL AND TEAM DOCUMENTS
Once you have developed your strategy and selected the most appropriate medium, you can then create and perfect your written communication.
Creating Individual Documents
Approaches to creating documents differ from person to person. Some people work best from an outline, while others feel more comfortable using the idea mapping or brainstorming techniques.
You should find the approach that work the best or you, but realize that you will be more productive if you follow some sort of step-by-step plan.
Creating Team Documents
Teams use one of two ways to divide the tasks: (1) one person on the team does all of the writing with the others providing the content to the scribe, (2) the team divides the writing among the team members according to the sections for which they have provided most of the moment.
The Single-Scribe Approach—ensures consistency in style and format.
The Multiple-Writer Approach—divides the writing among team members.
Controlling Versions
Version control is essential when creating the versions of your documents.
ORGANIZING THE CONTENT COHERENTLY
The initial stages of creating a document may be rather messy, particularly the idea generation stage. When you are generating ideas, you are engaged analytically, which means you are breaking things apart and probably even free-associating as one idea leads to another. Once you move into the stage of organizing them to present them to others. A business audience expects order and logic in a document; they expect it to make sense to them, to be coherent.
Organizing and Content
How organization depends on purpose, audience, and strategy, and explained some of the options for organizing your communication. You need to anticipate your audience’s response and stay focused on your purpose. You will want to select the organizing device that best matches your purpose and content, such as deductive, inductive, or chronological.
Opening with Power
In your opening, most of the time you should begin strongly by quickly stating your main message, but let your analysis of your audience guides you. You may want to begin indirectly for the following reasons:
- To establish the context for the communication if it is part of a chain communication.
- To include a more gentle opening with some appropriate pleasantries if your audience’s culture would expect it.
- To explain the reasoning or logic if you have complicated information to deliver.
Developing with Reason
You should aim for the same directness and brevity in the discussion or development section of your documents as you do in your introduction. Once you know you have the right topics and can develop each topic adequately, you should feel comfortable that your discussion section will appear reasonable to your audience.
Closing with Grace
Once you have taken your audience through your discussion, you should end as quickly and directly as you began. You should, however, provide a sense of polite, unrushed closure. Traditional academic writing requires closings that restate or summarize what has already been said. A letter, a memo, or e-mail is too short to require such repetition of ideas. A conclusion in a letter, memo, or e-mail should call for action, mention contact information or follow-up arrangements.
In a longer document, you may want to summarize your main points very briefly, and depending on the type of report, you may end with your conclusions or recommendations. However, it is usually more effective to have stated your conclusions or recommendations up front and end with next steps or implementation plans.
CONFORMING TO CONTENT AND FORMATTING EXPECTATIONS IN CORRESPONDENCE
You will determine the actual content of your letters, memos, and emails based on your purpose, strategy, and audience, but these types of business communications do carry with them some expectations of what you should include. In addition, you want to use a format that follows standard business writing conventions, which are designed to make your documents accessible as well as attractive.
INCLUDING EXPECTED CONTENT IN REPORTS
Business audiences also have expectations for longer documents and reports. The type of report, the company style, as well as the industry standards will often dictate content and organization. As a leader of organization, you may write reports that inform, instruct, or persuade. Often, you may team up with or supervise others in writing these reports. They may be long or short, informal or formal.
LEADERSHIP AND COMMUNICATION
Leaders need to consider strategy in communication just as they do in other areas of their business. As traditionally defined in business, strategy consists of two pieces: (1) determining your goals and (2) developing a plan to achieve them. The same definition applies to communication strategy.
ESTABLISHING A CLEAR PURPOSE
Leaders recognize that communication has consequences; you need to be sure the results you produce are those you intend. To achieve your intended results, you first need to establish a clear purpose. The three general purposes:
- To inform—transferring facts, data, or information to someone.
- To persuade—convincing someone to do something.
- To instruct—instructing someone in process
Clarifying Your Purpose
Just as leaders need to determine a strategic vision or a clearly stated direction for their companies, you need to establish a clear purpose or direction for your communication.
Generating Ideas
Once you determine your specific purpose, and sometimes while you are determining it, you can begin to come up with the supporting words and ideas and explore your thoughts about the subject.
There are four ways useful in helping you to push your thinking:
1) Brainstorming
2) Idea Mapping
3) The Journalist’s Questions: Who? What? Why? When? Where? How?
4) The Decision Tree
DETERMINING YOUR COMMUNICATION STRATEGY
Once you have clarified your purpose, you are ready to engage in the tactical side of communication strategy. Effective communication—whether a simple e-mail or memo, a complex report, a meeting, or a presentation—requires going beyond clarity of purpose to the plan for accomplishing your purpose, the second essential step in any good strategy.
ANALYZING YOUR AUDIENCES
Analyzing an audience is fundamental to any communication strategy since the characteristics of audiences will determine your approach and shape your targeted messages.
Leaders need to communicate to audiences with a range of expertise from the layperson or non-expert to the technical or highly specialized individual/
In addition, when you seek a decision from your audience, you might want to consider their decision-making style to ensure that you use a communication approach that will be persuasive with them.
