Communicate Like a Leader

Dianna Booher: I think they are essential as a leader. In fact, it's the essence of leadership and the reflection of your thinking that is what comes out of your mouth. It's the picture of your thinking on the page. It's what you say when you give a briefing, the interaction, one-on-one, when you see someone in the hallway. There's all the essence of your thinking. So you, ultimately, produce your thoughts when you talk to someone.

Rachel Salaman: And, in the book, you talk about strategic communication. So what is that in particular?

Dianna Booher: Basically, when you talk about "strategic," you're thinking, in an organization, "What kind of communication, what kind of interaction, what kind of encounter do I need to have that is going to have a long-term impact on these people as I develop my team, as I negotiate this deal, as I network at this event, as I write this email or this report or this proposal? What kind of thoughts should I put into this, that's going to have long-term impact?"

Even if you're hiring someone – if you're interviewing, recruiting – thinking, for example, if I'm hiring someone, "Do I just get someone for this position because I'm desperate, because the position is not filled, or do I keep that position open because I want someone in there for the long-term impact that's going to be with us, that really has the skill that we need?"

That's what I'm talking about when I go back to the dictionary definition of "long-term impact." And that's how I decided, even the topics for the book, when I thought of all the things that I could cover that leaders really need to know about leadership communication: "What is essential for long-term impact, not just the routine?"

Rachel Salaman: So that's your definition of "strategic communication." You share a couple of other memorable definitions in the book. "Managing is maintaining the status quo: leading is improving the status quo." How does that apply to actual jobs and roles, and do you think all managers should aspire to be leaders?

Dianna Booher: Definitely, I think so. And I'm not talking about holding a specific position, but I use the analogy of a financial manager. If you get someone to manage your portfolio – your money – you don't want a financial manager to just manage your money, to just administrate, to just move it around from this account to that account, and decide you need to buy this stock as opposed to another stock. You want somebody to improve the value.

And that's the difference I see in a manager and a leader. You don't want someone to just move people around from position to position: you want people to develop those people, to grow the team, to improve the value. So, yes, even managers who don't have a title, necessarily – or individual contributors who don't have a title – should grow in their positions. They should improve processes. They should contribute ideas. They should improve their own skills. They should improve the quality of things they are doing and products they're handling. Everyone should aspire to be a leader.

Rachel Salaman: You say that there's one question that leaders need to answer correctly every time, and it's "What are you working on?" Why did you single out that question? And what constitutes a correct answer in that context?

Dianna Booher: Well, you know, managers get asked a lot of questions all the time: everything from the "significant," like "Is that merger going through?" to the "insignificant," such as "Are we going to have to work over the weekend?" But that one, probably, is the most frequent. "What are you working on?" You get asked that at the water cooler; you get asked that at lunch; you get asked that from your boss; you get asked that from your subordinates. It's just a typical chitchat question.

And most people pass it off with a flippant answer, but I think it's really important that you don't do that. And I think your answer should have four parts to it. I think, if you want to be seen as a viable player, if you want to get an advantage from being asked that question, the first part of your answer should be, "We're working on solving X problem," or, "We're working on improving such-and-such." And the second part of your answer should be, "And here's why that matters to the organization."

And the third part of your answer should be, "And here are the outcomes we're working toward and the benefits that we'll gain from that." And then you may add this part, depending on who asked you: "This is how that work is going to affect your budget or your timeline," or, "As far you're concerned, such-and-such is going to happen," or, "You may not be able to do such-and-such until we get such-and-such corrected."

That lets people know that your department or your team or your role is vital to contributing to the organization as a whole. What you don't want to do is to answer it in such a way that you're using inside jargon – terms from just your area or your department – so that nobody knows what you're talking about.

If you do, you're just killing time; you're just giving them a "nothing answer" and they have no idea what your department does. You don't want to do that because no one can evaluate what kind of contribution you're making to the whole. So, if you want to remain visible and have people understand your contribution, across the product lines, across the divisional lines, you have to be able to articulate the value your team is creating in a way that they can understand it.

Rachel Salaman: The subtitle of your book is "Connecting Strategically to Coach, Inspire and Get Things Done." And part of connecting is hiring employees in the first place. And you have a chapter full of tips on this. And, here, you made the point that the most effective interview questions ask about past experience, rather than hypothetical situations. But doesn't that turn the interview into a memory test?

Dianna Booher: Not exactly, because, when you do that, you're asking about their concrete skills, not their wish list. When you ask about the future – "What would you do if..." – that's a wish list, they can make it up, and it cannot have anything to do with reality. But, when you're asking about "What did you do in the past?" they should be able to come up with what they did in the past because these are skills that they had.

