“Congratulations. We’re making you partner (or MD, or SVP, etc.). Now what have you done for us lately?”
At some point in the discussions with your firm or company about moving to the next stage of your career, you realized that the “promised land” that you had been viewing over the wall was, in fact, a heavily tilled and managed garden that required a great deal of work to maintain. If you work in law, accounting, or consulting, the partnership landscape today involves heavy emphasis on partner production rates, work generation credits, and responsibility to participate in more committees than you realized existed. If you’ve been promoted to the next level in finance or another corporate setting, the excitement about potential benefits can cloud your view of the complexity of the obligation. For some, the euphoria of receiving the promotion wears off faster than the buzz from the celebration your spouse threw for you.
We all know people who started down a particular career path because they weren’t sure what else to do, and that’s fine. You have to start somewhere. But no one becomes a senior leader in an organization because he or she “couldn’t think of anything else to do.” It takes too much work. Getting where you are took dedication and strategy—and probably a little bit of luck. The planning that allowed you to make it to this point is evidence that you want more than a job—you want a career. That career path doesn’t end with your current role. If you made partner or managing director at your firm in your thirties, and you plan to work into your sixties, it’s silly to think that you won’t grow and develop for the next 30 years. The planning that it took to reach this point was practice for the planning that will take you to the next level.
Every senior executive title in an organization is, de facto, a leadership role. However, not everyone with the title is a leader. Those who rise above the functional skills of their jobs are those who distinguish themselves as strategic thinkers and broad-based contributors and who place themselves in the running for more significant roles. Regardless of how you define yourself within your organization, you will have to demonstrate leadership skills, whether in leading your team, your practice area, your office, a particular initiative for the organization, or in leading ideas for your specialty in the larger business community.
In any bookstore, you can find shelf after shelf of books on leadership. Most are written by current leaders in business or politics or sports. Each has its own five-point plan or seven-step structure or ten-element pyramid principle. Each is worthy in its own right, and each will tell you what you already know: your leadership ability depends in large part on your ability to determine what you stand for, where you want to take your followers, and how you want to get there. These concepts are often referred to as your values, your vision, and your plan. One skill common to all effective leaders is the ability to articulate each of these elements, making superior communication skills an essential part of your leadership ability.
The one absolute necessity of a leader is a group of followers. Without other people, all the other elements of leadership leave us nothing more than potential. Leadership is, therefore, all about others—the ability to connect with them, the ability to inspire them, and the ability to guide them. It’s not about you.
Let’s look at how you can communicate your values, your vision, and your plan, whether in writing, speaking, or meeting with others. In each section we will focus on structuring your message to help your reader or listener effortlessly follow your thoughts. We will also consider the best language to use when communicating complex ideas. There is a better chance others will continue to follow you if your vision and your path are clear and easy to understand.
Strong leaders know themselves. They understand their strengths and their weaknesses and accommodate both—leverage their strengths and account for their weaknesses. Some people are innately introspective and therefore have a firm understanding of who they are and how they view themselves in the context of society. Others need help in putting language to what they know about themselves. Many personality profiles exist, both simple and complex, that can help you understand yourself. For the purpose of discussing your communication skills as a leader, we will assume you have already grappled with and come to some conclusion about who you are. Now the challenge becomes putting words around that personal message.
A leader takes his or her followers on a journey. How do you describe what you stand for in a manner that makes your audience want to join you on that trek? You must consider two steps when explaining to others the journey on which you want them to embark. First, the message must be about how your values impact your audience, rather than you. Second, the language you use must be effortless for your audience to understand. We’ve covered some of this in earlier chapters of this book. We’ll now apply those concepts to you as a leader.
Political leaders tend to describe their values with greater clarity than do leaders in industry, sports, or the military, in large part because their descriptions of themselves are what gain them their positions. Successful U.S. presidents have described themselves with a wide array of values. Harry Truman made a point of saying, “The buck stops here,” making accountability to the American people the cornerstone of his ethos. Teddy Roosevelt’s “Walk softly but carry a big stick” was reinforced by his “Don’t hit at all if you can avoid it, but never hit soft.” His words helped Americans feel strong and secure on the world stage as the nation approached its adolescence. John Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” was his way to make personal service the principle that would lead to achievements like the Peace Corps.
