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Think Before You Speak: Developing a Leadership Communication Mindset

Ninety percent of leadership is the ability to communicate something people want.

—Dianne Feinstein

Utilizing the Language of Leadership starts where all ideas begin: in your head, not with your mouth or on your keyboard. This first chapter focuses on strategic mindsets that will enable you to formulate meaningful points.

Content Is Not King

Some of my executive clients—and a surprising number of online articles—insist that “useful information” is a crucial driver of effective leadership.

These may be leaders who do the following:

Read the content on PowerPoint pages but don’t contextualize it or explain why it matters

Convey data points but not the point of the data

Define and describe a campaign but don’t champion its potential impact

Share, but don’t sell their ideas

These inclinations may come from a bias that content is inherently substantial and influential, whereas messages of inspiration are inherently shallow and fluffy. But here’s the problem with focusing heavily or exclusively on content: information alone rarely inspires.

Think back to the last time you were inspired. Were you inspired by paragraphs or by a point? By content or by commitment? By details or by dedication? By a book’s table of contents or by its blurb?

In each of these examples, the former word informs, and the latter word inspires.

I’m not saying information isn’t valuable. It certainly educates and enlightens. It also fills in gaps in understanding and provides essential context and updates. It informs, but it does not typically inspire, and if it does inspire, that’s because the audience is already fully aware of the content’s value and implications.

In leadership communications, information only becomes inspiring when it’s explicitly connected to a purpose—often in the form of a goal or a vision statement.

Here are some examples of that connection:

“Those statistics clearly indicate where we should be focusing our efforts in the fourth quarter.”

Informational Content: Statistics

Inspiring Content: The impact of the statistics

“These three tactics will drive us toward our goal of becoming a much more diverse and inclusive organization.”

Informational Content: Three tactics

Inspiring Content: The result of adopting the three tactics

“Understanding how we got started gives us the best clues on where we should go next.”

Informational Content: The history of our organization

Inspiring Content: The beneficial lessons we can extract from our history

Executive communication coach and author Laurie Schloff, whose clients include Bain Capital, Fidelity Investments, and Allstate, says that although many of her clients are experts in their fields, their greatest communication successes pair knowledge with inspiration.

“One of my clients tended to focus on facts, research, and statistics about their product’s ingredients, which was interesting to them but overwhelming and boring to their audience of prospective customers,” Laurie told me. “With coaching, these executives shifted the focus of their communications from merely informative descriptions of their product to influential and inspiring messages about the health, well-being, and environmental impact of the product, resulting in a measurable increase in online sales.”

Keep in mind that while subject matter experts are qualified to share content, only leaders have the official job of inspiring a team through clear and succinct expressions of hope, vision, context, purpose, drive, appreciation, impact, aspiration, empathy, and the “why.”

The Dynamic Duo: Purpose and Power

I consider two forces essential for effective executive communication: purpose and power. I call them forces because their value is in their potency.

Purpose is the compelling reason an idea has value and should be activated. It inspires a team because it gives them a meaningful cause to align with and a motivation to commit.

Purpose often manifests in language dealing with goals and strategy and is frequently referred to as the “why.”

The following are three examples of purpose-driven statements:

“The data demonstrates that doubling down on our awareness campaign will enable us to beat last year’s revenue forecast.”

“Adopting this strategy will enable us to protect vulnerable children in ways we never have before.”

“This product will enable people to save thousands of dollars every year and live healthier lives.”

Parul Agarwal, an executive coach whose clients include leaders from Morgan Lewis and Deloitte, says executives who convey purpose regularly can inspire their teams to think more strategically themselves.

“Leaders who successfully embed purpose into their organizations’ DNA create employees who not only care about their day-to-day work—they also become purpose-driven brand champions,” she told me.

Power is the leader’s perceived strength of commitment. It engages a team because it grabs and holds their attention.

