What can your mind learn, your heart embrace and your soul discover about success from a fortune cookie?

"An aim in life is the only fortune worth finding."
Robert Louis Stevenson

Over the past twenty plus years, I have made a point of collecting and cataloging the fortunes I received in fortune cookies. Now, I don’t believe there is anything mystical or magical that happens when I get a fortune cookie, but there is often a gift of wisdom and that’s pretty powerful magic by itself.

Fortune cookies not only provide sweetness at the end of a savory meal, they also can produce nourishment for the mind while culling a sense of appreciation for life within you. Sometime the urge is to look for an answer to something puzzling, like a set of winning lottery numbers. I have found that the secret to reading a fortune cookie is to look for the question you should be asking yourself that is relative to the advice the fortune cookie is communicating.

If you consistently look for the questions inside your fortune cookies you might find yourself on an amazing journey of self-examination fueled by the questions your fortune cookies have “asked”. Within these journeys you might encounter pieces of wisdom that your mind will learn, your heart will embrace, and your soul will discover about success.

Let me tell you about some of mine…

MIND OVER MATTER

In my early-forties, I received a fortune that did not change me physically, but it did change my way of thinking. At that time in my life, I had become preoccupied with death having witnessed my 69-yer old father lose his valiant bout with cancer. I worried about living long enough to witness the level of success and joy that he had in his life. Imagine the pressure I was placing on myself based on what I now know was an unrealistic expectation. After getting this fortune, it helped me to shift my mindset from the distant future to the immediate present. It also helped me realize that even under the worst outcomes, if I had my basic needs fulfilled, I would and could aim at fulfilling my unlimited potential. 

This is the fortune I received that changed how I have thought about life and success from that day forward, “Your blessing is being no more than safe and sound for the whole lifetime.”

Really? Great! Where do I go to sign up for that? 

If you’re thinking about how you will approach your success journey, it sure would help to know that you will be safe and sound for your whole lifetime. I know it did to me. I began to think about the word “lifetime”. A lifetime is just the span of one’s life. It is not defined by any measure of years, accomplishments or accolades. It is, as they say, “The dash”, between the dates on a tombstone. A lifetime is what you make of it. It does not need or beg for comparison to the lives of others to be of value. 

This little piece of fortune cookie wisdom encouraged me to ask,  “What it was that I really needed to live a successful life?” This hidden question helped me shift my thinking from what I thought I needed to be successful to what really mattered to me about living a successful life.

THE HEART OF A SMILE

I have always been a smiling person, although my dad was quick to point out I was a colicky baby and cried almost continuously for the first two years of my life. From my perspective, I was just getting all the tears out of my system so my naturally smiling character could shine through.

I don’t remember at what age I realized the power of my smile, but I know it has always been among my greatest assets. I like giving smiles away. To family, friends, colleagues and strangers. Smiles cost me nothing, are almost always returned to me immediately, and no matter how many I give away my supply of smiles is inexhaustible. Here’s a fortune I received that sums up my Smile Philosophy, “Smile. It makes your day brighter as well as the days of those around you.”

This small piece of advice encouraged me to ask, “Who benefits most when I share a smile?” My answer was simple, “I do.” When I share a smile, I get the high of releasing positive energy into the world around me. That positive energy has the potential to change the attitude of contention and the altitude of limitation in the world. Imagine the power of one small piece of paper to warm your heart and touch the hearts of others as well. That’s what this fortune was able to do for me.

SOUL PURPOSE

A significant portion of the success coaching I do with businesses, organizations and individuals consists of identifying the purpose, passion, and promises of their intended goals. For so many people, and for a very long time for me personally, success was an unsurmountable and elusive target. I never understood how to achieve it because I did not understand the simple nature of success. Like many people, I fixated on measuring success by the things I acquired, be they a position, some power or a possession.

In recent years, I have come to understand that most of the success I believe had eluded me was simply going unnoticed by me. And, as a result, I was never able to build and sustain the ultimate success I desired because I always seemed to be starting from square one with every effort. But now, I know differently. I have learned that success is not a single event set somewhere at the edge of a distant horizon. Success happens every day, if you just pay attention to it.