They just finished a job so they know, "I was in a sales role, so these are some clients I sold to." If they were in a specific management role, they will remember, "Oh, we really had a problem with this," "We really had to struggle with this process," "I really had difficulty when I tried to hire such-and-such, and he didn't fit and I had to move this person around," or, "I had this terrible conflict with these three employees and this is how I solved it." So they will have experiences.

Now, we don't forget them: bad or good, exceptionally good experiences, exceptionally bad experiences that we had. And that's what you're trying to get at. Otherwise, you're just talking about fantasy and that's what you don't want to get into; that's what you don't want to hear in a job interview.

You want a proven track record, because that's what we know they can repeat. If they have difficulty remembering some of these issues, you can always ask prompting questions. Let's say you're talking to a sales person: you might say, "Did you ever have an inactive client that you needed to get back in the fold?" "Did you ever have trouble closing a client?" "Did you like to cold call?" 'Tell me how you approached a cold call if you did like and do cold-calling."

So you can help them remember things and, when they remember something – or recall it – then you ask, "Well, how did you solve that problem and what was the result of that?" So you can jog their memory, though what you want to get at are real-life experiences and see how they handled things, aligned with how you think it should have gone, and if they are really telling you the results that you want to hear.

Rachel Salaman: Your book also has a lot of good advice when it comes to firing people. Could you share some of the most effective of those tips now?

Dianna Booher: Well, for firing people, what you want to do is to make sure that you've given them proper warning, that you've documented correctly. What HR people tell us most often is people just walk in – managers just walk in – and just say things like, "Joe Schmo is not working out," or, "I just need to get somebody to replace Jill; she's just not doing a great job," and they have nothing in writing.

It's a given that you should document conversations that you have, that you tell them exactly – specifically – what didn't work out, what needs to be improved specifically, and you've given a time period to do it. And then you need to be very specific when you do that and then be helpful and hopeful that they will make that change.

The problem is that most organizations have to absorb the cost of a poor player, and it's very non-productive for other people because they have to pick up the slack of the mistakes and the rework and the morale. And they see that, as a manager, you're doing nothing: you're just letting this poor performer slack off and make these mistakes and it kills the morale of the other, good performers.

And, of course, if you hate to do it – and anybody who has heart hates to terminate a poor performer – but that poor performer is awful stressed: if you can think of it like that. It's like they're waiting for the ax to fall. They know they're not performing up to expectations. They know it feels bad there and, by making the decision to terminate, you are helping them to move along to where they can be successful.

And it's just really not fair to keep them in a job with false expectation that the situation is going to improve, that you're going to lower your standards, that things are going to get better – because they're not.

Rachel Salaman: You mentioned employee development there. What are some ways to enthuse team members about the learning opportunities that there might be?

Dianna Booher: Well, you can make sure that you know what those are in your organization. A lot of times the manager does not even know what the learning opportunities are, what the HR team or department offers, and what kind of outplaces that there are. You need to be advised of that yourself so that you can feel better, and you will feel better about that decision – helping them move on – and you can advise them when you make the termination decision and have that conversation.

Rachel Salaman: You mentioned the importance of managers motivating their team members. And, in the book, you include an analysis of the difference between managers who motivate and managers who demoralize their team members. What are some of the more unexpected of those differences?

Dianna Booher: Well, demoralizing managers are always trying to analyze things, but motivating managers think through quickly and they come to conclusions and they apply them. Demoralizing managers are always going from the simple to making things complex, because that's justifying their job. Motivating leaders, on the other hand, go from the complex to the simple: they're wanting to make things simple so they can do it quickly and be productive.

Demoralizing managers often get distracted because, obviously, they listen to the buzz and they don't want to be offensive; they don't want to get blamed, certainly, for things; they don't want people asking questions. But motivating managers, on the other hand, want to be concrete; they know an ounce of specificity prevents difficulty, prevents mistakes. I think demoralizing managers try to control things; they control people, they control profits.

But, if they're motivating, obviously, they know how to overview and delegate and they have heart, they have passion, they have compassion. I guess, if they were going to sum it up, I would say demoralizing managers do things right: they want it done just their way. Motivating managers do the right things, and they know how to do those strategic things like the book says.

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Rachel Salaman: In the book, you stress how important it is for leaders to always tell the truth. But, sometimes, this might lead to over-sharing, saying things that would be better left unsaid because, maybe, they'd be misconstrued or they might reduce the leader's authority or credibility. Where should leaders draw the line between honesty and over-sharing?

Dianna Booher: Well, leaders certainly want to keep confidences. They don't want to mislead. But just telling everything you know is not being dishonest. It's keeping your mouth shut. For example, if your dog dies, it doesn't mean you're going to go around telling everyone that you're sad. That in itself is not dishonest. You don't have to tell everything but what it means is that what you do say needs to be the truth.