In ay situation, internal or external to your organization, knowing how your audiences make decisions will help you target your message.
ORGANIZING WRITTEN AND ORAL COMMUNICATION EFFECTIVELY
Once you have clarified your purpose, conducted your audience analysis, and created a strategy, you are ready to select the best structure for organizing your communication in your early thinking about how best to present your ideas to your audience.
You can pose the following questions to determine the best approach to organizing your communication:
- What is the most effective way to begin the document or presentation with this audience?
- How should I organize the content to ensure that the audience can follow the argument easily and understand the main ideas?
- What is the most effective way to conclude?
Selecting Organizational Devices
The following methods to organize individual sections and even the entire document or presentation:
1. Deduction
2. Induction
3. Chronological
4. Cause/Effect
5. Comparison/contrast
6. Problem/solution
7. Spatial
Using the Pyramid Principle
Using the Pyramid principle helps you structure a complete and logical argument. As you create the pyramid, you can easily see gaps in your evidence, establish the balance of your argument, and determine if each level logically supported the next.
Creating a Storyboard
Another technique for working out the structure of your communication is a storyboard. A storyboard is particularly useful if you are working in a team ti prepare a presentation. It allows everyone to see the logical flow and encourages you to think the individual slides you need to support each section.
Chapter 2
CREATING LEADERSHIP DOCUMENTS
SELECTING THE MOST EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION MEDIUM
As with any effective leadership communication, you need to clarify your purpose, analyze your audience, and develop a communication strategy before you put pen to paper or fingers to the keyboard to create a document.
If you have a complete freedom to select the medium and are not limited by the chain of communication or the practices in the organization, you should select the medium best suited for the context and your message.
CREATING INDIVIDUAL AND TEAM DOCUMENTS
Once you have developed your strategy and selected the most appropriate medium, you can then create and perfect your written communication.
Creating Individual Documents
Approaches to creating documents differ from person to person. Some people work best from an outline, while others feel more comfortable using the idea mapping or brainstorming techniques.
You should find the approach that work the best or you, but realize that you will be more productive if you follow some sort of step-by-step plan.
Creating Team Documents
Teams use one of two ways to divide the tasks: (1) one person on the team does all of the writing with the others providing the content to the scribe, (2) the team divides the writing among the team members according to the sections for which they have provided most of the moment.
The Single-Scribe Approach—ensures consistency in style and format.
The Multiple-Writer Approach—divides the writing among team members.
Controlling Versions
Version control is essential when creating the versions of your documents.
ORGANIZING THE CONTENT COHERENTLY
The initial stages of creating a document may be rather messy, particularly the idea generation stage. When you are generating ideas, you are engaged analytically, which means you are breaking things apart and probably even free-associating as one idea leads to another. Once you move into the stage of organizing them to present them to others. A business audience expects order and logic in a document; they expect it to make sense to them, to be coherent.
Organizing and Content
How organization depends on purpose, audience, and strategy, and explained some of the options for organizing your communication. You need to anticipate your audience’s response and stay focused on your purpose. You will want to select the organizing device that best matches your purpose and content, such as deductive, inductive, or chronological.
Opening with Power
In your opening, most of the time you should begin strongly by quickly stating your main message, but let your analysis of your audience guides you. You may want to begin indirectly for the following reasons:
- To establish the context for the communication if it is part of a chain communication.
- To include a more gentle opening with some appropriate pleasantries if your audience’s culture would expect it.
- To explain the reasoning or logic if you have complicated information to deliver.
Developing with Reason
You should aim for the same directness and brevity in the discussion or development section of your documents as you do in your introduction. Once you know you have the right topics and can develop each topic adequately, you should feel comfortable that your discussion section will appear reasonable to your audience.
Closing with Grace
Once you have taken your audience through your discussion, you should end as quickly and directly as you began. You should, however, provide a sense of polite, unrushed closure. Traditional academic writing requires closings that restate or summarize what has already been said. A letter, a memo, or e-mail is too short to require such repetition of ideas. A conclusion in a letter, memo, or e-mail should call for action, mention contact information or follow-up arrangements.
In a longer document, you may want to summarize your main points very briefly, and depending on the type of report, you may end with your conclusions or recommendations. However, it is usually more effective to have stated your conclusions or recommendations up front and end with next steps or implementation plans.
CONFORMING TO CONTENT AND FORMATTING EXPECTATIONS IN CORRESPONDENCE
You will determine the actual content of your letters, memos, and emails based on your purpose, strategy, and audience, but these types of business communications do carry with them some expectations of what you should include. In addition, you want to use a format that follows standard business writing conventions, which are designed to make your documents accessible as well as attractive.
INCLUDING EXPECTED CONTENT IN REPORTS
Business audiences also have expectations for longer documents and reports. The type of report, the company style, as well as the industry standards will often dictate content and organization. As a leader of organization, you may write reports that inform, instruct, or persuade. Often, you may team up with or supervise others in writing these reports. They may be long or short, informal or formal.
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