Power manifests in the confidence, credibility, authority, and competence with which you convey a message and is often referred to as presence.

To be clear, power doesn’t mean displaying aggression or dominance—nor is it gender-specific. It merely means you stand behind what you assert. Leaders can communicate messages of kindness and empathy as powerfully as they convey messages of accountability and ambition.

These words can project power when delivered with volume and emphasis:

Conveying power in a presentation or speech takes so much energy that it may exhaust you when you’re done. Low on energy? Eat a candy bar, drink some coffee, splash water in your face, because no matter how important your message is, it won’t sell itself.

Making Your Points Matter

My previous book, Get to the Point! Sharpen Your Message and Make Your Words Matter, argues that knowing, sharpening, and championing a valid point is pivotal to effective communication. Many speakers confuse topics, themes, and titles for points, rendering their communications pointless. Communicating real points is especially critical for leaders whose success relies on making clear and convincing cases to their teams.

The Difference between a Topic and a Point

The difference between sharing a topic and making a point is that the first is merely throwing out a concept for consideration (“Let’s discuss a theme”), while the other is selling a proposal for adoption (“I believe that this approach is best”). Strong leaders don’t simply blurt out their ideas and hope for the best. They argue for and build consensus to sell their ideas.

To see if your idea is a valid point or not, I recommend an exercise I call the “I Believe That” Test. Simply add the words I believe that to what you consider the point of your next address or presentation—no matter how short or unofficial that event is. If it now forms a grammatically correct complete sentence with little editing, you’re on your way to making a strong point. If not, you need to reimagine it to create a complete sentence.

For example, these are not points:

“Branded podcasting.”

“The importance of authenticity.”

“What our new Learning & Development department will do for us.”

They are not real points because, when you add “I believe that,” they do not form complete sentences:

“I believe that branded podcasting.”

“I believe that the importance of authenticity.”

“I believe that what L&D will do for us.”

The following are complete sentences and, thus, points:

“I believe that branded podcasting will expose our products to new audiences.”

“I believe that authenticity is critical to building trust.”

“I believe that our new commitment to L&D will elevate the skills and productivity of our staff.”

Now remove the “I believe that” part:

“Branded podcasting will expose our brand to new audiences.”

“Authenticity is critical to building trust.”

“Our new commitment to L&D will elevate the skills and effectiveness of our staff.”

The “I Believe That” Test conditions you to propose a point. Then it’s up to you to support it.

End with Impact on People, Not Things

A few years into my work to help clients sharpen and elevate their points, I spotted a pattern. Their most inspiring points almost always ended with an impact on people or society (living things) versus places and things (non-living things).

Here are three examples:

A pharmaceutical innovation increased revenue, quadrupled website traffic, and enabled the company to open more offices, but those impacts were not as inspiring internally or externally as the impact of saving more lives.

An environmental organization’s new clean-energy campaign dramatically increased donations, inspired a television show, and received major celebrity endorsements, but none of those impacts galvanized the team as much as the idea of making the earth a more sustainable planet.

When a public television show won a significant grant, it used the money to hire more fact-checkers, insert more sophisticated special effects, and conduct international investigations, but the impact that mattered most was making people better informed.

With this in mind, focus your leadership communications on impacts that improve the lives of people—whether it’s the people on your team, in your organization, in your city, or around the world. Articulating those human-interest outcomes gives you the best chance of inspiring the humans on your team.

Points on Parade—2018 Commencement Speeches

I consider 2018 an outstanding year for commencement speeches, many of which serve as useful models for grounding your messages in substantial points.

I’ve excerpted five of these speeches to demonstrate the clarity and power behind the speakers’ points. You may disagree with their ideas, but I know their points were conceived and expressed efficiently because it was easy for me to spot and extract them.

