Communication Skills Can Increase Your Leadership Credibility

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StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals ArticleIn today’s global marketplace, leaders must possess strong communication skills. The sound of someone’s voice matters twice as much as the content of his or her message, according to recent findings as reported in the Wall Street Journal. Studies have shown that a person’s speech patterns, including the quality of their voice, strongly influences how others perceive him or her.

Last year, research published at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business revealed that the resonance of a male executives voice strongly correlated to their earning power. A smaller study of female business leaders suggested that this pattern did not hold true for women. The leading criteria for female leaders were the use of ‘vocal energy’ or variations in their volume. What many don’t realize is that you can change the way you sound. For those who speak too quickly or in a soft voice, the message can be lost.

Open and clear communication is a critical part of strong leadership. In today’s global marketplace, a successful professional must be able to deliver their message in a clear and concise manner and to use their speaking skills to lead and inspire others. The proper tone and the proper delivery will make the difference in an audience that listens to what is being said or chooses to remain fixed on the messages on their Smartphone. Public speaking and presentations are no longer just confined to the conference room and the PowerPoint slides.

The truth is, as Patricia Fripp recently stated, “public speaking is everything we do when we leave our home in the morning.” With that in mind, there are several steps one can take to improve their professional speaking skills and deliver every message like a leader. By practicing these techniques you will be able to transform your communication skills into those of a dynamic and engaging speaker. You will consistently be able to establish credibility as soon as you begin to speak, and you will be able to persuade your audience with powerful authority and clarity.

Here are three steps one can take to improve their professional speaking skills and deliver every message like a leader.

  1. Power up Your Voice: Speaking in a strong voice conveys confidence and leadership. Learning to project from the diaphragm will create a strong, confident and dynamic voice. Take a breath and feel the control.
  2. Master the Strategic Pause: Simply slowing down your rate of speech will add impact to your message and will significantly improve your speech quality and delivery. Speak in sound bites. It shows you are in control of what you are saying, and it gives the listener time to process what is being said.
  3. Communicate with Eloquence: Avoid using filler words such as “uh,” “um,” “like,” and “you know.” Even seasoned professionals often use these words more often than then realize. Make an effort to avoid any words, syllables and phrases that detract from your message and make you look unprofessional.

By practicing these techniques you will be able to transform your communication skills into those of a dynamic and engaging speaker, and you will be able to persuade your audience with powerful authority.

Lee Iacooca stated, “You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them across, your ideas won’t get you anywhere.” Mastering the communication skills of a leader is more important than ever.

There are more tips to follow in the next edition of this article from Jayne Latz, Founder and President of Corporate Speech Solutions.

In the meantime visit, www.corporatespeechsolutions.com, to learn more.

About the Author

Jayne LatzJayne Latz is an expert in communication and CEO of Corporate Speech Solutions, LLC. She has worked as a speech trainer, coach, professional speaker, and has co-authored two books titled, Talking Business: A Guide to Professional Communication and Talking Business: When English is Your Second Language. She was recently featured in The Wall Street Journal and on The TODAY Show.

Jayne can be reached by email at: [email protected]. Follow Jayne at: @JayneCSS.

‘Barrier Breakers’ for Women in Corporate America

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In taking on a more dominant role in Corporate America as more women confidently climb their career ladders and step into important roles and leadership positions, the experience in Corporate America is shifting and tilting the power balance in their direction. With more women in the U.S. workforce than men, this provides an opportunity to take a stand on some important issues that continue to impact women in their multiple roles as career woman, wife, and mother.

While the glass ceiling clearly has large cracks and even holes, there is more work to be done to truly leverage the earning potential and talent that can catapult Corporate America toward greater success and help women in the process.

Changing the Face of the American Workforce

Here are some tips for taking charge of these issues and helping to continue turning the tide on long-ingrained Corporate America barriers:

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About the Author

Michelle PattersonVisionary and lauded business accelerator Michelle Patterson is President of the Global Women Foundation and The California Women’s Conference – the largest women’s symposium in North America that has featured esteemed First Ladies, A-List Hollywood celebrities, and high caliber business influencers. Michelle is also the CEO of Women Network LLC, an online digital media platform dedicated to giving women a voice and a platform to share their message. Michelle may be reached at WomenNetwork.com.

