How to be seen as a Brilliant and Bold Leader [Become a great Communicator] 

How to be seen as a Brilliant and Bold Leader [Become a great Communicator] 

Oct 12, 2022 | Report Reviews, Resources

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How to be seen as a Brilliant and Bold Leader

[Become a great Communicator] 

1 June 2022 4 min Read

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This is a recap of Harvard Business Review @HarvardBiz ’s Good Leadership is About Communicating Why, by Nancy Duarte @nancyduarte.

Becoming a bold leader means that communication should be your top priority. More than that, extremely clear communication should be what you’re consistently striving for, because everyone works better when there are no questions left on the table.

“ Leaders explain the ‘what’ of their insights and the ‘how’ of applying the findings. This is how most leaders approach their talks, especially professionals who are deep subject matter experts. They focus on the content they want to share. Many leaders don’t even consider the why from the audience perspective because it seems so self-evident to them, they think it’s obvious to everyone.”

Nancy Duarte @nancyduarte.

MORE KNOWLEDGE  |  LESS TIME

The Two Minute Takeaway

KEY TAKEAWAY 1

Get to the crux of the “why” to whatever you’re communicating.

The what and the how are often easily transcribed into emails, memos, chats, speeches, etc., but rarely is the why extremely clear. You can ask yourself “what” questions to get to the why more easily:

A. What is at stake if we do or do not do this?

B. What will the future look like if we get this done? What would the state of the human condition be if we did or didn’t do this?

C. Have someone else ask you “so what” until you can’t answer it anymore. That’ll get you to the root of “why.”

KEY TAKEAWAY 2

Think about what action you’re asking your audience to take, and then follow it with “because.”

Here are some samples:

A. We need to integrate this faster into our system because…

B. If we don’t do this, then X will happen because…

C. If we do this now then we won’t hit problems X or Y because…

KEY TAKEAWAY 3

Share ideas you abandoned and why.

If you show you’ve explored varying options and why they aren’t the best routes to take, it’ll help convince others and get everyone on the same wavelength of thinking that you’re on.

People cannot read minds so the whole truth has to get out and onto “paper” so that everyone can see the line of thinking.

Why This Matters

Sharing the ‘Why’ around decisions that have been made, why a pathway chosen, explaining full concepts when problem-solving or coming up with ideas are all incredibly essential the good leader’s toolbox. This will show that you care for others by getting everyone onto the same page.

This is how people become inspired and motivated and how you can become a more efficacious leader and clear communicator (two vital foundations to bold leadership).

How to be seen as a Brilliant and Bold Leader

In today’s ever-evolving remote/hybrid working environments, things are shifting more and more and clear communication could not be more important. In these environments, what leadership skills do you need most?

Communication is at the tippy top of this report that displays votes of the most important skills needed for all management positions (from The Skills Every Leader Needs by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman).

The way you inspire and motivate others is through communication, and the way that communication gets even better is when it’s backed by high integrity and honesty.

As we all know, data never lies!

Here’s a great chart to show you what skills should be polished to move you into that bold leader quadrant:

Resources_Swae_Harvard_Business_review_How to Be Seen as a Brilliant and Bold Leader [Become a Great Communicator]-

Using Missions & Proposals, Swae helps our clients be bold leaders by

  • getting to the crux of what problems the organization needs solving,
  • lets everyone propose actionable ideas complete with justification (‘the because’)
  • and gives a transparent archive of ideas that were abandoned so everyone can understand why and start a cycle of continuous improvement. 

This Article refences Harvard Business Review @HarvardBiz ’s Good Leadership is About Communicating Why, by Nancy Duarte @nancyduarte.

Swae is helping organizations across the world to solve today’s problems and create tomorrow’s strategy. From Start-ups to Charities, and Enterprises to DAOs, our clients find that their greatest resource is their people, and Swae is proven to help get the best from the untapped potential within their workforce.