One strong caution as you read these (or experience any speeches for that matter): Don’t try to emulate other speakers’ communication styles, no matter how much they impress you. Your objective isn’t to speak like Michelle Obama or Steve Jobs. Who can? You are unique as both a leader and a communicator, so your objective is to come across as the most purposeful and powerful version of you.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at Harvard University

Above all else, do not lie. I grew up in Nigeria through military dictatorships and through incipient democracies. And America always felt aspirational. When yet another absurd thing happened politically, we would say, “This can never happen in America.” But today, the political discourse in America includes questions straight from the land of the absurd. Questions such as, “Should we call a lie a lie? When is a lie a lie?” And so, class of 2018, at no time has it felt as urgent as now that we must protect and value the truth.

The point: Protecting and valuing the truth is critical for a democracy.

Extra credit: Ngozi does a great job of using her unique personal story to illustrate and add relevance to her point.

Justin Trudeau at New York University

I think we can aim a little higher than mere tolerance . . . Saying “I tolerate you” actually means something like, “Ok, I grudgingly admit that you have a right to exist, just don’t get in my face about it.” . . . Let’s try for something a little more like acceptance, respect, friendship, and yes, even love. And why does this matter? Because in our aspiration to relevance, in our love for our families, in our desire to contribute, to make this world a better place, despite our differences, we are all the same.

The point: It’s critical that we respect, not just tolerate, each other.

Extra credit: Note how Trudeau uses the words “And why does this matter?” to draw attention to his point. Learn about attention magnets and see more examples of them in Chapter 2.

Abby Wambach at Barnard College

There was a picture taped next to the door—the last thing every player saw before she headed out to the training pitch. You might guess it was a picture of their last big win, or of them standing on a podium accepting gold medals. But it wasn’t. It was a picture of their long-time rival, the Norwegian national team, celebrating after having just beaten the USA in the 1995 World Cup. In that locker room, I learned that in order to become my very best, I’d need to spend my life letting the feelings and lessons of failure transform into my power. Failure is fuel. Fuel is power.

The point: Failure can be a powerful tool for success if you allow it to motivate you.

Extra credit: Wambach’s personal story centered around an image—the photo of the Norwegian national team. Focusing on that specific image made the story more visual and accessible, making her point more penetrative. She also boiled her point down and restated it in two punchy and memorable lines: “Failure is fuel. Fuel is power.”

Jake Tapper at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst

I had to be so skilled and tough and industrious and vigilant that, if my bosses at ABC News made anyone else the White House correspondent, they would look like idiots. I had to force them to give it to me out of their own best interests . . . Have something that they want. And show it to them—over and over, every day. Make them need you. Work twice as hard as the job requires. Make sure they know that you will show up and act like a professional, that you don’t feel entitled to anything. Make them hire you for their own good, not yours.

The point: Making yourself vital to your employers will open doors of opportunity.

Extra credit: Tapper doesn’t rely on clichés like “do your best” or “persevere through challenges” but finds a fresh point in encouraging his audience to make themselves invaluable to their employers. He also makes the lesson relatable by sharing a personal learning experience.

Oprah Winfrey at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

You are in a position to keep all of those who now disparage real news in check. Why? Because you can push back, and you can answer false narratives with real information. And you can set the record straight. And you also have the ability and power to give voice . . . to people who desperately now need to tell their stories and have their stories told.

The point: You are uniquely able to defend truth and tell vital stories.

Extra credit: Oprah knew her audience (journalism and communications students) and customized her message for them.

Balancing Realism and Idealism

One of a leader’s most essential—and tricky—communication responsibilities is balancing realism and idealism. You want your language to be pragmatic but also visionary. You want to focus on today’s challenges as well as tomorrow’s hope.

Conveying realistic messages is crucial to developing trust. Conveying idealistic messages is crucial to creating inspiration. But the peril of overdoing idealism is that you might overpromise or seem tone-deaf to reality, and the peril of overdoing realism is that you may be limiting your projection of ambition and vision.

Like I said: tricky.

