Category Archives: Communication

Communication Week is Coming

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Next week we will be hosting two excellent Soundview Live webinars around the topic of communication and influence. This topic has become critical with changes in the business environment, including a new digital generation entering the workforce, the advent of social media, more people tele-commuting, and companies becoming more culturally and ethnically diverse.

May 13th: How to Hold REAL Conversations with John Stoker

In this Soundview Live webinar, How to Hold REAL Conversations, John Stoker offers clear explanations of the theoretical aspects of conversation along with practical application of real skills that will help you to connect with others in a deep and meaningful way.

What You’ll Learn:

  • The four conversation skills that make for effective communication.
  • The eight principles for conducting REAL conversations.
  • The effectiveness model of conversation involving Respect, Results and Relationship.

May 15th: The New Science of Leading Change with David Maxfield

In this Soundview Live webinar, The New Science of Leading Change, you’ll be the first to hear from author David Maxfield about the new research, case studies, and content featured in the latest edition of Influencer. David will teach influence strategies for achieving  profoundly better results by changing bad and entrenched human habits. And he will examine, in detail, why people do what they do and what it takes as a leader to help them act differently.

What You’ll Learn:

  • How to use three keys of influence to become a true leader.
  • How to identify a handful of high-leverage behaviors that lead to rapid and profound change.
  • How to apply strategies for changing both thoughts and actions.
  • How to marshall six sources of influence to make change inevitable.

Please consider joining us for one or both of these important webinars. As always Soundview subscribers attend free of charge. You can fill a conference room with colleagues on one registration, and submit questions to the authors throughout the presentations.

Unleashing Potential through Secure Base Leadership

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Whether you’re out in the woods camping, hiking the Long Trail, or climbing a mountain, you generally set up a base camp, and place you can return to for supplies, to rest, or to seek safety from the storm. This base camp is your security, a safe place to return to.

People can also be a secure base. A mother is a place of safety for a child to return to when he or she needs reassurance or when something scares them. In the workplace, a leader can be a secure base for their employees.

George Kohlrieser, in his book Care to Dare, defines a secure base as “a person, place, goal or object that provides a sense of protection, safety and caring and offers a source of inspiration and energy for daring, exploration, risk taking and seeking challenge.”

Through his research, Kohlrieser discovered nine characteristics of a secure base leader:

  1.  Stays Calm – a secure base leader remains composed and dependable, especially when under pressure.
  2. Accepts the Individual – the leader shows caring for the human being before focusing on the issue or problem,
  3. Sees the Potential – secure base leaders see the employee’s potential talent versus his current functioning or state.
  4. Uses Listening and Inquiry – this leader has a preference for listening and inquiry rather than “telling” and advocacy.
  5. Delivers a Powerful Message – secure base leaders are masters at coming up with pithy sentences, or what is called “bull’s-eye transactions.”
  6. Focuses on the Positive – this leader is good at directing the Mind’s Eye of other people to focus on the positive rather than the negative.
  7. Encourages Risk-Taking – this characteristic goes beyond acceptance to taking direct action.
  8. Inspires Through Intrinsic Motivation – the secure base leader talks about what is inherently interesting and enjoyable, instead of just focusing on money and financial reward.
  9. Signals Accessibility – people believe that secure base leaders are always accessible and available.

If you would like to become this secure base leader, then you’ll want to join us on May 10th for our Soundview Live webinar with George Kohlrieser called Unleashing Potential through Secure Base Leadership. Register today and bring your questions for George to answer during the session.

