I was lucky to be on a panel early in the day on Communications leadership with Jim Lukaszewski , Jason Falls and Heidi Sullivan. Jim is the guy you call when you have a crisis.
If all problems are management problems then all problems are also leadership problems. The most powerful tool leaders have is their verbal skills. How good of a persuader are you ? Leaders get their information from good communicators. Advice that Jim gives is to get good at verbal communication and persuasion skills.
I caught up with him and got him to sign his book “Why Should the Boss Listen to You: The Seven Disciplines of the Trusted Strategic Advisor” and also got the opportunity to interview him on camera.
Here are my notes from the session at IABC:
What am I about to say is important enough from their perspective. Management is done in real time. Think about skills that management needs from you. Information on the spot. Give advice on the spot to be able to stay in the conversation. Bosses recognize when people are not saying things when they should be talking. Say things that matter. If someone spends a great deal of time with you then it is a sign that someone likes you. Read the Harvard Business Review. Robins school of management has a great magazine from Canada.
Be a problem solver. The boss is in the position because once upon a time they were problem finders. Become solution finders, incremental ideas that move the process. Tell the boss specifically what to do next. Realize that there are decisions that a leader has to make it up for re: 25% of decisions.
Chief role at the top – Strategist – Tell us where we are going and find the people that get us there. Monitor these people and continually educate the people to reach the destination . Greatest problem is the failure of strategist to repeat themselves. Issues that matter need to be repeated so people can get it.
Movement of a core idea through changing circumstances is communication. Strategy is always about tomorrow. You should not try to strategize backwards. Ask yourself if you are a person of tomorrow or of yesterday. Force of tomorrow or force of yesterday. Does this really matter and is it moving the organizations forward. Meetings should not be focused on arguing about what happened last month.
Spin is not strategic, stuff is not strategic, say less make it more important. Do not produce lots of stuff and show it. Every document should have a word count and a time translation at the top. If it takes more than 2 or 3 minutes no one is going to read it. Say less but make it more important. Add the word count and time translation on top of every document. Send back documents that take more than 5 minutes. Cross out every negative word as it confuses, distorts and angers , causes contentions.
Be good at determining what does not matter. You should be the person who needs to say what’s next. Negativity is not strategic. The higher you are as a manager you have the ability to confuse more people more quickly.
What do strategies do – communicate effectively in real time. Focus on moving forward. Help everyone recognize the obvious. Raise the question and ask and deal with what is out there.
Managers are Linear thinkers = process thinkers, we are intuitive thinkers .
Communicate in the systematic process driven way:
Ask for 3 minutes
- 60 words: explanation- what and why we are taking about it now
- Why – opportunity, threat, time
- Goal : where are we going with this
- Options: provide options , be the one to talk about it first. Option- doing nothing Option2: Doing something Option3: doing something more
- What’s the first step to take the implement the suggestion. What do you really want the boss to do ?
Get yourself tested for verbal skills. strategic impact: to move teach your direct boss the 6 steps. The soon they will send you to the big boss meeting. Have intuition and be a strategic thinker.
See Twitter posts from Mitch Popilchak @disruptivethink http://cli.gs/gDNae6 that has live Twitter coverage of the IABC panels he attended. Make a prediction of the future by studying the patterns of the past
Btw Jim is a Network Solutions customer http://www.e911.com
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