The heart of leadership is 99.9999% communication.

“You do not lead by hitting people over the head — that's assault, not leadership."
Dwight D. Eisenhower

There is a demand these days for leaders to become better communicators. From CEOs to heads of state, people want their leaders to be better at communicating ideas, initiatives and policies. All of this comes on the heels of a generation severely lacking in many of the basic communication skills. Leaders cannot afford the luxury of dismissing solid communication skills as a necessary personal attribute. Why?

Because the heart of leadership is 99.9999% communication. Leaders are charged with being the trustworthy voice and face of their enterprise. Whether you are the CEO of a fortune 500 or the leader of a non-profit, your ability to communicate effectively is the most critical skillset in your leadership toolbox.

Leaders have three basic duties they perform in their role through communication, each of which can have an enormous impact on those they lead. 

These three duties are:

1.    Invitation

2.    Demonstration and

3.    Inspiration

If you’re a leader or aspire to become one, you’ll want to read on.

INVITATION

When you lead others, you are in the enviable position of directing the level of engagement of employees, clients, vendors, supporters, and stakeholders within your organization. A leader’s ability to expand (or contract) varying spheres of engagement, inclusion or exclusion allows them flexibility in communicating vision and most importantly opportunity. Leaders are facilitators of opportunity. The opportunity to learn more, to become part of an initiative, to become more deeply enmeshed in the strategy of growth and development of an organization are prizes or high value and praise.

Through strategic communication and effective presentation, a leader can build consensus, elevate awareness and drive massive culture change by inviting those they lead to seize the opportunity to become part of something bigger that themselves.

When you lead consider communicating the invitation to share and participate in your vision a primary role of your position.

DEMONSTRATION

In recent years, many organizations sought to “right their ship” coming out of the deep economic recession. Enterprise initiatives to increase engagement among employees who had their wages frozen, advancement stifled, and training suspended stumbled out of the gate because the concept of employee engagement was misunderstood by leadership.

Eagerly seeking an instant fix to a problem created by a culture systemically rife with platitudes but little gratitude, organizations missed a critical element of engagement and culture change. They are both top-down driven processes. Employees don’t want to hear about culture change, they want to see the culture change. They want to see the change happen in leadership first so that they will feel supported in their efforts to join the change.

When a leader uses demonstration to communicate to an organization, they allow their actions to speak louder than their words. They inspire by leading from the front.

The next time you have a leadership opportunity, think about how you show up. Are you demonstrating the type of leadership character that will inspire others? Will they be proud to follow you? It has been said that you cannot not communicate. The leader who communicates through demonstration knows how to exploit this rule for the benefit of all.

INSPIRATION

Some leaders have a distorted view of their role. They see leadership as an entitlement instead of as the obligation it truly is. Inspiration is a positive human relations activity. If you do not understand this, you will never be an effective leader. You cannot lift yourself up by beating someone else down. An effective leader will not ask others to do something they would not be willing to do their self.

Leaders are visionaries. They have the ability and the freedom to not only dream “what if” they have the license to put “what if” into play. Using solid communication skills, strategically placed, these leaders can inspire others to join them on their incredible journey. They can attract others to set sail with them to worlds beyond the current event horizon. By effectively communicating their vision of life beyond the “what if”, they can attract investors, workers, vendors and a myriad of stakeholders to unilaterally take the leap of faith only dreamers believe in. Leaders can use their vision to inspire others. When you inspire others, you lift them up.

Great leaders learn how to effectively communicate their impassioned vision to inspire organization and individuals to dream bigger, reach higher and achieve greater than they could dream of individually.

THE VIEW FROM THE TOP

It’s not easy leading organizations and people. Today, there are more channels to control, more opportunities to misspeak, and more subtleties to language than ever before. But a great leader recognizes the nature of our current communications environment as a controllable element of their role. An effective leader learns to use communication with purpose to manage the flow of invitations to inside access, demonstrate how they can lead from the front through their actions, and strategically craft communications that illustrate the attractive and fascinating possibilities within their vision.

When you become a leader, you can do this too.

Thanks for your support as a reader of my blog and I eagerly welcome any comments on how you’re thinking about achieving the possibility of your promise. Also, I would appreciate any suggestions you might have for future posts in this blog on a topic near and dear to you in the comments section below. As always, please feel free to share this post with a friend or colleague.

Bringing Positivity to Everything,
The Brain Tamer

Behind every excuse you give is a reason asking you to own it.

"An excuse becomes an obstacle in your journey to success when it is made in place of your best effort or when it is used as the object of the blame."
Bo Bennett

Can you imagine walking into a meeting with a major client and instead of beginning your presentation you pause and say the following, “You may not believe this, but my dog ate my thumb drive and I will not be able to make my presentation today.”

I trust you cannot imagine yourself actually saying anything like this, but I have been in large public forums where I have heard speakers basically say something similar. I have also been in classrooms where students have offered the modern-day equivalent of “my dog ate my homework”. You know the one. It gets used a lot in business too. Can you guess it?

Stumped?

OK, I’ll relieve your befuddlement. Tell me if you’ve ever heard this famous excuse in place of actual performance, “My hard drive crashed.”

