1: We have a tall task.
Our goal is to persuade our audience to change behaviors and set out on a new course.
We begin by getting their attention. To do so, we go negative.
“Negative stories, questions, or challenges wake us up. They activate the reptilian brain, suggesting fight or flight,” writes Stephen Denning in The Secret Language of Leadership: How Leaders Inspire Action Through Narrative.
What … continue reading
1: Define problem Analyze problem Recommend solution.
This sequence is the “normal” or “rational” way of communicating, Stephen Denning writes The Secret Language of Leadership. “It’s an appeal to reason—a model that has been the hallowed Western intellectual tradition ever since the ancient Greeks. . . And it works well enough when your aim is merely to pass on information to people who want to hear it.”
But what if … continue reading
1: “Becoming a better leader (or a better person) is a process, not an event,” Marshall Goldsmith writes in What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.
Marshall is one of the top executive coaches in the world. Historically, the focus in executive development has been “an event—a training program, a motivational speech, or an intense executive retreat,” he observes.
The only problem with that approach? It doesn’t work. … continue reading
What’s wrong with this statement? “I behave this way, and I achieve results. Therefore, I must be achieving results because I behave this way.”
Harry was “a brilliant, dedicated executive who consistently made his numbers. He wasn’t just smart. Harry saw things no one else at the company could see. Everybody high and low conceded this. His creative ideas led to groundbreaking new processes and procedures, for which everyone credited … continue reading
We don’t stay the same.
People and organizations are either getting better or getting worse.
“We tend to think of an organization as a machine-like object,” Robert E. Quinn writes in his terrific book The Deep Change Field Guide. “Yet it is often more fruitful to think of an organization as a living system that has a trajectory: it is either gaining energy or losing energy.”
The second … continue reading