Most teams want and need to hear messages that are both realistic and idealistic. They want to understand the road under their feet and know it’s leading to an amazing place.

For sufficient balance, the trick may lie in transitions. Instead of addressing the real and the ideal in completely separate chunks, consider connecting them explicitly, similar to a well-known quote by American philosopher Eric Hoffer:

The leader has to be practical and a realist yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.

Here are more examples of a realism/idealism transition:

“While we need to keep one eye on today’s challenges, the other should be squarely focused on our goals for the remainder of this year and beyond. That’s how we keep moving ahead and understanding where we need to be.”

“We will inevitably make mistakes and may not always meet our objectives, but taking risks and thinking big are critically important to our success, so I encourage you to aim high. Remember, every moment of failure is also a moment of learning.”

Know What Your Audience Wants and Needs

One of the biggest public speaking mistakes I ever made was in 2000 when I oversaw the launch of a major news website for kids. On the day of its launch, I was asked to give a short celebratory speech to dozens of people, including my team, my bosses, their bosses, and other executives.

I spoke about how much the moment meant to me—given my professional history and personal aspirations—and how proud and thrilled I was to be affiliated with the effort and for the opportunity to lead it.

When I finished, the reaction wasn’t so much “yea!” as “okay.” I didn’t inspire. I didn’t engage. I didn’t impress.

I expressed the kind of speech you would expect from a best supporting actor, but not from a team leader. Those very words—team leader—indicate the crucial elements I omitted. My speech was about me, not about the project, the objective, or my team. It prioritized what mattered to me well above what mattered to my audience.

That’s an enormous mistake because, in leadership, there’s no point communicating to your team if your message has little value or relevance to them. Your leadership is only valuable to the extent you influence the people you’re leading.

That may sound obvious, but I often meet executive clients who start with “what I want to say” versus “what my team wants and needs to hear.” In taking that route, leaders run the risk of seeming self-centered and oblivious to important organizational realities.

Expressed as an equation, the most effective leadership communication is “team wants to hear” + “team needs to know” = “what leader needs to say.” Only when that equation is satisfied should leaders even consider incorporating “leader wants to say.”

Needs to Know

Work with other leaders in your organization to determine what your team needs to know. Collaborating with others will help ensure that you’re focused on an organizational imperative and not a primarily personal concern.

Also, try to develop an actual and vital “need to know” versus a less valuable “neat to know.” To know the difference, ask: How important and relevant is this message?

“Very” = Need to know. “Somewhat” = Neat to know.

Wants to Know

Understanding what your team wants to know from you can be tricky. Lean on your internal communications and HR teams for insight. You can also conduct staff polls, solicit questions and concerns directly, and run breakfast meetings with small groups to get a sense of their feelings and ideas.

One HR executive I worked with—Jeanette—wanted to speak to her team about how inspired she was by a new book on innovative approaches to employee benefits.

Jeanette had not raised these ideas with her staff before, and her only rationale for sharing it was that the book appealed to her. As a result, her concept flunked the “want to hear” test and scored a solid “inconclusive” on the “need to know” test.

I asked her, “How would your team benefit from this insight?”

Of course, it would appeal to Jeanette’s team for the same reason it attracted her. So, working with that question and her answer, we changed Jeanette’s focus from “what I want to say about this book” to “how thinking outside the box can make our benefits package more understandable and valuable for employees.” Jeanette framed the book as a resource, but not as a point unto itself.

TED Talks are strong examples of communications that emphasize audience relevance over speaker interests. All TED Talk topics have very high audience interest, and that item of interest is usually reflected in the title. You’ll never see a TED Talk titled “A Conversation with [Famous Person],” but you’ll find thousands of TED Talks about how to conduct successful conversations.

If reimagining your presentation as a TED Talk doesn’t help, ask the same question I asked Jeanette: “How will my team benefit from this communication?”