The Advisor’s Corner – Can I Afford a Bad Hire?

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Can I Afford a Bad Hire?Question:

Can I Afford a Bad Hire?

StrategyDriven Response: (by Roxi Hewertson, StrategyDriven Principal Contributor)

Fact 1: No one can afford a bad hire!
Fact 2: Nationally, about 50 percent of hires, fail. Of those that succeed only about 20 percent are top performers.
Fact 3: 90 percent of failures are UNRELATED to brains and technical skills.
Fact 4: The cost of a bad hire is up to 2x the person’s annual salary and benefits… until you fire them or they leave. How much you lose depends on how awful they are and how much time, money, and productivity is flushed away in the meantime. Then… add another 2x to 2.5x their salary costs to replace them.
Fact 5: Turnover in any position costs you real money. Turnover of good people leaving because they don’t want to work with your bad hires, costs you even more.

Do I have your attention? This is not theory – it is fact. And yet… we hire most people and positions based on shiny new degrees and/or technical skills along with perceived or tested IQ. We now KNOW, for a fact, that EQ (Emotional Quotient/Intelligence) is far more important for success in most jobs, and definitely within leadership roles.

Still, we continue to hire and promote people, including leaders, largely for IQ and technical skill sets. “The best salesperson will surely be the best leader of other salespersons,” right? WRONG!

It just gets dumber and dumber. We keep getting the same lousy results and yet we have not substantively changed the hiring practices in most organizations. It is mind-boggling! I believe Albert Einstein had something clever to say about this phenomenon being related to insanity.

Whatever methods (legal and ethical of course) you use, you need to discover at least these SIX key things about your candidates BEFORE you hire.

A. Attitude: Is theirs one of abundance and can do, or scarcity and focused on obstacles?

B. Brains: Can they do the job or learn quickly how to do the job?

C. Character: What are their core personal values?

D. Drive: Are they self-motivated to achieve their goals and yours?

E. Experience: What have they done in the past that prepares them or makes them ready for what you want them to do now?

F. FIT: Will they truly FIT into your culture, your organizational values, help you accomplish your mission, and advance your vision?

If you said “NO” or “I Can’t Tell,” to even ONE of these questions about the candidate, do not hire that person. Seriously – don’t do it!

Trust the answers to your ABCDEF questions and trust your GUT. If the person doesn’t feel right to you or others, he/she probably isn’t right. In any case, it’s rarely, if ever, worth the risk to you and your team.

About the Author

Leadership authority Roxana (Roxi) Hewertson is a no-nonsense business veteran revered for her nuts-and-bolts, tell-it-like-it-is approach and practical, out-of-the-box insights that help both emerging and expert managers, executives and owners boost quantifiable job performance in various mission critical facets of business. Through AskRoxi.com, Roxi — “the Dear Abby of Leadership” — imparts invaluable free advice to managers and leaders at all levels, from the bullpen to the boardroom, to help them solve problems, become more effective and realize a higher measure of business and career success.

The StrategyDriven website was created to provide members of our community with insights to the actions that help create the shared vision, focus, and commitment needed to improve organizational alignment and accountability for the achievement of superior results. We look forward to answering your strategic planning and tactical business execution questions. Please email your questions to [email protected].

Business Performance Assessment Program Best Practice 12 – Define Issue Materiality

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StrategyDriven Business Performance Assessment Program Best Practice ArticleBusiness performance assessments seek to identify meaningful improvement opportunities for an organization, typically in the areas of safety, performance reliability, and operational efficiency. Meaningful or material opportunities are those representing a performance improvement that satisfies a regulatory requirement, exceeds the organization’s financial return on investment threshold, and/or provides a not easily replicable advantage over competitors. As such, assessors should evaluate potential performance improvement opportunities for their materiality; focusing on those offering the organization meaningful gains.

