Communicating with impact boils down to influencing from who you are, listening with your heart and rallying people around you in the most critical moments.
In 2009, COO of Facebook Sheryl Sandberg gave a speech at Stanford University on the importance of authentic communication to scale one’s career and foster relationships. In 2013, she emphasized on communication as the one vital ingredient in leading change in her book ‘Lean In’.
Five years later, Sandberg’s leadership and authority have been called into question in the face of Facebook’s political scandal in 2018. Sandberg had not stepped up in responsibility to address the crisis transparently and quickly. Instead, she stayed behind the scenes and addressed other priorities.
Why did Sandberg fail to practice her mantra about communicating, listening and taking responsibility?
It can be easy to speak about the ideal when things are going well. In contrast, consistently putting these keys into practice is a whole other matter. It requires personal conviction to the exceptional leadership that LinHart Group is strongly committed to.
From our experience in counseling high potential executives to CEOs, we have found that most need to get these three basics right.
1. Communicate in the most critical moments, do not avoid or lecture
When there is a crisis or major decision that has to be made, many leaders are missing in action. Even those who try do not engage fully with the context nor the relevant stakeholders with their whole being. Sandberg was one such example.
It takes courage and humility to take the heat in challenging situations where there are no easy answers. Lack of answers, however, should never be an excuse not to engage with people. People look for leaders to hear them, to be with them, to care about them, and not just give them answers.
2. Engage with your mind and heart
People have deep emotions and motivations that need to be addressed. To be an impactful communicator, you need to blend rationality and emotionality when engaging with people. Narrow methods using logic and reason are not the most effective way when you want others to listen and follow you.
Prior to the Facebook crises, Sandberg had shared, “I learned that effective communication starts with the understanding that there is my point of view (my truth), and someone else’s point of view (his truth). Rarely is there one absolute truth, so people who believe they speak the truth are very silencing of others. The ability to listen is as important as the ability speak.”
Impactful communication is having a sincere conversation that involves awareness of other’s needs, listening to their point of view, openness, transparency, engagement, discussion and collaboration—because moving in a coalition only produces true results. In a world that is increasingly integrated, empowered by social media activism and interconnected with complex stakeholder relationships, the biggest oversight for leaders of big corporations is the failure to account for the dynamism in human interactions. This is where many young executives have erred; they are more focused on doing their job well than rallying support of others, which makes or breaks projects.
3. Influence wholly from who you fundamentally are
Most leaders focus on what to say to influence people, instead of influencing from who they are. In order to convince stakeholders to see your point of view—to think, feel and do what you want them to, they need to buy into you, the whole package, not just what you say.
More often than not, people do not take what you say at surface value. Humans intuitively look for signals that indicate people’s real thoughts and feelings, in order to listen and believe what they are saying. Studies have shown that the brain makes immediate snap-judgements on how trustworthy people are in a few milliseconds before even consciously and rationally processing the facts. Faking does not work. People can tell when a leader is doing corporate speaking versus speaking with real conviction.
Before stepping into the boardroom with the one chance to present your proposal, think first how you want others to think, feel, and do. Leaders who want to have a strong influence and reputation have to fundamentally align their personality, values, character and idiosyncrasies with objectives in order to create a stronger resonance to what you say.
Communicating with impact is about conveying the right thing at the right time in the critical moment. It requires the ultimate combination of being inward-looking to leverage your whole person, outward-looking to listen and rally people around you, and upward-looking to see beyond the long dark tunnel and lead others into the light.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was able to lead the nation during the crisis of New Zealand’s mosque shootings with compassion, kindness and unity because the values are real to her core. In the heat of the moment, she acted, communicated and led her people authentically, hence the impact. Do you understand your context before deciding on the objective and strategy of your conversation? Understanding who you speak to and the circumstances in which the conversation takes places also matters. This will be covered in a future article.
LinHart has a deep heritage of CEO counselling, board advisory and executive mentorship. We have specially designed a high level and high impact leadership influence accelerant program for early executives, LIFE2. Get in touch with our Principal, Huijin Kong (huijin@linhartgrp.com) to find out how LIFE2 program can be a good fit for you.
Published in May 2019