While leaders will pay a lot of attention to public speaking, and even their writing skills, many people overlook non-verbal communication.  But your non-verbals can sometimes speak even louder than your words.  Following are some key aspects to focus on:

1. Body Language 

• Posture. Stand tall.  Sit up straight.  No Slouching.
• Lean In. A slight lean in connotes interest.
• Openness. Don’t cross your arms or legs. Relax your arms at your side.
• No Fidgeting. Get rid of any nervous tics or distracting mannerisms.

2. Eye Contact

• Make Initial Eye Contact. This should last two-three seconds when you first meet someone.
• Look at Each Person in a Group. Move your eye contact around as you are speaking.
• Don’t Stare. Look down or away naturally.
• Cultural Awareness. Some cultures have different guidelines regarding eye contact.  Make sure to find this out as you travel or entertain people from other countries.

3. Facial Expressions

• Genuine Smile. You are happy to see these people; demonstrate that.
• Natural Expressiveness. Channel friendliness through your face.
• Active Listening. A thoughtful nod or expression can go a long way.

4. Voice

• Tone. This should match your message – whether enthusiastic or concerned; definitely not monotone.
• Volume. A moderate, confident volume adds credibility to your actual words.
• Rate of Speech. Many people talk too fast, especially in high-stakes meetings, such as interviews.  Take your time.

As with most aspects of leadership, building your self-awareness around your non-verbals is key.  Some of these are subtle and it may be hard to know how you are doing.  Enlist some colleagues who are willing to observe you and provide feedback.

You want to be naturally engaging – so don’t overthink this.  Use this checklist to help others see you as your sincerely engaging wonderful self.

In order to be an effective, active listener we need to listen purely for comprehension – without an agenda!  Wow – that is not easy.

But it is important.  Research shows that people who engage in active listening are considered to be more trustworthy, competent, and likable.

Here are some excellent thoughts from Amy Gallo in a recent article in Harvard Business Review on how we can improve our Active Listening skills.

1.  Pay attention to the whole person.  Active Listening is about using empathy and self-awareness to tune into the other person’s thoughts and feelings – as well as what they say.

2.  Focus.  Eye contact, nodding, and other nonverbals are a good start.  Pay attention to the information, stay calm and compassionate, convey your interest verbally and non-verbally.

3.  Focus is hard!  It’s okay to say “I think I missed something, would you mind going over that again.”

4.  This is about the person you are listening to, not about you.  This is not about you.  Not about you.

5.  Don’t rehearse your response.  If you are thinking about what you are going to say next, then it is difficult to really listen.  Ask questions early in the conversation and take your time to figure out your perspective.  For example, “Please tell me more.  I want to make sure I fully understand.”

Developing our Active Listening is a lifetime endeavor.  And the payoffs are huge.  Research shows that when people feel heard, it increases job satisfaction and organization commitment.

As Gallo says, Active Listening “turns a conversation into an active, non-competitive, two-way interaction.”  Just imagine how much more productive our relationships and workplaces will be if we can learn to listen like that.

*Ideas for this blog taken from: Gallo, A.  “What is Active Listening?” Harvard Business Review online, January 2, 2024.

This person is not alone.  Today’s leaders are dealing with an environment that is increasingly challenging.  Some reasons for this include:

• Covid and its aftermath – including work from home
• A more politically charged environment than ever before.
• People are demanding transparency and authenticity

The implications for this are that leaders are more stressed and often feel under pressure constantly.  What to do?  Following are some ideas from Harvard Business Review:

*Rely on Close Confidants.  Loneliness can compound the stress of leadership.  Seek out people that you trust and respect.  Utilize them for advice or even just having someone to vent with.  Talking through issues with people who are not directly involved can provide valuable perspectives.

*Listen to Professional Advisors.  You might be hesitant to spend the money – but do it!  Getting the right legal perspective or PR expertise can be the difference between a challenge and a catastrophe.  You need to make the final decision, but take the time to ask the pros for their counsel.

