Turbo Charge Your Career With The Most Powerful Leadership Tool
Of All: The Leadership Talk. (Part T
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Summary: The author asserts that presentations and speeches are
the least effective means of leadership communication. There is
a much more effective way: the Leadership Talk. In this three
part series, he describes underlying principles of the
Leadership Talk and ways to help develop and deliver it.
Turbo Charge Your Career With The Most Powerful Leadership Tool
Of All: The Leadership Talk. (Part Two) by Brent Filson
In Part One, I described the Leadership Talk and how it is a
much more effective leadership tool than presentations or
speeches.
I also described two fundamental premises that the Leadership
Talk is based on.
In Part Two, I will show you the purpose of the Leadership Talk.
You won't be able to give a Leadership Talk effectively on a
consistent basis if you misunderstand its purpose.
The Leadership Talk doesn't drive purpose. Purpose drives the
Leadership Talk. There is one and only one purpose of the
Leadership Talk: that's to motivate people to be your cause
leaders in meeting the challenges you face.
This is important in understanding the difference between
Leadership Talks and presentations/speeches.
You're a leader. You have a task to complete. Do you want the
people you lead to simply do the task? Or do you want those
people to actually take leadership of accomplishing the task?
For the difference between doing and leading in terms of
accomplishment is stock car and a formula 1 racer.
Clearly, you can order them to accomplish the task; and if
you're in a position of authority, they will most likely carry
out the order. But they might not do it with full commitment. Or
they may resent being ordered. Or they may be inclined to do
nothing unless ordered, and so after accomplishing the task,
they do little else but wait for the next order.
However, their committing to take leadership involves your
establishing a special relationship with them.
For instance, going back to the example I used in Part One, if
one is a floor sweeper, one does the best floor sweeping, not
simply by doing it but by taking leadership of floor sweeping.
Such leadership might entail: taking the initiative to order and
manage supplies; evaluating the job results and raising those
results to ever higher levels; having floor sweeping be an
integral part of the general cleaning policy; hiring, training,
developing other floor sweepers; instilling a "floor sweeping
esprit"that can be manifested in training; special uniforms and
insignias; behavior, etc.; setting floor sweeping strategy and
goals.
Otherwise, in a "doing" mode, one simply pushes a broom.
You may say, "Listen, Brent, a job is a job is a job. This
leadership thing is making too much of not much!"
Could be. But my point is that applying leadership to a task
changes the expectations of the task. It even changes the task
itself. Think of it, when we ourselves are challenged to lead
and not simply do, our world is, I submit, changed. Furthermore,
though you may order people to do a job, you can't order anybody
to take leadership of it. It's their choice whether they take it
or not.
This is where the Leadership Talk comes in. Using it, you set up
the environment in which they make that choice.
The Leadership Talk is not only the most important way to get
cause leaders; it is the only way to get them on a consistent
basis.
In the final part of this three part series, I'll show you how
to develop and deliver a great Leadership Talks.
2005