A fortune cookie once told me, "Success lies in the hands of those who want it."

This led me to ask the question, “Are you clearly and purposefully defining what you want enough to establish a clear and reasonable expectation of your intent.” When I discovered I wasn’t doing this, it helped me pave the way for striving to live a successful life by intent. In the simplest of terms, success is the achievement of an intent. Purpose, passion and promise are the foundational pillars successful people practice with confidence and consistency.

Success need not be measured by exorbitant achievements at all. In fact, to be successful most often requires you to recognize the smaller accomplishments that lay the foundation for larger ones down the road. The devil truly is in the details. Finding strength and confidence in the ability to consistently do the small things in life, is a critical step that can lead you to achieve a successful life.

THE SECRET TO SUCCESS

The cumulative effect of paying heed to fortune cookie wisdom is the level of awareness it will create in you when you follow the wisdom with an inquiring question. We live hurried lives, leaping from one second of inspiration to another, expecting something fantastic to happen along the way. This type of success strategy is akin to going into a multiplex theater and seeing a small fraction of each film they are showing. You might get a sense of each film, but you will not experience their complete stories. To truly make the theater going experience complete you have to invest the necessary time it will take to watch each film beginning to end. In other words, you must make a commitment, have an intent and expand your patience.

According to fortune cookie wisdom I received, "Success is usually the fruit of patience."

How sweet that is!

I want to thank those who have shared comments and suggestions with me and I’m looking forward to positively contributing to your life in the next year. Please continue to share your suggestions and comments with me. As always, I encourage you to freely share this post with friends and colleagues.

Bringing Positivity to Everything,
The Brain Tamer

Are you as fast as the people you are leading or as slow as the people that are dragging behind you?

“The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority.
A second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority.
A first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.”
A.A. Milne

Most leaders know the pace of their own thinking. They also know a portion of their role is to get out ahead of the current situation and offer visionary thinking. Often, their ideas require those that follow them to think at a matching pace, make the necessary transition from “what is” to “what will be”, and be ready to support their leadership in a timely fashion.

Whether you’re leading a business, a team, or the proverbial “horse to water”, you may discover that you’ll only be as fast as the thinking of your slowest-thinking follower. This relationship produces a phenomenon I call, Leadership Drag. 

People who follow decisive thinking leaders generally fall into three types: 

1. No Thinkers

2. Whoa Thinkers and

3. Go Thinkers

Developing a clear understanding and appreciation of how each of these thinking styles impacts your leadership ability can help you determine the best ways to approach, cultivate and unleash the thinking styles of those you lead.

Do you know what kind of thinker you are?

Do you know what kind of thinkers are found in the people you lead?

Join me as I explore the three thinking styles of the people you lead.

NO THINKERS

Have you ever led a committee seeking a solution to a nagging problem? Perhaps you’ve noticed that only a few people in the group are doing most of the “heavy” lifting while a small portion remain tacit and untethered to the outcome. These people are No Thinkers.

No Thinkers are not people who respond to every new idea or suggestion with a “No”. No Thinkers are people who have simply chosen not to think about something until they have little or no choice at all.

No Thinkers provide the maximum amount of friction creating Leadership Drag. Their extremely passive behavior ultimately limits your ability to lead. No Thinkers require extra energy on your part just to elicit and understand their thinking so you can build a consensus around your idea.

Many of these No Thinkers manage to exist on a plain of self-limiting thinking. It is not that they do not think at all. They are, from time to time, great and fervent thinkers. What dominates their thinking is inability. Particularly, the inability to think outside the box or take risks. They lack the ability to be original, decisive and energetic. They seek and find comfort in waiting to see “how the wind blows” before expressing either their support or opposition.

Most people develop their thinking style based on experience and confidence. For a certain number of followers, embracing life as a No Thinker is a quiet, comfortable, risk-free existence. The less they express, the less is expected of them. The less they offer, the less they have to defend. It is not uncommon for most No Thinkers to have had their ideas diminished, belittled and dismissed by a leader insensitive and disrespectful of their passive style. This is not a follower’s dilemma, it is a leader’s problem.