The answer to that question should reveal whether the topic is relevant or irrelevant, as well as potentially elevate the topic—with a little help—from “what I want to say” and “how this affects me” to the much more meaningful “what my team needs to know” and “how this affects them.”

Problem-Solving versus Problem-Sharing

I recently reviewed a nonprofit leader’s quotation promoting her new environmental awareness campaign. It read:

This environmental emergency puts a new face on a truth we’ve known for some time: When we disregard the Earth, we disregard our lives.

Catchy. Direct. Tweetable. But it’s missing one crucial element: a leadership communication obligation to not only identify the challenge but—even more importantly—propose the solution. Here’s the fixed quote, which the leader also shared on social media:

Our government must commit to meaningful environmental protection because when we disregard the Earth, we disregard our lives.

Yes, we cut “new face” and “known for some time,” but, at the end of the day, how important or unrealized are those details?

Focusing on solutions is already a requirement in many settings where one human being is relying on another. For example, you don’t bring your car to a mechanic primarily to learn how worn down your brake pads are. Nor do you invite a plumber into your home to tell you your pipes are clogged. Those diagnoses may be part of the conversation, but ultimately you want professionals to fix the problem, not dwell on the damage.

Like those specialists, leaders need to recognize they are in the problem-solving business, not just the problem-sharing business—no matter how fascinating or destructive the problem or challenge is.

This guidance doesn’t mean you should avoid referring to challenges and obstacles to your organization’s progress, but that you should get in and out of that description quickly so you can spend more time communicating about learnings, countermeasures, and solutions, which is your role as a leader. In volleyball terms, the obstacle is the set, and the solution is the spike.

We, Myself, and I

Leaders are most engaging and inspiring when, in their expressions, they position themselves among the team, not above the team, particularly by framing their points from the perspective of “we” versus “I.”

“We” and “us” are instantly inclusive and inviting. They imply a commonality of challenge or purpose. They also reinforce critical workplace values like teamwork and collaboration.

Example:

“We are going to overcome this challenge,” and “This will enable us to increase our revenue.”

Implication: We are unified.

“I” and “me,” on the other hand, speak to individual effort and, in some cases, conceit. Using these pronouns sounds very personal—which can have advantages in some instances—but it also creates distance between leaders and their teams.

Example:

“I am confident we will overcome this challenge” and “Increasing revenue is important to me.”

Implication: My primary goal is to satisfy myself.

In most cases, it’s not difficult to turn an “I” into a “we” without changing the meaning of an expression:

“I believe we should” becomes “We should.”

“This is something I care about” becomes “This is something we should all care about.”

“This is one of my proudest moments” becomes “This is a proud moment for us all.”

Kilar and Sarnoff

Writing for the website of The Hollywood Reporter on September 17, 2020, Katie Kilkenny shared separate internal memos written by WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar and Warner Bros. CEO Ann Sarnoff to their staffs in response to workplace complaints of improper behavior on the sets of two of their television shows.

Their memos, both roughly 600 words, had common elements, including disappointment and rejections of inappropriate employee behavior and announcements that third-party organizations would be brought in for assistance.

But in terms of “I” versus “we,” the memos couldn’t have been more different.

In Kilar’s memo, there were at least 15 instances of “I”:

I am both concerned and disappointed . . .

I’ve always been a believer that . . .

In my first four months . . .

I’ve thought a lot about . . .

I’ve come to the conclusion . . .

I’d like people to say . . .

I believe it entails . . .

I say the above as prelude . . .

I want to understand . . .

I also am encouraging all of you to . . .

I anticipate . . .

I also anticipate . . .

I also want to say that . . .

I am certain that we will make mistakes . . .

I know we can and will be better . . .

That’s a lot of “I”s for 600 words, all of them positioning Kilar above his team, not among them. He focuses almost entirely on his singular perspective, and it feels professorial.

The subtext: “This is what I think you should know and how you can please me. Take notes.”

