by those that you believe you have mastered, and put an X by those that you would like to further develop. Then map out an action plan to integrate them into your leadership communications.Communication is built on trusting relationships.
—Dale Carnegie
Powerful leaders can affect thousands or even millions of individuals. Whether a leader touches only one individual or many, the power that he or she has to change the world can never be underestimated. Consider Annie Sullivan, Helen Keller’s wondrous teacher. The focus of her leadership was merely one child, but inadvertently, the work that she did with Helen has affected millions.
Leadership ability doesn’t automatically come with the title of manager, supervisor, or team leader. It must be an ongoing learning process. Ask questions, observe carefully, and reassess the use of your resources regularly. Use your strengths, talents, and common sense.
Here are some specifics.
• Focus on the big picture. Understand how the work your team performs fits into the productivity, image, and overall success of the company. Plan long-term strategies for your department and communicate them to superiors and staff members. Set realistic and measurable individual and team goals, and communicate your expectations in the context of the big picture.
• Be ambitious. Being ambitious doesn’t have to mean being cutthroat and aggressive. Use your ambition wisely. You shouldn’t climb the corporate ladder by stepping on other people. Know where you want to go in your career and accept opportunities and challenges. Groom potential successors. If you’re seen as irreplaceable in your particular position, you will not be promoted.
• Know yourself. Recognize your strengths and work on your weaknesses. Never be afraid of asking questions or taking additional training. You don’t need to know everything or be the best. If you’re weak on detail work, make sure you have people on your team who excel in that. Surround yourself with people who make the company look good, not “yes men” who say only what they think you want to hear.
• Be decisive. Plan for the unexpected and nothing will surprise you. If you’ve thought of the things that could go wrong with a project, you’ll be able to make confident decisions on corrective action when necessary.
• Control stress. If you feel you have to control something, make it your stress level. As the old saying goes: “Never let them see you sweat.” Have confidence in yourself and you’ll inspire others to have confidence in you.
• Accept criticism. Demonstrate your self-confidence by accepting other people’s negative comments without becoming defensive, arrogant, or submissive. Look for something useful and constructive in any criticism and thank the person. Show your professionalism and maturity.
• Listen. Always take an interest in hearing others’ opinions. Learn what policies or problems hinder your team from doing its job effectively, efficiently, and enthusiastically. Listen carefully to better understand quality of life and work/life balance issues and then encourage employee-driven solutions.
• Be flexible. A strong leader doesn’t always want or need to be right. Be open to dissenting opinions, other ideas, and new initiatives. If your staff members feel comfortable offering suggestions and are involved in developing and implementing some of them, they will actively look for opportunities to improve the company.
• Be supportive. Be patient and work through frustrations regarding people who are less dedicated and driven than you. Always treat your coworkers and staff with courtesy and respect and take an interest in them as individuals. Remember: How you interact with people impacts how you are perceived as a leader.
• Encourage people. A strong leader has the ability to inspire and energize. Learn to be a mentor. Concentrate on bringing out the best in people, developing their talents, and encouraging them to use their initiative and judgment.
• Celebrate success. Be quick to praise. A handwritten note—on decent paper, not a sticky note—congratulating and thanking an employee for a job particularly well done will earn loyalty. When things go wrong, never criticize an employee publicly. Do it quietly and constructively and, unless you’re building a case for dismissal, point out something positive as well. If, in spite of their long hours and imaginative ideas, your work group’s project bid was not the winning one, involve everyone in a debriefing and decide together what could be done differently next time. Then review what you’ve all learned together.
• Back your staff. Being a leader doesn’t automatically mean people will follow you. You need to show that you’re behind them. Understand your team’s needs. Whether it’s increased training, upgraded tools, new technology, or a shift in duties, be willing to fight for them. You won’t always be successful, but it’s important that you act as their advocate.
• Help out. Pitch in whenever you can, even if it’s only for a few minutes. Show them that you understand their challenges, even if you’re not experienced at doing their jobs. You’ll be better able to clarify expectations and do meaningful performance reviews if you have up-to-date and hands-on knowledge of their duties and responsibilities.
• Accept responsibility. The buck stops with you. If a shipment was late or information on a project was incorrect, be ready to take responsibility for your staff’s errors, apologize, and take corrective action. Whose fault it was does not matter at this point; deal with the employee responsible for it afterward.
• Solve problems. As a leader, you’ll need to make difficult, sometimes unpopular decisions. You’ll need to manage conflict and help people accept change. Communication is the key. If you are committed to your career, your duties, and your work group, you’ll find innovative ways to resolve problems.
• Lead by example. Always show your ability to work well with others, no matter how much you might differ in opinions and approaches. Be fair and don’t play favorites. Keep negative comments and frustrations to yourself. Maintain a positive attitude, no matter what.
• Do the right thing. When you’re faced with a decision that goes against your own values, speak up. If you’re asked to do something illegal or unethical, refuse. Stand up for yourself and for the rights of your employees or work group.