Find your next winning ideas using Swae

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Being Honest in Leadership Roles Helps Drive Innovation and Long-Term Success

Being Honest in Leadership Roles Helps Drive Innovation and Long-Term Success

May 23, 2022 | Report Reviews, Resources

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Being honest in Leadership roles helps drive Innovation and long-term Success

Doing Decision-Making Right Without Blinders On

23 May 2022 5 min Read

Resources_Swae_Harvard_Business_review_Approaches to Solving Problems in the Workplace

This is a recap of Harvard Business Review’s @HarvardBiz “Decisions Without Blinders” study.

Being honest in leadership roles seems as if it’s a no-brainer, but as we well know, that’s hardly the case in many organizations around the globe. It may not always be about “not being honest” but there are still many ways that employees of any company, leader or not, can be more cognizant of information seeking when making decisions.

According to this study’s insight, “Social science research has shown that decision-makers ignore certain critical information without realizing it.” Why? Because of something they’ve coined “bounded awareness,” which means the cognitive blinders that prevent a person from seeing, seeking, using, or sharing highly relevant, easily accessible, and readily perceivable information during the decision-making process. The cause can be anything from hiding information to not asking the harder questions.

“ Most people fail to bring the right information into their conscious awareness at the right time.”

HBR

MORE KNOWLEDGE  |  LESS TIME

The Two Minute Takeaway

KEY TAKEAWAY 1

Failure to see information

People can get hyper-focused on what needs to be done and shut down their senses and awareness of what’s happening around them. The “head down working” concept seems excellent, but this is how critical details are missed. This is a cause for concern, given that people need to be aware of peripheral threats and opportunities while honing in on the job at hand.

According to this research, this has led to massive problems because those who should be aware closed their minds off. This led to the inability to adapt their strategies so that their organizations could thrive. The outcome then becomes a lack of long-term success due to vital mistakes.

KEY TAKEAWAY 2

Failure to seek information

The most worrisome version of this occurs when decision-makers are motivated to favor a particular outcome. A failure to seek information means that critical elements are being methodically “left out,” and there’s a deliberate lack of diligent efforts to uncover the “whole story.” However, some situations are innocent because we don’t know what we don’t know. This is why it’s essential to find what lies beyond our very awareness. Consider the information that addresses the decision required and get all the insight possible.
“Executives must rely on others to streamline the data flow for them, but they must be skeptical of the absence of contradictory evidence: It’s a red flag indicating highly bounded awareness.”

HBR

KEY TAKEAWAY 3

Failure to Share Information

Team members frequently fail to share unique information with one another. This is why meetings must have agendas and informational reports from the parties involved in the process of making a decision. Assuming that people will speak up is not, at this time, possible in many workplaces (due to employees not feeling safe to do so, and so much more. We’ve got loads of this kind of research within our resources center here).

KEY TAKEAWAY 4

Failure to Share Information

Although it may be hard to believe, many executives simply disregard accessible and valuable information when they are making an important decision.

Why This Matters

Remote work is here to stay, so the more tips for remote work that leaders can receive, the better, because of lot of these issues are new to many. Again, not everyone has had remote work environments/hybrid models in place before 2020.

There is going to be a split of how people operate in these remote/hybrid models. Some people can adapt easily and find it more rewarding, and then there will be those that have serious issues separating “being at home” and having to actually DO work at home (emphasis on the fact that they aren’t doing work hardly at all).

Asking questions like the ones shown here in these charts could help you get you ahead of the game when it comes to dealing with issues arising now (versus later). And, this is a time to look to your people to get more ideas as to how to ensure your employees don’t overdo it and end up working way too long not getting proper rest or time away from the computer/phone/whatever other device.

This recap references the Harvard Business Review article Decisions Without Blinders
by Max H. Bazerman and Dolly Chugh

Swae is helping organizations across the world to solve today’s problems and create tomorrow’s strategy. From Start-ups to Charities, and Enterprises to DAOs, our clients find that their greatest resource is their people, and Swae is proven to help get the best from the untapped potential within their workforce.

We’d love the chance to show you how Swae can help you find your next winning ideas…

Ready to learn how Swae can help your organization?

Schedule a Demo now
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