Pastor Andy Stanley said, “Leaders who don’t listen will eventually be surrounded by people who have nothing to say.” If you’re leading No Thinkers, think of ways you can minimize friction and decrease their effect on Leadership Drag by non-judgmentally listening to what they feel and seeking ways to help them express themselves about your ideas, those of others, and even their own.

WHOA THINKERS

In every situation there is always a person who sees their primary function as the “voice of reason”. This type of thinker is a Whoa Thinker. Whoa Thinkers have their greatest influence on Leadership Drag through their verbal tendency to “slam on the brakes” of progress. In many cases, they are fervent champions of “change avoidance” and defenders of the status quo. Whenever and wherever change is proposed through strategic leadership thinking, you can count on Whoa Thinkers to righteously proclaim there is no need to “rush” into something. “What we have is working so far, why change it?” is their rallying cry.

While Whoa Thinkers are not hesitant to share their thinking, their highest drag potential can be found after consensus has been reached. In their last-ditch effort to avoid the perils of the unknown world of “change”, they will go “all in” in an effort to thwart fast leadership thinking.

Although they may not have ultimate decision influence, they are still a faction of followers that a leader must learn how to integrate into their thinking strategy. Offering Whoa Thinkers the earliest opportunity to voice their thinking can go a long way to helping a leader get out ahead of potential objections and other opposition thinking. Also, offering Whoa Thinkers a visible seat at the table can provide an opportunity to allow them to embrace ownership and responsibility for change initiatives as their own instead of feeling they are victims of progress.

GO THINKERS

Is there a downside to enthusiasm? Of course, there is. Enthusiasm, while an admirable quality, can have a tendency to cloud and distort rational thinking.

Go Thinkers are wonderful supporters of leadership thinking. They rarely question a leader’s judgement, preferring instead to maintain close ties with the leader through a confidential and strategic relationship. 

While Go Thinkers usually have high levels of self-esteem, they can, at times, be blinded by their own brilliance. When engaging with a Go Thinker as a leader,  you should think about stepping back and taking a more candid look at what a Go Thinker is really saying to you. Are you hearing honest appraisals of your ideas or aggrandizement designed to further elevate the Go Thinker’s confidential status?

As a leader, Go Thinkers are important for you. But you should also be aware that blind allegiance can expose a leader to the “Emperor’s Clothes” syndrome. Hence, in your leadership role, you must learn how to temper the thinking of Go Thinkers by allowing yourself to integrate their thinking along with that of the No and Whoa Thinkers you lead.

LEADERSHIP DRAG STRATEGIES

The best strategy for working with No Thinkers, Whoa Thinkers and Go Thinkers, with an eye toward limiting their opportunities of creating Leadership Drag, is to encourage their participation by providing a judgement-free zone in which they can feel safe flexing their “outside-the-box” thinking skills. If, in the end, these thinkers oppose or disagree with the majority thinking, make an extra special effort to applaud their contribution. Leaders need to know, and their followers as well, that it is okay to agree to disagree. This is the adult approach to the world we live in. It is a major strategy in limiting conflict and keeping those you lead focused on the “big picture”. Leaders who cannot convey this attitude will find themselves leading from behind. Ultimately this will cause you to become a pusher of your ideas rather than having them be attractive opportunities you offer.

Leading others can be an awesome experience. Don’t let it slip away by turning a fantastic opportunity into a drag.

Thanks for your support as a reader of my blog and I eagerly welcome any comments on how you’re thinking about achieving the possibility of your promise. Also, I would appreciate any suggestions you might have for future posts in this blog on a topic near and dear to you in the comments section below. As always, please feel free to share this post with a friend or colleague.

Bringing Positivity to Everything,
The Brain Tamer

You can learn the secret to creating the joy of expectation while eliminating the pain of disappointment.

“Hope is not a substitute for expectation.”
Don E. Smith

Expectations are the lifeblood of your existence. A single expectation can influence a decision, create an industry, drive innovation, initiate a relationship and, ultimately, change the world.

Simultaneously, an expectation, if unfulfilled, can be demoralizing. 

Why is there such a thin line between experiencing either exhilaration or devastation from an expectation?

The answer lies in the foundation of your expectation. Whether you experience joy or frustration will depend on how your expectation is conceived, nurtured and brought to life.