• Be honest. If you cannot live up to a promise, don’t make that promise in the first place. When you make a mistake, admit it and apologize. With so much emphasis these days on spin and damage control, you’ll impress your superiors, clients, and staff if you’re honest.
• Avoid gossip. Don’t spread malicious rumors or repeat seemingly inconsequential stories about other people. It takes a strong person to say “I don’t like talking about someone who’s not here,” but it shows integrity. Demonstrate and inspire respect and you’ll also avoid creating opportunities for anyone to gossip about you.
• Do your best. It sounds so simple, doesn’t it? Maintain confidentiality, respect others, and be consistent. Always offer your best talents and skills for any project, and you’ll earn admiration and respect for your unfailing commitment and integrity.
• Criticize constructively. Effective leadership, especially when dealing with another’s sense of dignity and pride, takes subtlety, empathy, and tact. Whether practiced by a famous world leader or a prolific and inspiring teacher, the principles and practices that create an outstanding leader remain the same. Begin with praise and honest appreciation. Call attention to people’s mistakes, but find a way to do so indirectly. Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person. Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
Let the other person save face. Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be hearty in your approval and lavish in your praise. Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to. Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct. Make the other person happy about doing the things you suggest.
When communicated correctly, positively directing others toward personal or professional improvement is invaluable.
Leadership mastery is a combination of many skills. There is one thing that a leader must be able to do skillfully and articulately. Very simply stated, leaders must be able to communicate. At the outset of this book, it’s vital for us to look closely at what’s involved in effective communication, about what it is and what it is not.
Communication has always taken many forms. Just in the past few years important new media for communication have emerged. So when we refer to communication we’re not limited to speech. We’re talking about e-mail and snail mail. We’re talking about cell phones and videoconferencing. But even as more avenues for communication emerge, certain basic truths have proven themselves again and again. In fact, many of these principles were identified and explained by Dale Carnegie himself. And he was especially insightful in the area of leadership communication.
Mr. Carnegie found, for example, that effective leaders open many challenging conversations with sincere praise and honest appreciation. Please take special note of the words sincere praise and honest appreciation. A manager who calls someone into his office, woodenly recites a few words of praise, and then erupts in anger or recrimination will not accomplish very much. As a leader about to initiate a difficult conversation in the business setting, give some thought to what you can honestly say to the other party that conveys respect and appreciation. It doesn’t even have to be directly related to the topic at hand. If a manager is going to talk with an employee about meeting deadlines or quarterly goals, the conversation can begin by praising an insightful comment the employee made in a meeting recently. The content of the positive message is relatively unimportant compared to its sincerity and honesty.
Dale Carnegie also realized that sometimes a leader needs to offer constructive criticism. When this becomes necessary it’s best to call attention to someone’s mistakes indirectly. Sometimes the best way to do this is by referring to a mistake of your own. If you bluntly state that someone has done something wrong and they better not do it again, they’re going to react much more strongly to your threatening tone than to the content of what you’ve said.
If, however, you can identify with the person you’re talking to, and show that you too have occasionally fallen short in a similar situation, you’ll reduce the level of resistance to the important message you are there to convey. By allowing people to save face and retain self-respect, a leader can head off the negative feelings that lead to dissension and poor performance.
As careful as a leader should be when administering criticism, you can freely lavish praise almost anywhere and at any time. In fact, even slight improvements in attitude or performance should receive immediate positive attention. This is one of Dale Carnegie’s most valuable insights. If we’re trying to encourage complex forms of performance from people (and many jobs today are indeed complex and demanding), we shouldn’t wait until the task is done perfectly before offering praise and encouragement. When even small signs of improvement or heightened effort appear, that’s reason enough for an effective leader to take notice.
Sometimes, in fact, offering praise can be of enormous benefit even before tangible signs of improvement appear. As Dale Carnegie described it, “Providing someone with a reputation to live up to can be the best way of inspiring peak performance.” Often when a person has achieved a leadership position, there’s a temptation to devalue the capabilities of everyone else. After all, if you’re the leader, it must be because you have superior and perhaps unique capabilities, right? This line of thinking can cause you to underestimate the achievements of subordinates.
Many leaders simply wait too long before delegating power. This not only reduces the efficiency of organizations but also withholds opportunities for growth among people who are ready to make a greater contribution. One of the paradoxes of organizations is their relationship to stability and change. On one hand, all complex systems naturally seek to achieve balance. If the temperature is in the nineties, people tend to perspire. This is the body’s way of cooling the surface of the skin in an attempt to balance the effects of the high temperature of the air.
In a similar way, organizations that find themselves under stress may become conservative and defensive in their responses, as if the best way to deal with external change is to minimize change internally. Impulses in this direction can cause leaders to consolidate too much power for themselves or to hold on to power too long. To move beyond this limiting mind set, it’s important to realize that an affinity for balance is natural only until balance has been achieved. After that, nature begins to move in the other direction, toward innovation and change. So many organizations and so many people manage to achieve leadership positions as a result of their creativity and originality. Often, though, they then seem to forsake the very talents that got them to the top in the first place.
