Lead Positive: What Highly Effective Leaders See, Say, and Do by Cramer Kathryn D

Author:Cramer, Kathryn D. [Cramer, Kathryn D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2014-02-10T00:00:00+00:00

Situation

The situation framework helps you determine how best to engage your listeners at a particular moment in time. Knowing your audience's frame of mind—uncertain or clear, hesitant or ready, worried or excited, or in the dark or knowledgeable—is essential to selecting the right stories and engagement strategies. The sizzle of your message must serve the needs of your audience: their interests, concerns, aspirations, and well-being must be your paramount focus. You, your emotional tone, the stories you tell, and the images you paint must connect with your listeners' most ardent hopes and desires.

I had been working with a CEO and his five-person leadership team for the past year to assist them in planning a successful divestiture process. Two weeks before the closing date of the sale, the team needed to announce the sale to employees, customers, suppliers, and the community at large. Because these stakeholder groups were not privy to the earlier phases of the process, the announcement was going to come as a surprise.

In preparing their announcement remarks, the leaders took into account the unique interests and concerns of each stakeholder group relative to the sale announcement. They brainstormed on what the sale would mean from the unique perspectives of each constituency, profiling the likely hopes and fears of each. Painting the picture of how each group would react to the sale made it possible for the leaders to customize stories and create talking points that would best satisfy the interests and concerns of each group.

Most important, the CEO and his team had to come to grips with the fact that because they were well past their own initial anxieties and concerns, they needed to tap into two essential virtues: empathy and patience. To demonstrate empathy, each leader (including the CEO) crafted a personal story of how he or she initially reacted to the uncertainties associated with the divestiture process. Each story also revealed what it took for them to come to terms with their worries.

The chief operating officer spoke of her anxieties about losing her organization's well-earned reputation for putting safety first. She knew safety would always be a personal value for her, but she wondered if the new company would champion safety as emphatically as her previous company did.

The head of sales and marketing had been worried about finding a buyer with a solid customer base and a reputation for being customer focused. If customer relations with the new company were not as strong, he wondered what could be done to rectify that situation. How fast could the turnaround happen? His concerns multiplied as he visualized the worst-case scenarios.

As each member of the leadership team made his or her respective announcement of the sale of the company, each told personal stories of shifting from concern and worry over potential problems to curiosity and enthusiasm over what possibilities the sale might spark. They offered to give time and support to everyone else now needing to shift from negative apprehension to positive engagement.

Engaging in tailored preparation enabled the leadership

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