For example, when you have bad news, it means acknowledging a bad situation rather than just glossing over it. If you have a defective product, you admit that there's a problem and you focus on correcting it, rather than just pretending it's not there and being falsely positive.

Rachel Salaman: And I suppose the same can be said for humor, which you recommend as a connecting tool. It can diminish someone's authority; it can even cause offense. Do you have any tips for how a leader or manager might judge where to draw that line?

Dianna Booher: Well, you're right. And we do judge people by what they find funny or not funny. Obviously, you never want to offend with your humor but I do consider it a tension reducer and I think self-effacing humor that doesn't diminish authority is the best kind. Obviously, you don't want to diminish your skills, because that diminishes your authority, but you can always do self-effacing humor about things that won't affect your credibility.

For example, myself, I'm always making fun of my cooking because, when I'm in front of an audience or when I'm out consulting, I'm not talking about my cooking. My husband, in fact, often says things like, "We have an oven in the kitchen only for resale purposes," because that is not part of my credibility. If I were making fun of my writing, that would be another story because I'm an author and that is part of my credibility.

So it's a judgment call about what you do use your humor for. I would never use anything off-color, that's just not me, that's not my character. But humor does open the door; it lowers people's defenses so that they are able to hear you. And, if you can find something that you have in common, that you and your audience – even if it's an audience of one, an audience of six in a meeting or a large audience – it relaxes them so that they can hear you.

Rachel Salaman: Now, networking, of course, is central to strategic communications. What are your best tips for busy leaders in this regard?

Dianna Booher: When you network, you have to be aware that you have a goal. Most people don't think of the events they attend as networking events. It might be just that you are meeting someone early the night before a big meeting. It might not be called a networking event but you are meeting with people from other divisions and you're going out to dinner with eight or 10 people. That is networking. On the other hand, many times, you're an industry contact and you're seeing two thousand in the hallway between breakout sessions.

And, again, it might not be the networking event of a conference but you still have opportunities to network with people. But here's what I suggest that people do, sometimes, to become aware whether they're good at it or not good at it: take all the cards that you picked up at some kind of event, say the last three events that you returned from.

Say you came home with 22 cards. Lay them out in front of you. How many people do you – can actually picture in your mind – remember? You look at their cards, you look at their title. Do you actually remember the conversation you had with them? Could you pick up a number of those 22 cards, pick those up and hold the one that you actually know enough and remember enough about the conversation that you could refer them to another customer, or one of your suppliers, or a friend?

And most people can't pick up more than two or three out of those 22 cards, and that's not a good sign. What you need to do as a networker is to go with a mission in mind to meet two or three or four or five – whatever the mission is, depending on how long the event is – and purposely come home and make a note to stay in touch with those people.

And, over the long haul, if you want to stay in touch there are several ways to do that. You want to serve those people, keep them active, don't let them decline in value. Become a resource to them; provide introductions for them; be a sounding board when they're making a decision or making a change or a move in the organization across a division or a department. If you do that, then, at 7am when you have a question and you need a favor, you can pick up the phone and call them.

But you must keep the network active or it becomes of no value. It's just like your money: if it's not growing and you're not keeping it active, they close accounts. If you don't stay active with these people, they don't remember you and then it becomes of no value: those contacts just become inactive.

Rachel Salaman: And one of your particular areas of expertise is executive presence. And this comes up in your latest book, too. What, for you, are the key points that will help people boost their executive presence for better communication?

Dianna Booher: Executive presence can boil down to four key areas: it is how you look, how you talk, how you think, and how you act. And, of all of those, the first thing that people notice, of course, is your physical presence. The most important, of course, is how you act. And the way I am defining how you act are all the things about character and integrity, your track record, reputation and competence. Those things you can't teach. Those are character issues that you develop over a long, long time.

But the physical presence and the voice, the thinking process: those first three that I named – how you look, talk and think – those can be taught; they can be learned very quickly. In fact, that's what I've coached on for the last three decades. And those matter a great deal. Leaders can learn those very easily. They have a great deal to do with how credible you are. You can even hear it on the phone when you call up.

Let's say you have a mistake on your credit card and you call and you talk to the first person. You can tell, just by their voice quality, their firmness, you're either talking to a low-level employee who can't do a thing about it, or you can tell if you're talking to a manager who says immediately, "We'll remove these charges, it's handled, it's done." You can't see that person, and you don't know anything about their character, their values. You make all those judgment calls based on their voice.

And same thing when you see somebody. Sometimes, you can just walk down the street and you think, "This person knows nothing." They're invalid sometimes, but you make those calls based on how straight they stand, their posture, when they look timid, they look shy, or they look in command, in control. You say, "That's a distinguished-looking person." All of that is conveyed just in seconds.