*It’s Not Personal.  It surely can feel personal, but remember – you are playing a role.  Anger has to be aimed somewhere and you are a convenient target.  Do your best to absorb it, but don’t let it stick.  Some exercise or meditation may help you just let it go.

*Anticipate Emotional Reactions.  Do your best to empathize with others who are being impacted with the issue you are addressing.  How would you feel in their situation?  Encourage others on your team to empathize as well and see things from others’ perspectives.

“It’s lonely at the top.”  It’s a cliché because it is true and has never been more true.  These four tips can help but we will add a 5^th – get away from work when you can and truly unplug.  We all need time to recoup and recharge.  Organizations need leaders, and we need you to stay as fresh as you can be!

*Ideas for this blog taken from: Nohria, N.  “How CEO’s Can Navigate the Emotional Labor of Leadership,” Harvard Business Review online, August 11, 2023.

However, this might not be enough to keep you from being isolated.

Leaders need to make sure that they are hearing and listening to the most important things going on in their organizations.  Here are some tips from a recent article in Harvard Business Review to keep us from being trapped in a bubble of not knowing.

1.  Protect against blind spots.  Create a culture where people feel free to challenge you.

2.  De-emphasize hierarchy.  Respect every person and what they have to say regardless of their placement in the organization chart.

3.  Give permission to share bad news.  Don’t overreact when people share bad news.  Make it a big point that you want to hear bad news quickly and clearly.

4.  Acknowledge progress to encourage problem solving.  Ask people what they are most proud of having accomplished in the past.  And then ask – five years from now – what they will be proud of.  This helps to demonstrate progress along a timeline and inspire people to solve today’s challenges.

5.  Listen without judgement or agenda.  Calm yourself and just listen (mindfulness meditation can help; check out this blog).  Remember WAIT: “Why Am I Talking,” and stop talking if you can’t come up with a really good reason.

6.  Actively seek input.  Invest time in getting out of the usual communication chains and talking with the same old people.  Walk around the office, visit various locations, hold town halls – virtual and real – to give people an opportunity to be heard.

The way we listen to one another is vitally important to understanding others and to understanding what is going on in the organization.

We also need to be strategic about making sure we have the right channels of communication coming our way and that people know they can share anything with us.  Then we can listen and work together to most effectively move forward.

*Ideas for this blog taken from: Bryant, A. & Sharer, K.  “Are You Really Listening,” Harvard Business Review, March – April 2021, pp. 80 – 87.

A recent online Harvard Business Review article has some very good ideas on how we can all create a more “compassionate” email culture in our organizations.  Here are some of the authors’ tips:

*Consider if everyone really needs to get this email.  Cut your list if not.

*Be clear, specific, and to the point.

*Consider if this topic should be a phone call or meeting instead of an email.

*Be conscientious about timing.  Emailing outside of the typical 9 – 5 work day can be distracting.  Alternatively, you could write your email early and then keep it in Draft to send later or use the Schedule Send feature in most email systems.

*Respect the Out of Office message.  If you get such a message from a colleague, then don’t resend while they are away.  If you set one up yourself, then don’t undermine yourself by responding too soon before you are supposed to be back.  Again, write Drafts or use Schedule Send.

*Use BCC appropriately.  It’s best used in large group emails in which communications between the recipients is not necessary.  If you use it in this case it eliminates the potential problem of someone hitting “Reply All” inappropriately and clogging everyone’s email box.  But – you need to clearly state in the email to whom this is going so people understand.  For example, I often use a BCC and then start my email: “Greetings Cohort 21 Executive MBAs & Executive Coaches” – no mystery on who is getting this.

Share this list with others in your organization and let’s get more compassionate about our emailing!

*Ideas for this blog taken from: Landry, A. & Lewiss, R. E.  “What a Compassionate Email Culture Looks Like,” Harvard Business Review online, March 16, 2021.