The Underlying Logic of the Office

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THE ORG

THE OFFICE GOES UNDER THE MICROSCOPE

Bureaucracy that hampers productivity, outrageous salaries for those at the top, cutthroat office politics, endless meetings that everyone knows are useless — there must be a better way to get things done than through today’s dysfunctional organizations. Isn’t there?
The short answer, from Columbia Business School professor Ray Fisman and his co-author, Harvard Business Review Press editorial director Tim Sullivan, is: there isn’t. Of course not all organizations are perfectly designed and managed — no doubt, there is always room for improvement — but as Fisman and Sullivan demonstrate in their book The Org: The Underlying Logic of the Office, today’s organization is still the structural unit for our world. Yes, too much time is spent in meetings, and the politics of the workplace will always create roadblocks to success. But for Fisman and Sullivan, much of the frustration and concern that our organizations inspire are the result of give-and-take that is not only inherent but unavoidable in our economic system. Through scores of in-depth case studies of organizations ranging from the Baltimore Police Department to the island nation of Samoa, the authors explain why organizations are structured and managed as they are — in other words, the “underlying logic” to it all.

How Much Can the Org Do?

For instance, take the task of structuring the job so that employees are incentivized to be highly productive. Police departments, for example, might incentivize police officers by rewarding them based on number of arrests. Theoretically, this might seem logical, but on closer examination a number of issues arise. First, is it truly better to arrest 10 loiterers, or even car thieves, as opposed to one murderer?

Even more complex is the fact that the job of a police department is not to make arrests but to keep the city safe. Thus the measure of “success” a police department uses for its officers actually reflects a failure of the department’s mandate. Even more important, the chosen incentive in this case might actually discourage officers from doing their job — keeping the city safe — because the initiatives and work that could help to keep the city safe is not rewarded. This is a very real problem, as the authors found in Baltimore. The answer is that the “org” — as the authors call it — can plan, structure and impose only so much. At some point, the police officers themselves must recognize the job they have to do and must act accordingly. And this is exactly what happens, the authors write. After a period of “cowboy” policing — making lots of showy arrests — many cops settle into a routine of keeping the peace in which arrests are the means and not the end.

The bottom line is that structuring organizations based on high-powered incentives and rational economic principles might seem logical, but real life is different. The best organizations balance incentives with an acknowledgment of intrinsic motivation, which itself can be as high powered as any carrot — just ask any entrepreneur.

Guardians vs. Stars

Organizations do fail, and fail through their own fault. The subprime mortgage meltdown resulted from incentives that pushed loan officers to approve as many loans as possible, regardless of the risk of those loans. The problem, as the authors explain, is that these mortgage companies and banks did not have the guardians watching over the stars. Any organization needs to have stars swinging for the fences — but those stars are not going to worry about the risks; thus, the same organization needs to have guardians to ensure the quality of the quantity being brought in by the stars. The banks had no guardians ensuring the quality of the loans being approved, which was a recipe for disaster. The subprime mortgage experience explains, write the authors, “why we’ll always have oppressive bureaucrats, and free-thinking entrepreneurs oppressed by them. And that’s okay.”

The simple phrase “that’s okay” is the beating heart of this lucid, well-researched book. The organizations that we deal with — and their policies, structures and rules — will no doubt continue to frustrate us, but the fact is that despite the give-and-take, compromises and seeming unfairness, today’s organization is still the best vehicle to get things done. Organizations may not be perfect, but that’s okay.

The Surprising Truth About Moving Others

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TO SELL IS HUMAN

WHY THE OLD RULES OF SELLING DON’T APPLY

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, author Daniel Pink notes in his new book To Sell Is Human, 1 out of every 10 Americans works in sales. Is that less than before? Certainly. But have the Internet and online shopping brought the sales function to the precipice of extinction, as so many have predicted? Not quite, Pink writes. In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics data (replicated by corresponding statistics in other developed countries) vastly understates the amount of “selling” going on when we consider what selling, according to Pink, really entails: “persuading, influencing and convincing others.”