And you have an enormous advantage when you stand up to make a presentation, when you look the part, when your voice sounds the part, and then when you think on your feet under pressure. And I've done surveys, and my organization, about every five years, we'll do a survey. My previous book, "Creating Personal Presence," it was on this topic specifically – we ask, "What is your weakest area?" And people said, "Thinking under pressure." And that's where they felt the biggest gap in their skill.

And that shows up when they respond to a tough question, when they are giving a presentation, and at the end they say, "What questions do you have?" And they get asked a specific, to-the-point, technical question and they ramble and ramble and ramble, looking for a place to land, and they get down in the weeds, they can't handle it.

And so one thing that I teach and that I've covered in this book is how to think on your feet using the lead format. You can't always anticipate the question but you can have a format that will lead to the thought process to come up with a succinct answer. So all of that encompasses your presence.

Rachel Salaman: Another section of your book deals with written communications. And you say here – quote – "It pays to think strategically on paper and online." So can you give us an example of what you mean by that?

Dianna Booher: Many people try to write as they think. And that's good and bad. When it's good, what I mean by that is it's conversational, which it should be. You should use conversational words when you write. But it shouldn't be a ramble. We keep to format, which I use: the TADA template.

Rachel Salaman: TADA. Yes. I should just say, for people listening, that it's an acronym and it stands for "Top Line Summary, Action, Details and Attachments."

Dianna Booher: And I preserve that in the book. And they think about, "What is the key top line message?" Then they can think out, "What action do I want people to take based on this proposal or this email I'm about to write?" "What are the details I need to put in: the who, what, when, where, why, how?" "Do I need to send an attachment?" Once they pick out the key details they need to include, then they need to sit down and write, not before. When they start to write just as they think, they tend to write in "once upon a time" format.

And, when they write in "once upon a time" format, the problem is they never go back, correct it and straighten it out, and so the reader has to suffer through that before they pick out all those things. It's almost like they have to pick up a highlighter and go, "OK, here's the point," and "Oh, here's another point," and "Oh, here's the action over here," and "Oh, here's one detail." It's all very rambling. And that makes you look very incoherent. That is documented: that poor thinking, that incoherent ramble is documented for days, sometimes years in the files for people to see.

Unlike spoken speech, you hear somebody do a presentation and you think, "Oh, that was a great idea." You don't remember exactly how they said it – if it was boring or rambling – two weeks from now. But, with writing, it's documented forever and that's why it's so important that, as a leader, you write well, because it's going to be on file for a long, long time.

Rachel Salaman: You also include a section on meetings. And one of your tips here is to prepare the meeting's agenda in question format to provide focus: very simple, very effective. What else do you advise for better meetings?

Dianna Booher: I think that timing is really important. When you have agenda items, they're in question format, and I also go into in the book how to set those up, raise the focus. They should always have a time on each question. The tendency is just go to a meeting and it doesn't say "Ten minutes on this topic," "Fifteen minutes on this topic," "Eight minutes on this topic." They may just think, "We have the whole hour and, if it takes us 45 minutes on this topic and we only have five minutes left for this topic..."

They have no sense of urgency to speak their mind on this topic, come to a decision or come to a recommendation and move on. So it's very important that, with each topic, you add a time. And you can always adjust the time: if you get into the discussion and see that it's going to take longer, you can decide, as a group, "All right. Let's adjust the timing from 10 minutes here to 20 minutes, and we're going to have to leave one of these other topics for next week or for the next meeting."

You need to have a cancelation system so that, if somebody's input is vital – they're a key player here – and they can't make it, or they cancel at the last minute, the whole meeting is canceled. There's no use having two meetings. What happens many times is some vital person that has input can't come and you just sit around and then you have to redo the whole meeting because that person can only come next week, and that's a waste of time.

You must have follow-up assignments so that everybody walks out of the meeting, they know exactly what the conclusion was and who's doing what before the next meeting. How many times have you walked out of a meeting and people look at each other thinking, "What did we decide?" "What was the conclusion?" "Who's doing what?" and you repeat it the next time. And always evaluate your meetings, certainly the important meetings.

Every so often, you should take a sort of a temperature on your meeting to decide, "How are we meeting?" "How are the processes going?" "What needs to be changed?" Otherwise, you just continue to infuriate yourselves because the meeting's a time waster, rather than really producing results.

Rachel Salaman: That's great. Thanks so much. And, just finally, Dianna, how can people find you?

Dianna Booher: BooherResearch.com.

Rachel Salaman: Dianna, thanks so much for joining us today.

Dianna Booher: Thank you, Rachel.

Rachel Salaman: The name of Dianna's book again is "Communicate Like a Leader, Connecting Strategically to Coach, Inspire and Get Things Done." I'll be back in a few weeks with another Expert Interview. Until then, goodbye.