And for ME.  For all of us.

And this is not just about politics.  It happens to all of us in our organizations.

We all know what the customers/clients/donors want.

We all know what the employees want.

We all know what the big bosses are thinking.

Of course the economy will always or never . . . . .

We are all subject to various cognitive biases or mental blind spots.  Chief among them is confirmation bias.  This is when we look for and interpret information that confirms what we thought previously – vs what the facts may really tell us.

This can lead to bad decision-making and here are some things to do about it:

*Create a culture in your team where you list out your assumptions and question them.

*Make your reasoning clear.  Take the time to write out your logic trail.  Read through it with someone outside of your team to see if they can follow it.

*Check the evidence to make sure it confirms your logic trail.

*Seek out people who you think may disagree with a decision you are about to make and ask them for their reasoning.  Do your best to find an objective observer to provide their feedback.

Just because everyone agrees quickly does not mean that you have an amazing team process.  It could mean that you are all wrong and headed down the same wrong path – happy though you may be about it.

All of these suggestions are part of being an effective critical thinker, which will make you a more effective decision maker and leader.

*For more info on this topic, check out this article “Repetition Makes it True.”

But just exactly “how” do the most effective teams communicate?  By equipping members of a wide variety of teams with electronic “badges” that captured communication behavior – tone of voice, body language, whom they spoke with, how much, and more – the research team made some fascinating discoveries.

Here are some of the key takeaways:

*Communication patterns predict team performance more accurately than other factors including intelligence, personality, and talent – combined.

*Team engagement outside of formal meetings is an important factor in effectiveness.  Creating opportunities for this engagement is important.

*Energy is important for a team.  The most valuable, high energy form of communication is face to face.  Next valuable is phone or video – but the effectiveness decreases as the size of the team increases.  Email and texting are least valuable.

*Engagement of all team members is essential and it is the balance of that engagement that is key.  When some team members are not as engaged the performance of the team suffers.  Therefore, encouraging participation is imperative.

*High performing teams engage in Exploration outside of their team for new ideas.  Insular teams are not nearly as creative.

*The Ideal Team Player has the following characteristics and teams are more effective when they have more of these people.  They:

-Circulate actively, engaging people in short, high-energy conversations

-Communicate with everyone equally and make sure others have a chance to communicate back

–Initiate communication with others even though they may not be naturally extroverted

–Listen as much or more than they talk

-Connect their teammates with others and spread ideas around

There is still much to learn about all of the ingredients that go into a high performing team.  Researchers have identified “communication” as a key factor in team effectiveness for years.  This research gives us new perspectives in improving communication for overall team success.

Pentland, A., “The New Science of Building Great Teams, Harvard Business Review, April 2012, pp. 60 – 70

Op-ed writers published in major newspapers, such as The New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, remain disproportionately white, male and older.  The same is likely to hold true for your local paper.  According to an article in the Columbia Journalism Review, The Op-Ed project and other sources, women and people of color generally write less than twenty percent of published opinion pieces.

Now is the time for more confident and diverse writers to expand the country’s perspective on public policies for the greater good of our democracy. Scholars and political pundits are not the only ones with observations, thoughts and suggestions that can inform the public or generate a broader discussion.

Although social media caters to a broader audience, newspapers still count.  Our country’s political, business and financial leaders still get news from traditional media sources.  Consequently, op-eds provide you with the opportunity to engage with the people who make policies about a broad scope of issues, ranging from funding for schools in your neighborhood to nuclear disarmament agreements.

For years, my colleagues and I have hosted workshops on the “why” and “how” of op-eds at national conferences, only to be met by yawning and bored audiences.  Yes, it may have been the presentation, but I think that ordinary working people and local community leaders do not readily recognize how much their own opinions influence the public debate.  The exigent fuss about The New York Times’ mysterious piece may inspire more people to submit their own perspectives to the newspapers.