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About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

Finding the elusive decision maker. Then what?

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Question from a reader:

Jeffrey, I speak with many people in organizations that want you to think they are the decision maker when in fact they are not. I have wasted too many emails and follow up on people that can’t help. How do you ask without hurting the relationship you may have built? How do you determine the real decision maker? Steve

Finding the real decision maker may be one of the largest barriers to a sale in existence. It’s second to one other barrier: “Once I find the decision maker, what do I say?”

Finding the decision maker and speaking with that decision maker intelligently are not just critical, they’re also skills that can be career building or career ending.

I’m about to give you insight that will help you find and communicate with the all-important decider. But I caution you, it is not a be-all end-all. Rather, it’s the beginning of your true understanding about decision makers, and decision making.

There are several parts to the decision-making process. Finding the decision maker is only one of them and it may be the smallest one.

Early in my career, I created a question that helped me find decision makers without ever asking anyone who the decision maker was. Whoever I was talking to, as I was making the sales presentation, I asked the question, “Who pulls the trigger?”

That was a direct question that didn’t insult the person I was talking to. If you ask, “Are you the decision-maker?” or worse, “Who is the decision-maker?” you both embarrass the prospect, and pressure them for an answer. To the person you’re talking to it gives the impression you’re sales hungry instead of customer friendly.

By asking, “Who pulls the trigger?” you don’t hurt anyone’s feelings. You’re merely asking for distant information. Vital, but distant.

After I asked the “who pulls the trigger” question, I followed up with an equally powerful, but still pressure-less question. I simply asked, “How will the decision be made?” And whatever my prospective customer said, I followed up with yet another question about the decision-making process, “Then what?”

The words “then what” lead you through the decision-making process. Especially if you continue to ask it. Then what? Then what? Then what? Until finally you come back to the trigger puller. It sounds pretty easy, doesn’t it?
Well, over the years I found that it wasn’t quite that easy. I had to have a greater understanding of the total process especially what happened after the purchase was completed. In other words, what happens after ownership and what are the expected outcomes.

You may think what happens after ownership and expected outcomes have little or nothing to do with the decision maker. And you would be totally, completely incorrect.

After ownership comes value of purchase. Often erroneously referred to as ROI, it’s what happens after the customer takes possession, and what they’re hoping to achieve as a result of it. REALITY: That’s the only thing decision makers want to know. And once you know it, you’ll be able to find every decision maker. That’s pretty powerful.

There are additional questions you MUST ask during a sales meeting in order to find out the total purchasing and use of product or service situation. Keep in mind, you’re going to be selling for about an hour, but they’re going to be using your product or service for years. Once you understand that, you understand the significance of obtaining that information.

Here are the critical decision-making questions:

  • Who do you collaborate with?
  • Who will be the main user of…?
  • Who calls and asks for service?
  • When a service person arrives, who do they meet with?
  • How did the last purchase happen?
  • Who will be responsible for the outcome of this purchase?

HERE’S THE SECRET: Once you have the names of these people, you ask the person you’re meeting with to introduce you. And talk to these people about what really happens. Even if you’re meeting with the CEO, you can still ask for meetings with his or her people.

Once you have this information and meet the people involved…
Look at the insight you’ve gained.
Look at the understanding you have about their business process.
Look at the expertise you put into your experience base.
And even more important, you’re now charged with the responsibility of making certain every person involved in use and decision making are aware of your value.

“Jeffrey,” you say, “it’s a pretty complicated process. In fact, it changes my whole strategy of selling.”

That’s correct, your way was a fight to get to the decision maker. People lied to you, and people led you down a rosy path that completely wasted your time. Oh, and you lost the order. My way is a little bit more difficult to learn and implement, but a heck of a lot more productive in terms of not just finding the decision maker, but actually making the sale – and gaining experience and expertise for the next sale.

Now you have to make a decision.
Decide to try it my way!

Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.

About the Author

Jeffrey GitomerJeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].