This leaves me wondering, why is it so easy for people to make excuses for their shortfalls and so hard instead for them to offer a reason for the outcome?

Do you know what the difference is between an Excuse and a Reason?

Read on and I’ll explain.

CAN THINGS HAPPEN ACCIDENTALLY ON PURPOSE?

Things happen in life, some by intention and so many more by accident. By its very definition an accident is “an event that happens by chance or that is without apparent or deliberate cause”. So, let’s be clear on something, there is no such thing as an intentional accident. An accident has no deliberate cause, but it does have a reason.

Because accidents happen so frequently, many people find it convenient to use an accident as an excuse. “I was late to the wedding because I accidentally burned my shirt while ironing it.” An accident is not an excuse. An accident is a reason. Inside every excuse is a reason screaming to be free. The hidden reason in this accident might sound something like this, “I was late to the wedding because I accidentally burned my shirt while ironing it because I was engrossed in the big game and forgot to look at the shirt until I smelled smoke.”

A pure accident is one that occurs to you in which you have no role other than to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Most of us call this “bad luck”.

The old adage says, “Everything happens for a reason.” It does not say, “Everything happens by excuse.” There are many things we classify as an accident and leave it at that. We either lack the resolve or the intention to prevent a repeat of this event in the future. This type of behavior meets the now classic definition of insanity, “doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results”. In truth, we might find that many accidents have very clear reasons for their happening that are simply the result of poorly focused or missing intention. However, what we can choose to extract from any accident is the way we react to it. The most important outcome we can harvest from an accident is to understand the reason of its cause and how we might play a role in preventing future occurrences.

WHAT IS AN EXCUSE?

An Excuse is “a reason put forward to conceal the real reason for an action; a pretext.” This can be stated another way, an excuse is “the explanation of an event in which the outcome is someone else’s fault”.

“My dog ate my homework” is an excuse offered as a reason to quickly absolve a person of responsibility for the outcome and neatly shift the blame to a defenseless creature.

People will even offer an excuse and frame in terms of an accident. “Dinner is late because I “accidentally” forgot to take the meat out to defrost in time to cook it.” There is no accident here, just a lame excuse that makes the giver seem helpless against the forces of nature. Forgetfulness is not an excuse. Who is at fault here, the freezer for effectively doing its job or the cook for forgetting how to do theirs?

Every excuse, real or imagined has a reason looking for someone to own it.

WHAT IS A REASON?

A Reason is, “a cause, explanation, or justification for an action or event.” Another way to put this is a reason is “the explanation of an event in which the outcome is your responsibility”.

Excuse: “My dog ate my homework.”

Reason: “My dog ate my homework because I was careless, dripped some hamburger juice on it and left it on the floor near his bowl.”

There is always a reason behind every excuse you give asking you to own it. An accident has a cause and you may have a role in it by way of intention or lack of it that will constitute the reason for its cause.

A few years back I went to a major speaking event with one of my clients so that she could study and learn what are the best and worst skills being practiced in the speaking industry. We watched and listened to a lot of speakers that day. A few were very good, some were okay, and a few were just terrible. I don’t want to go into to everything we witnessed that day, but I will highlight one of the speakers.

This speaker, a well-known real estate mogul from a popular television show, took the stage and then proceeded to fumble her way through her PowerPoint presentation. About one-third of the way through she began to offer an excuse for the problem she was having. “Oh, I’m really sorry, but I just got these new slides from my designer late yesterday and this is the first time I am seeing them.”

Ouch! How lame is that excuse. How insulted would that make you feel if she were making you a presentation on a big pricey piece of real estate?

I listened to her excuse loud and clear, but what I really heard was this reason, “I am way too over-stretched at the moment and I probably should not have even taken on this speaking engagement because I just did not have the time to prepare. But, they offered me so much money I couldn’t say no. So, I thought I would just show up and, because you all love me sooooo much, you would give me a bye if I screwed up completely.” This is what I call a poor excuse of a speaker.

SPEAKING AND LEADING FROM REASON

Speakers and leaders can profit from offering reasons instead of excuses. When you offer an excuse, it changes nothing. It does not assure your audience or those you lead that you are making a commitment to preventing a repeat outcome of an event or actions.

As popular motivational speaker Bo Bennet says, “An excuse becomes an obstacle in your journey to success when it is made in place of your best effort or when it is used as the object of the blame."

Nothing succeeds like success, and nothing will help you succeed faster than having fully focused intentions and doing everything by reason. Success is not an accident, so stop making excuses for the things that don’t go as planned.

When you take responsibility for the outcomes of events, people will trust you, believe you and follow you with conviction and commitment. When you take responsibility for the outcomes of events you will grow, trust and believe in yourself, your goal and your future.

My reason for sharing this blog with you is to help you step off of the easy road of excuses and onto the harder, surer road of reasons. Speaking and leading with intention is never an accident and always leads to a pleasant journey followed by a delightful destination.

I deeply appreciate your support as a reader of my blog and I eagerly welcome any comments on this post or suggestions you might have for a future blog on a topic near and dear to you in the comments section below. As always, please feel free to share this post with a friend or colleague.

Bringing Positivity to Everything,
The Brain Tamer