Winning, music tips, and communicating incrementally
Every two weeks we’ll give you three communication tips. If you find them valuable, please invite someone else to subscribe to this newsletter.
Talk about victory.
Get yourself into a success cycle if you feel stuck or accelerate your cycle if you’re already in one.
One way to do this is by talking about victory more. I call it objective-based communication, and it starts by identifying your goals and being clear about them with every member of your team.
Life is nuanced, sure. But leadership is often a matter of simplifying things and cutting through the nuance so each member of your team knows exactly her part.
When you talk about what victory looks like in simple terms, your team will start talking about it, then visualizing it, and then making decisions that get them closer to it.
Read about how military commanders make decisions that lead to victory.
Articulate like a music teacher.
In music, articulation is clarity in the production of successive notes. It involves the particular ways a musician can start, sustain, and complete a note, then combine it with other notes to form music.
Apply that to your own communication practices. It’s much more than word choice. Great leaders know when to talk, and when silence advances their message. They also understand that communication can harmonize with other leadership practices to help others understand.
The best leaders understand how articulation goes beyond using the right words and phrases.
Break it down, like in math.
Communication is a tool to teach or advance a cause. In your enterprise, organization, or team, people will look to you for clues about how they should advance the cause.
Some leaders make the mistake of assuming that team members see the problem or the cause in the same way. Rarely is that true. And because leaders often need to extend frontiers, they are at risk of leaving their team behind in their understanding of the issues.
Look for clues about how well your team understands where they are and where you need them to go. A small step in the right direction is much better than mileage gained going the wrong way.
Read about how to make work manageable by increments.