They begin thinking and acting defensively. Once that happens, it is no longer a question of whether they’ll lose their leadership positions. It is only a question of when.
In summing up the leadership master’s approach to communication, we need to emphasize the importance of putting everything, even criticism, within a proactive, positive framework: a framework that recognizes the universal human need for recognition and appreciation. The leader must understand the true importance of the idea that success is a journey rather than a destination. Success requires continuous innovation and creative thinking. This is especially true when you’ve already achieved some success, and you are tempted to become conservative and defensive.
Akio Morita built Sony into one of the world’s most profitable and innovative companies. In response to a leader’s tendency toward conservatism, Morita said, “If you go through life convinced that your way is always best, all the new ideas in the world will pass you by.” Not many new ideas passed by Sony under Morita’s leadership. His company introduced Japan’s first commercial transistor radio, the 3.5-inch floppy disk, and the Walkman. In 1978, Morita came up with the idea of the Walkman when he wanted to listen to opera on long airplane trips. This began the whole portable entertainment revolution, replaced today by the MP3 player and the iPod. A striking instance of creative leadership, the Walkman was developed with a minimum of market research and testing. “I don’t believe any amount of research could have predicted its success,” said Morita in an interview. “The public doesn’t always know what it’s possible to do.”
Socrates said repeatedly to his followers in Athens, “One thing only I know and that is that I know nothing.” We can’t hope to be any smarter than Socrates, so we would be wise to quit telling people they’re wrong. In the end it pays off. If a person makes a statement that you think is wrong, isn’t it better to begin by saying, “Well, now look, I thought otherwise but I may be wrong. I frequently am, and if I am wrong I want to be put right. Let’s examine the facts.” There’s magic, positive magic, in such phrases as “I may be wrong, I frequently am, let’s examine the facts.”
People often find themselves in careers far removed from what they really hope for and expect. Many feel alienated from their work but they continue, because they don’t really see an alternative. That is, until someone offers them a chance to use their talents as they’d really wanted to in the first place. Sometimes it’s a leadership master who presents that opportunity, and sometimes they have to discover it for themselves.
Dale Carnegie belongs in the second category. He had trained to become a teacher at a state college in Missouri, yet as a young man he somehow found himself selling trucks in New York City. If that seems like an unlikely turn of events, it’s no more unlikely than aspiring novelists who turn into corporate lawyers, or gourmet cooks who become accountants. One day it dawned on Mr. Carnegie that he was living a life totally unrelated to the one he had envisioned for himself. This was a very unsettling realization, but unlike many people, Dale Carnegie decided to do something about it.
The first step he took was quitting his job as a truck salesman. That took some fortitude, but it was something he had wanted to do for a long time. The next step was a bit more complicated. Mr. Carnegie knew he did not want to sell trucks, and that his training had been in education. He saw that what he really wanted to do was write. As he considered his training and his aspirations, a plan began to form in his mind. Perhaps he could find work as an instructor in adult education classes held at night. He could then have his days free to fashion novels and short stories. It was a good idea but it was not as simple as it seemed.
Mr. Carnegie first applied to the most prestigious institutions of higher learning in the Manhattan area, including Columbia and New York University. Both schools, as he later described it, “somehow decided they could get along without me.” Finally a job teaching adult classes on salesmanship and public speaking skills opened up at the night school of the YMCA.
We all crave appreciation and recognition and we will do almost anything to get it. However, nobody wants insincerity. Nobody wants flattery. These principles will work only when they come from the heart. We are not advocating a bag of tricks, but are talking about a new way of life. We are talking about changing people. If you can inspire the people with whom you come in contact to a realization of the hidden treasures they possess, you can do far more than changing them. You can literally transform them. Does this sound like an exaggeration? Then listen to these sage words from William James, one of the most distinguished psychologists and philosophers America has ever produced. “Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. We’re making use of only a small part of our physical and mental resources. Stating the thing broadly, the human individual thus lives far within his limits. He possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use.” Yes, you who are reading these lines possess powers of various sorts which you habitually fail to use; and one of these powers you are probably not using to the fullest extent is your magic ability to praise people and inspire them with a realization of their latent possibilities. Abilities wither under criticism. They blossom under encouragement.
1. Listed below are the nine principles to effective leadership. Go through these principles and put a by those that you believe you have mastered, and put an X by those that you would like to further develop. Then map out an action plan to integrate them into your leadership communications.
• Principle One: Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
• Principle Two: Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly.
• Principle Three: Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person.
• Principle Four: Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
• Principle Five: Let the other person save face.
• Principle Six: Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise.
• Principle Seven: Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
• Principle Eight: Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.
• Principle Nine: Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest.
2. Dale Carnegie’s early beginnings are intriguing. He noted that being a truck salesman neither motivated him nor fulfilled his desires. He decided to focus on his passion, and take a course of action toward that dream. How fulfilled do you currently feel in the work that you do?
3. Are you are using your magical abilities to praise people and inspire them with a realization of their latent possibilities? Write down three “magical” things that you can do to further inspire those around you on an ongoing basis.