More people need to know these basics:  “Op-Ed” is short for “opposite the editorial page,” not “opinion editorial.”  Generally, the author does not work for and is not affiliated with the publication.  The op-ed, letter to the editor, blog and editorial are all different mediums. (Google them.)

Whether you think the author of the anonymous editorial, who has cable news, the White House and political activists mounting search parties for their identity, is a traitor or a patriot, they have certainly brought attention to the power of the op-ed.  I can’t remember a time when the general public gave this much attention to or became so frenzied over a written opinion.

The folks at the Op-Ed Project, the Poynter Institute and journalism schools must be popping the champagne.  The political dynamite of this now scandalous op-ed will likely surge interest in the formerly forlorn editorial pages.

The moral of this story is that you, too, should express your opinions, thoughts and observations through the op-ed pages.  Your perspectives are important and can help bring about change, awareness and conversations.

Submit and share your opinion.

This is the issue that Steven Covey was addressing in his book First Things First as he suggested that leaders need to spend less time on what is viewed as the “urgent emergency” and more time thoughtfully considering what is really important for the long run.

And once you do that, how do you get others to take some time away from their “urgent emergencies” to work with you on what is really important?

Systems Thinking Pioneer, Dr. Russ Ackoff, whom we had the pleasure of welcoming to the Smith School of Business to talk with our Executive MBAs while he was still alive, had a great technique he used to draw people’s attention to what is really important.  Russ called it “Creating the Mess” – and here is how it works, as described in his book Idealized Design:

*“The Mess” is the current set of circumstances that an organization faces, which – if it fails to change – will result in self-destruction.  All too often people are oblivious to “The “Mess” because they do not notice trends.

*Leaders should prepare a presentation which explains the current situation, but then use “reference projections” to show how “The Mess” will lead to self-destruction down the road if changes are not made ASAP.

*It is important for the presentation to be made in as dramatic way as possible.  My favorite example is a group Russ worked with that was trying to avert a strike at an aluminum plant – which would have been bad for labor and management.   This group created a fake city newspaper with the headline:

BLOOM COUNTY TO LOSE ALCOA PLANT AND 2,300 JOBS

The article went on to explain the impact to the city tax base, as well as the jobs, and the millions of dollars the company would lose.  When they presented the fake papers to leaders on both sides they said that this is what awaited them all if they could not come to an agreement.  It worked!  Motivated by the reality they were facing, both sides ended up working together to avert the strike.

It is challenging to get other people’s attention, but demonstrating “The Mess” can help avoid a Real Mess in the future.

In recent weeks I have worked with two top leaders (both women incidentally)who are fantastic at execution – which has driven this home. The importance of being able to GSD (Get Stuff Done) is always vital, as two friends of mine often remind me.

Let’s look at an example of two bike teams who want to travel from St Louis to San Francisco. Team A created a strategy to head directly west to SF via Kansas City, Denver, and Salt Lake City while Team B somehow thinks it is a good idea to head immediately south and travel via Memphis, Dallas, and LA (I have seen worse real life strategies).

Team A, while they have a good strategy, fails to break down the strategy into goals and milestones. They have no action plan based on a map – and just rely on a compass. They often get distracted by billboards for special activities and take side trips. The team is often disgruntled – “are we there yet?”

The Team B leadership creates a detailed map of the exact roads the team will take for the trip – broken down with daily goals. Various leaders on the team remind everyone of how cool it is going to be to get to San Francisco – the fun they will have at Fisherman’s Wharf and the tickets they have for the Beach Blanket Babylon. They have a vision.

Which team will get to SF first? Even though Team B is traveling hundreds of miles further, they actually have a chance to get there before Team A given their excellent execution.

Of course, the ideal is to have excellent strategy and great execution (FYI – the two female leaders I mention above are also excellent at strategy).

The most effective leaders put the time into creating great strategy and then maintain their focus to execute it with precision. That’s what accounts for Breakthrough Impact.