By contrast, Sarnoff’s memo had fewer “I”s, but more importantly, many more “we”s and “our”s. Here’s how they looked:

We have the opportunity . . .

We’re all working from the same playbook . . .

Our success will be based on innovation . . .

We all have a role in supporting our code of conduct . . .

We will be redoubling our efforts . . .

This is how we will operate going forward . . .

We all have a responsibility . . .

It’s how we’ll do our best work . . .

We will be asking a third party . . .

Our opportunities and success are only limited by our imaginations . . .

Let’s show everyone what we can do together . . .

Are you already feeling more inspired? These phrases are warmer and more inclusive than those from Kilar, placing Sarnoff among her team instead of above them.

The subtext: “We can and will fix this together.”

A Powerful “I”

“I”s aren’t all bad. “I” can be a powerful instrument when used to convey authenticity and personal commitment.

Sarnoff does this several times:

I take responsibility for what happens on my watch . . .

I will hold them accountable . . .

I will state here today that this is how we will operate going forward . . .

These register as inspirational because they are statements of accountability to the team, not just self-centered pondering.

Bottom line: When your communication is mostly about you—what you want, what you think, what you expect—you build separation, not engagement. You need your team’s support as much as they need your leadership, so take every opportunity to convey “we are one team, and we work best when we work together.”

It, This, and That

Leaders only benefit from frequently reiterating and reinforcing their key points. (No one ever said, “Felicia is a great leader, but she makes her point too many times.”) But even leaders who know this still miss key opportunities when they over-rely on pronouns like “it,” “this,” and “that” instead of explicitly saying what they mean.

Look for these pronouns in your text and speaking habits, and try to supplement or replace them with words imbued with greater meaning and relevance. The more specific your addition or replacement, the more it will resonate with your team.

Look at the impact of pronoun replacement in the following three groups of sentences.

Weak: This will take us to the next level.

Better: This idea will take us to the next level.

Best: Adopting this innovative approach will take us to the next level.

Weak: It will make our processes much more efficient.

Better: This product will make our processes much more efficient.

Best: Using a cloud-based filing system will make our editorial processes much more efficient.

Weak: That should inspire us all.

Better: That story should inspire us all.

Best: Magda’s story of resilience should inspire us all.

The Beauty of Brevity

We’ve all heard “less is more,” but Albert Einstein took it a step further (and wiser) when he said, “If you can’t say it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

I take Einstein’s quotation to mean that brevity is not merely about cutting words. It means understanding your core message thoroughly enough to recognize what can be stripped away and what needs to be preserved.

The importance of brevity in leadership communications can’t be overstated (and, by definition, shouldn’t be overstated), especially when you consider an average audience’s attention span. I don’t mean that to be disparaging, but consider an audience’s job versus a speaker’s job:

A speaker’s job: Say something you’ve been thinking about and working on for days or weeks.

An audience’s job: Hear it for the first time, then digest it, process it, consider it, attach relevance to it, and perhaps write it down.

Given that enormous disparity in cognitive burdens, it’s critically important to be concise, which will give your team more time to process and record your points. It also demonstrates that you value their time.

Occasionally, often at a holiday or town hall meeting, it may become necessary for a leader to run down a “laundry list” of achievements or acknowledgments across the organization. In these “must include” cases, focus on three key approaches:

1. Do the “Need to Know/Neat to Know” audit you read about earlier in this book to keep the list as tight as possible and to consolidate ideas into themes where you can.

2. Make sure you hit every item on the list with ample energy and clear articulation. Often the biggest problem with laundry lists is not the lists themselves, but the way leaders seem bored by the recitation and rush through the lists. Keep in mind that people in your audience will be lifted with each mention, so give every item strong emphasis to ensure that impact.

3. To prevent perceptions of favoritism or bias, make your list of lauded individuals and teams as diverse as possible, including considerations of work function, geographic region, hierarchy, ethnicity, race, gender, and age.