Whether your statement of values focuses on integrity or valor or street smarts or anything else, you must be able to phrase your values as being about others. Below are some common attributes of a leader, explained to an audience using both leader-centered language and audience-centered language.
| Leader-Centered Language | Audience-Centered Language |
| “I stand for integrity.” | “You deserve someone you can trust.” |
| “I want the world to be a better place.” | “Your children deserve a more just society.” |
| “I believe in hard work.” | “You want a leader who works as hard as you do.” |
In most business settings, we don’t have the opportunity or need to discuss ourselves or our plans on a philosophical basis. Most of our days are less “rendezvous with destiny” and more “committee meeting at 3:00.” Nevertheless, our message about ourselves remains important.
| Leader-Centered Language | Audience-Centered Language |
| “I want a better work environment.” | “You deserve a civil, open workplace.” |
| “I believe in work-life balance.” | “You want to see your kids on more than just the weekends.” |
| “I want us to be known as the best structured finance team in the country.” | “You want to be part of a nationally recognized and respected team.” |
In each case, by phrasing the content from the audience’s perspective, you as a leader will have a better chance to connect with your audience members and encourage them to join in the journey.
Once you have adopted an audience-centered mind-set, you then have to select the right language.
Leaders inspire. Your challenge is to describe your values to others in language that motivates them. Some key points and suggestions for understanding your natural inclinations regarding language:
No one wants to follow a sourpuss. Your message must talk about striving to improve, not about avoiding difficulty. That’s why Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” campaign provided a welcome respite from the dour message of resignation that Jimmy Carter seemed to embody.
You don’t motivate people by impressing them with your vast vocabulary. You get them on board when they easily understand your message. With the right language, you can phrase key ideas simply and significantly.
Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address was only 701 words long. Although 505 of them were single-syllable words, “With charity toward all. With malice toward none” rings in our ears as the epitome of elegance.
Re-read your latest speech, presentation, or memo. Did you use any words that would qualify as jargon or unusual? Did you use acronyms with which certain members of the audience might not have been familiar? Ask yourself whether your audience would have intuitively understood the language you used.
Once a sentence approaches 20 words, it becomes cumbersome. Your listeners and readers will find it harder to grasp concepts hidden in long sentences.
Again, consider your last memo. Count the number of words in each sentence for at least 10 consecutive sentences. Determine the average. Is it below 20? If so, you are starting in a solid position.
Review your last speech or key memo to your staff. Circle the verbs you used in each sentence. How often does the verb describe real action? How often did you use weak or passive verbs such as “is,” “are,” “was,” “were,” “has,” or “have”? What other word in the sentence would have described better action? Some simple examples:
We are all basically self-focused. To other people, our issues are always, out of necessity, secondary to their issues.
Search your entire document for any personal pronouns (I, me, my, mine, you, your, we, our). If you have fewer than five personal pronouns per hundred words, see where you can add some. Aim for two “you”s for every “I.”
To lead people, you must know where you want to take them and articulate it clearly. Your vision is broader than a set of specific actions, but more concrete than a vague statement of ideals. It’s a long-range goal for how you want your team or organization to be structured and function. It is, ultimately, where you are telling your followers that they are headed.
Martin Luther King, Jr., verbalized his quest for equality through his vision that his children could one day be “judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Note that he didn’t define success as the passage of a particular law. He defined success as an innate change in people’s hearts. He was leading us to evolution rather than revolution.
Leading is about others. But leading others to be complacent or to wallow in their own pity isn’t the goal of a positive, effective leader. Great leadership is about challenging and motivating others to achieve, to improve, and to grow.
As with your statement of values, your vision must be about others rather than about you, and it must be expressed in language that engages and motivates. Whether your vision is about creating the most respected M&A practice in the country, about doubling the size of your Cleveland office, or about developing a reputation as creative problem-solvers for your clients, you have to express the ideas with the same clarity with which you expressed your values.
