The language of leadership
Leaders should not assume what drives them automatically drives their teams. Scott Lichtenstein, Henley Business School and director of EVS Consulting, argues that leaders need to ‘accommodate’ their messages into their employees’ language.
In these tough economic times, organisations tend to fall into the trap of focusing on resources rather than the resourcefulness of their talent. Think about the reasons people give when they fail to achieve their goals. Answers typically include money, time, technology, management or some other claim to resources they don’t have. You can already predict the reasons organisations in the current climate will give for not achieving their goals, but what will your competitors’ excuses be?
In focusing on resources we fail to utilise our talents’ resourcefulness. What can’t be achieved when you are curious, passionate, creative and determined? When talent are being resourceful, the ‘what’ and ‘how’ take care of themselves. To get talent and organisations to achieve goals you need to understand the forces that drive them. If you answered ‘money’, you have misread what moves a majority of the workforce in western societies.
When it comes to moving talent to action most of us make it up as we go along, or misguidedly assume that what fulfils us, fulfils others. To harness your talent’s resourcefulness you need to be focused on changing or reinforcing existing behaviour. You can’t change what drives executives, but you can change their behaviour by ‘talking’ to them in a language that resonates with what drives them. If you want to influence someone you need to know what already influences them.
Next, visions, strategies and missions need to be translated into the personal operative values and underlying needs of your talent. Executives’ operative values are those dominant personal values that influence ‘choice’ behaviour as opposed to ‘adopted’ values – those that are espoused by the organisation. The difference between operative and adopted was highlighted by a high potential senior executive who several times a week ‘walked-and-talked’ the halls, greeting as many employees as possible while they worked. In her 360 degree assessment, subordinates and peers described her as cold and uncaring, shallow and self-centred. After hearing the comments she agreed 100 per cent. She explained that she did the ‘walk the halls’ only because it was an organisational requirement and that she didn’t really care how the employees felt. Talent resourcefulness requires translating the adopted values into their operative values.
Strategic leadership research found that executives’ personal values had a significant impact on organisational performance, both financial and operational performance, and an even greater impact when aligned to organisational goals. Strategic leaders have to focus on the ‘hard’ and the ‘harder’ aspects of performance: the ‘softer’ factors are harder.
In values training workshops for top teams it is common to hear: “I’ve repeated the strategy five times to my team and they still don’t get it, now I know why.” Once people have a framework to uncover what is driving them and others, they realise that they have been talking from their own values as opposed to those of their direct report. Values drive meaning that drives language. With training, executives become adept at accommodating their style to communicate with those whose values are other than their own. Effective leaders do not ‘align’ themselves, they accommodate.
Whether you are a certainty freak or crave autonomy, understanding what moves you and others to action is the key to developing policies, practices and strategies to create more shareholder value faster. It also allows talent to contribute by being more effective with their direct reports. This is facilitated by quantitative tools to measure, benchmark and track the diversity of values in the organisation. To understand what drives executive choice and behaviour just as marketers understand consumer behaviour. I have worked with marketers to develop quantitative values instruments to translate ‘woolly’ concepts into numbers – the language of management. What gets measured gets done.
Unleash the resourcefulness of your talent and they will get you through these tough economic times and take your company to the next level. Just make sure you’re talking their language.