All expectations spring forth from one of two sources, either from something Promised to you or Imagined by you.

The odds of experiencing a joyful life are directly proportionate to the degree you manage your expectations. Let’s look at how.

THE LAND OF PROMISE

What is a promise?

A promise is a declaration or assurance that someone will definitely do, give, or arrange a particular thing or that a particular thing will happen. A promise will lead you to create an expectation based on the good grounds from someone for you to reasonably expect a certain result.

Sounds simple, fair and reasonable. Doesn’t it? And it should, in an ideal world. I highly doubt that I am the first to point out to you that we do not live in an ideal world.

Why do your expectations, based on promises people make to you, sometimes end in disappointment? 

Because people are not infallible. They often make promises to gain future favor without knowing if fulfilling the promise is fully within their means.

Is it your fault if someone makes a promise to you that raises your expectation only to “let you down” by not delivering the promise? “No” and, to some degree, “Yes”.

It has long been my belief that, “Success happens when the result of an intention meets or exceeds a reasonable expectation.” Please note my emphasis on the word “reasonable”. 

It may be fairly reasonable for you to take someone at their word when they make you a promise. Assuming positive intent and giving someone the benefit of the doubt is a fundamental step in building a lasting relationship. Developing and displaying trust in another person is a healthy, critical human behavior. The trust you place in someone else will expand or contract depending on your experience with their PPA (Promise Performance Ability).

As your experience grows with each individual, you will develop either increasing or decreasing trust in the promises they make to you. Intellectually, you could create an EDI (Expectation Delivery Index) for your relationship with that person.

This index (EDI) could have a measurement for each promise that lets you calibrate the reasonableness of the expectation blooming from that promise. Some measurements might be:

• How much control do they have over the promise?

• Are they likely to follow through on the promise?

• Is the promise being made exclusively to you?

• Are the elements of the promise specific and clear?

Life and experience with that individual will help you develop other benchmarks for use in calibrating your EDI for them regarding future promises.

If your boss promises you a raise, but does not have full authority to deliver on that promise, how reasonable is your expectation? If it doesn’t come to fulfillment, how devastated should you be?

The reasonability of an expectation based on a promise from someone else is subject to multiple variables. The more these variables are beyond your control and theirs, the lower the reasonability of your expectation should be. One way to increase the reasonability of your expectation becoming fulfilled, is to do whatever you can to help the person making the promise, keep their promise.

If your boss promises you a raise, do everything you can to make sure that when the raise is proposed you are seen as deserving not just by time accrued, but in your productivity, creativity, dedication and reliability.

But what about the promises you make to yourself?

THE KINGDOM OF IMAGINATION

Have you ever made a promise to yourself? 

How does it make you feel if you keep it?How does it make you feel if you break it?

Promises you make to yourself spring from your imagination.

Let’s say you believe you are due for a raise. You then create an expectation based on that belief. This expectation blooms 100% from your vivid imagination. To fulfill this expectation, you will need to make a promise to yourself. A promise you will not break.

The promise must be a reasonable promise. To be reasonable, it should be a promise over which you have complete control, falling within your current skillset and resources. Unless you recruit the aide of others, you will be completely alone in this endeavor. Self-reliance will be the fuel in your expectation engine. Whether you eventually fulfill your expectation or not, the result will not come as a devastating shock. Because, throughout the process, you will know if you’re getting close to actuality or are still miles from your destination.

Remember, it’s your promise, your expectation, and your compelling dream. You will need to do everything you can to have the highest personal EDI possible when it comes to the promises you make to yourself.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Whether your expectation ends in a celebration of joy or the wretched pain of disappointment, it will be determined by the degree of intentional focus you bring to bear on your promise. If the promise is from someone else, you have a responsibility to help them in every way you can to keep that promise. 

If the promise is one you make to yourself, the same behavior applies. Honor that promise. Do everything within your power and ability to keep the promise and fulfill the expectation you’ve created.

People make promises to others and themselves and “hope” they will keep them. That seems to be the overall strategy. As you may know, I am not a big believer in “hope”. I believe a promise deserves the intention of the expectation it creates. 

