Leadership Is Language: The Hidden Power of What You Say and What You Don't

Product Information

How to avoid the seven common sins of questioning, from binary questions (should we do A or B?) to self-affirming questions (B is the better option, right?) The captain’s attitude affects his officers. You can see it in the hesitant, ambiguous, and ineffective language used. The situation steadily worsened, but El Faro had committed to the exposed Atlantic side of the Bahamas eighteen hours earlier. It would have only one more chance to seek shelter on the other side of the Bahamas, at 1:00 Thursday morning. This was fast approaching. About two hours prior to reaching this point, the third mate, on watch, called the captain with a report of the storm’s location and a suggestion: turn south. Here are the words from the third mate to the captain over the internal phone at 11:05 p.m.: The New Playbook. In a playbook that changes the language and approach of how we work together, all the team members work together in both decision-making and doing. Discussion is open, and workers are involved in evaluating and guiding goals and processes alongside leaders. For the book’s purposes: bluework is defined as decision-making work, and redwork is defined as “doing” work.

Leadership Is Language: The Hidden Power of What You Say and

The right balance of doing and thinking keeps an organization adaptive and agile, innovative and entrepreneurial. It gives the people in the organization a sense of purpose and progress, which helps drive continuous improvement. In short, the right balance of doing and thinking drives learning. It keeps the company relevant and solvent. It keeps employees happy. It leads to happy customers, too.As I developed my thinking around the language of leadership, I formulated responses for leaders in various situations at work. I started thinking about these preplanned and preprogrammed responses that we have—patterns of action (and in our case, language) in response to, and triggered by, certain events or scenarios. Just like a sports play, you choose your play by reading the field and then making a deliberate decision about how to act. But I wasn’t sure about that metaphor and was still struggling with the overall structure of the book. FERNANDEZ-ARAOZ, C., ROSCOE, A. and ARAMAKI, K. (2017) Turning potential into success: the missing link in leadership development. Harvard Business Review. Vol. 95, No 6, November/December. pp86-93. Our Profession Mapputs the purpose of the people profession, championing better work and working lives, at its core. The profession can gain trust and credibility by following this purpose. There are several critical areas where the language you use as a leader affects morale, operations and even employee retention: Complete, not continue–If every day feels like a repetition of the last, you’re doing something wrong.

Language Sunk the El Faro – Leadership is Language How Language Sunk the El Faro – Leadership is Language

The real-life example of how David changed his leadership style while captaining a nuclear submarine When we started discussing the organization of the binders the first words out of his mouth were, “Well, it’s all about language.” I took that as a sign from the heavens and settled on the playbook metaphor. The author has the point about engaging the "doers" in the thinking-decision process and some good advice about the languages to use. However his writing style is not persuasive. It's like he's recording the scripts that he's had at different workshops.

We all seem to be agreeing on x - before we make a final decision, let's flip to What would be the case for not doing x? What could be bad about it?' Frame performance discussions to focus on the employee and their career goals to show that you value working together and want to help them. Hiring and onboarding One of the key strengths of the book is its emphasis on the importance of language in leadership. Marquet highlights the power of words, tone, and framing, demonstrating how they can either reinforce hierarchical structures and limit employee empowerment or foster a culture of engagement and accountability. He provides actionable strategies for shifting from a "leader-follower" model to a "leader-leader" approach, where employees are encouraged to think and act independently. Even individuals with great leadership skills can fail if the organisation doesn't support them through effective structure, processes and policies, as explained in the report Leadership – easier said than done. Flatten the power gradient – to create a culture in which people feel safe enough to dissent, to be confused, and to admit mistakes. The power gradient is “the amount of social distance there is between one person and another” (p. 220) and manifests through the censoring of information.

Leadership Is Language: The Hidden Power of What You Say-and

This pattern of executing plays or preplanned responses already exists in human behavior, business leadership, and language. The problem is that most of us are working with an outdated playbook: plays that we have been programmed to run from an older paradigm of leadership, the Industrial Revolution. In the early chapters of this book, I’ll explain how we inherited our language of leadership from the industrial era and why it’s so poorly suited to today’s work environment. Toward the end of the 2017 Academy Awards, Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway walked on stage to announce the Best Picture winner. When Beatty opened the envelope, he found a card that said, “Emma Stone, La La Land” – and, in smaller print at the bottom, “Actress in a Leading Role.” It wasn’t the card for Best Picture at all. All communications, both internal and public messages, should reflect The Connect Play (pp. 268-269). The concept of management that emerged in the nineteenth century focused on command and control principles. Managing entailed planning and implementing strategies, tactics, and policies from the top down. Later studies made a distinction between "managing tasks" and "managing people." Managers need to influence people to achieve objectives, which is a leadership skill.In Leadership is Language, Former US navy captain David Marquet expands on his bestselling leadership book Turn the Ship Around! and shows managers and leaders the next step in their development: how to enable their team through communication.