This is what he calls “non-sales selling.” Most people, Pink explains, are involved in non-sales selling, no matter what their profession. Examples cited by Pink include physicians who sell patients on a remedy, lawyers who sell juries on a verdict, teachers who sell students on the value of paying attention in class, entrepreneurs selling to funders, writers selling to producers and coaches cajoling players to play their best. In fact, it’s no longer completely accurate to see producing and consuming as the two most important economic activities, Pink writes. “Today, much of what we do also seems to involve moving,” he explains. “That is, we’re moving other people to part with resources — whether something tangible like cash or intangible like effort or attention — so that we both get what we want.”

Why Sales Is So Important

Why are so many people devoting their valuable time to selling when the practice is allegedly in decline? Pink offers three reasons:

  1. Entrepreneurship. The past few years (thanks in great part and a bit ironically to the Internet) have seen the rise of small entrepreneurship — small shops or one- or two-person enterprises selling, as Pink writes, “services, creativity and expertise.” For these small-business owners and micro-entrepreneurs, there is no dedicated sales force to bring in the customers; they are their own sales forces.
  2. Elasticity. Once upon a time, Pink writes, “if you were an accountant, you did accounting.” However, intense competition and economic conditions have forced organizations to go “flat” — or at least flatter. As a result, functions are no longer rigidly separated as in the past. Job descriptions are broader and usually involve some kind of selling.
  3. Ed-Med. Education and health are among the fastest-growing industries, and as the examples of the teachers and physicians above demonstrate, much of education- and health-related work involves non-sales selling. “Of course,” Pink notes with characteristic humor, “teaching and healing aren’t the same as selling electrostatic carpet sweepers. The outcomes are different. A healthy and educated population is a public good, something that is valuable in its own right and from which we all benefit. A new carpet sweeper or gleaming Winnebago, not so much.”

The New ABCs

When selling is mostly “moving” people, the old rules of selling no longer apply. After making his case for the predominance of non-sales selling in our lives, Pink outlines the different strategies for 21st-century selling. He begins, in the second section of his book, by showing how the traditional mantra of selling, “Always Be Closing,” has been replaced by a new set of ABCs: Attunement, Buoyancy and Clarity. Attunement is to be in harmony with those around you — which is why, Pink writes, extraverts are not the best salespeople. They don’t take the time to become attuned. (Introverts aren’t necessarily the best, either, Pink notes.) Buoyancy is knowing how to always be “afloat” in a difficult world of constant rejection, thanks to one’s resilience and optimism. Clarity, in Pink’s approach, refers to the art of problem finding — different from the traditional emphasis on problem solving. Attunement, Buoyancy and Clarity are the attributes of the new successful salesperson. In the final section of the book, Pink outlines the three core abilities — knowing how to pitch, how to improvise and how to serve — required to succeed.

Pink, a best-selling author whose books include Drive and A Whole New Mind, has once again expanded his readers’ perspectives on how the world really works, with insight and humor bolstered by solid research.

How to Lead So People Will Follow

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It’s not often that a leadership concept is inspired by fairy tales, but such is the case with Erika Andersen’s ideas in her recent book Leading So People Will Follow. In chapter one of her book Andersen describes her early work as a consultant while raising young children. Her two passions intersected as she pondered how leaders inspire followers while also reading fairy tales to her kids.

From her observations she discovered the archetypal elements of leaders that people want to follow, and translated them into today’s business language. As she shared these elements with business leaders they immediately recognized and related to her observations. She calls this discovery the “looking for leaders DNA”.

Here are the attributes of a recognized leader:

  1. Farsighted
  2. Passionate
  3. Courageous
  4. Wise
  5. Generous
  6. Trustworthy

In order to provide Soundview customers with further insight into this important topic, we have invited Erika Andersen to join us for our next Soundview Live webinar titled The Six Leadership Attributes That Inspire Followers. Step by-step, Andersen will lay out the six key attributes that offer people, at all levels within an organization, the tools to think and behave as fully accepted leaders.

You may want to consider inviting your whole management team to this event, as the development of these attributes has been demonstrated to dramatically increase loyalty, commitment and results within organizations. You can fill a room with colleagues on just one registration.