If you reviewed the minutes of the last meeting you led, would you read a clearly articulated statement of where your firm is headed? How much of the language pertains to your group’s performance to date, rather than to the goal for the next 12 months? Does where you are now bear any resemblance to the goal you set for yourself last year? If the current plan is not designed to get you where you want to go, determine whether the goal is SMART:
If your vision doesn’t meet these criteria, you can’t achieve it, because it isn’t well defined.
Once you have articulated your vision and ensured that everyone understands it, you must determine what steps are needed to reach that goal. As with your values and your vision, when you communicate your plan, you must stay focused on your followers’ needs and use language with which they can connect.
For instance, your company determines that doubling the size of your department is essential to staying competitive. The company’s executive committee will undoubtedly convey to the entire organization what steps must be taken to make this happen. In business, we tend to be very good about telling the people below us what has to happen. We tend to be exceptionally good at telling them when it has to happen. (Yesterday would be nice.) However, we often come up short when conveying why the goal is important. Even when we do cover the why of an issue, we often forget to focus on the why from the perspective of the individual we want to lead. From whose perspective do we explain why?
Why from the company’s perspective:
“To maintain this company’s reputation for innovation.”
Why from the department’s perspective:
“To help the R&D group become a key driver of revenue for the organization.”
Why from the individual engineer’s perspective:
The closer we can tie a particular set of objectives to the individual we seek to lead, the better chance we have to connect.
As a leader, the motivation for your public speaking falls into three general categories: to persuade, to inform, and to inspire.
In earlier chapters in this book we discussed different formats for your content, depending on whether you want to be persuasive or informative. Let’s discuss here how to inspire.
When you want to inspire people to move forward, stories should drive your message. Few people are persuaded by data. We need to know our data so we can back up the claims in our stories, but it’s the stories that engage people. When you inspire, you aren’t selling people widgets. You are selling an idea. Most of us cannot process an idea on its own. We need context—a story, an example, an anecdote—to make the concept real. That’s why business school, where the content is conceptual rather than concrete, is driven by the case study method of learning. Law school, similarly, is driven by the case method. The cases are the stories that bring the concepts to life. When you want to inspire your audience, hone the message you want the audience to take from the meeting, then reflect on the stories from your experience that demonstrate the point you want to make. You should keep your stories short and upbeat. Focus the story on the very specific point you want to convey. See Chapters 1 and 2 of this book on messaging and storytelling for more specifics.
Your actions are your most forceful message about yourself and your beliefs. As a leader, you can talk a good game about supporting others, but if you consistently arrive late for meetings or play with your phone or BlackBerry while others speak, your lack of consideration is what people notice, comment on to each other, and factor into their overall impression of your professionalism and stature. You are a busy professional. So are the people who work with you. Your consideration of their time commitments and their need for the information that only you can provide contribute in large part to their willingness to get behind your ideas.
Years ago, I taught a program for the more senior leaders at the financial services firm Smith Barney. The president of the company attended the program, along with about a dozen other senior leaders. During each break in the day-long program, participants spent most of their downtime reading and responding to emails on their BlackBerrys. (This was in the days before smartphones.) As I called the group’s attention back to the class at the end of each break, the president echoed my invitation to return to the discussion, and then added, “Let me get rid of this thing,” as he shut down his BlackBerry and threw it into his briefcase. He wasn’t thinking out loud. He was sending a very direct message by modeling the behavior he expected from his team. It worked. Participants understood the message that their full attention to the discussion at hand was expected.
As you develop your leadership skills, consciously consider how you have verbalized your messages about your values, your vision, and your plan. Then consider how your actions have reinforced or detracted from those messages. Your audience absorbs information as a package, factoring in both what you say and how you say it. They then compare the words with the actions observed. Many people continually watch for inconsistencies. Your job as a leader is to ensure that the message they hear from you matches the message they experience from you daily.
By achieving the next stage in your career path, you have advanced in your leadership role in your organization. Congratulations. Don’t view it as a reward for past performance. View it instead as a vote of confidence in the values you project, the future you envision for the organization, and the strategic skills you have demonstrated thus far. When you are trusted with a leadership role, it means your superiors recognize that you have consistently put the greater good of your company or firm ahead of short-term benefits to yourself. The reward is more intrinsic: it’s the opportunity to see your followers act upon your values and vision. Ultimately, your leadership isn’t about you. It’s about them.