All promises are vaporware. But a promise will lead you to imagine a compelling future in which you will experience something you might not be able to get for yourself either with your resources or skills. The difference between a Great Expectation and an unmet expectation is not in the promise made, it is in the ability of the promise maker to be full of intention and committed to fulfilling the promise.

Remember this the next time you raise an expectation.

Thanks for your support as a reader of my blog and I eagerly welcome any comments on how you’re thinking about achieving the possibility of your promise. Also, I would appreciate any suggestions you might have for future posts in this blog on a topic near and dear to you in the comments section below. As always, please feel free to share this post with a friend or colleague.

Bringing Positivity to Everything,
The Brain Tamer

Do you have humility agility?

"Great leaders don't need to act tough.
Their confidence and humility serve to underscore their toughness.” 
Simon Sinek

One of the most essential habits for a speaker to exhibit is the act of humility. With humility, a speaker’s content reaches levels of effectiveness audiences will appreciate and admire. Without humility, a speaker’s content may sound empty and self-serving leaving an audience to feel exploited but not served.

Every speaker is a servant speaker. To not comprehend this simple characterization is to miss the essence of why you speak and why you have an audience. The passion to speak is driven by the axiom, “I speak because I have something to say that needs to be heard by someone other than me.” The validation for speaking is, “I speak because what I have to say will be said to the benefit of those who hear me speak.”

With these two guidelines in place, you must learn how to speak with humility in order for your message to reach and serve your audience. Building your content around three elements can help you become a speaker with effective and sincere humility agility.

The three elements are:

1. Falling Down

2. Lifting Up

3. Learning From

Let’s look further into how these three elements can create humility agility when you speak.

FALLING DOWN

When you take the stage, your audience expects you to share intimate details of your life journey with them. They want to learn vicariously from your travails without having to experience it first hand for themselves. As a result, they want to know about the times you fell down. It is not only okay to tell them about your failures, stumbles and short falls, it is expected.

Don’t worry. Everybody falls down. We are humans, not robots or gods. We dream, vividly imagine, plan and still come up short. That is not an issue. Part of having humility agility is the level of comfort and familiarity you have with telling your “falling down” story. It is a moment on the stage of self-reflective insight. Feel free to tinge it with humor of a self-deprecating nature. Poking a little fun at yourself makes you more human. And that will help you establish a connection with your audience. 

More lessons are learned from falling down and rising to triumph than any other experience. We all have them. They only need to be of value. Whatever lesson you learn from missing your mark is of great value to your audience. It inspires them to perceive what is possible if they apply themselves to a purpose. 

Your story does not need to be an earth-shifting monumental tale. While your story may not have changed the planet, it most likely changed your world. That’s impact from the stage. You just have to learn how to humbly own the story, extract the learning significance from the story and then place it appropriately within your larger message.

LIFTING UP

English author John Donne famously wrote, “No man is an island entire of itself…” In other words, no one is self-sufficient; everyone relies on others. There is a good chance that, in your life journey, you have as well.

We all get help. Some of this help may come from friends, family, colleagues, teachers or coaches. In this element of being a speaker with humility agility you should look to extol the virtues of someone who helped you in your journey. Sharing the credit with a person who either inspired or guided you on your path to accomplishment sets into motion for your audience an examination of their journey. Who has been of assistance, inspiration or guidance in their life?

When we humbly acknowledge the contribution of another person to our personal achievements, three things happen. First, you give credit where credit is due. Second, you inspire others to give selflessly of themselves, for nothing more than the shear reward of seeing someone else triumph. Third, you establish a special place of respect and admiration in the minds of your audience for those that have been of support, inspiration and guidance to them.

This is a moment in your speech when you should speak humbly and sincerely. You can’t fake it here. Only honest, genuine sentiment, culled deeply from your heart, will pass muster. When you lift someone up through humble praise you raise us all.

LEARNING FROM

We already know what every person in the audience is thinking before you speak, “What’s in it for me?” Sharing a learning from moment is your opportunity to answer that question.

The goal is to humbly share the “A-ha” moments of your journey without bragging. This is when you let your audience know the payoff you’ve received from the road you’ve traveled. For many speakers, it is an unexpected humbling experience. Many times, the lesson or lessons speakers ultimately learn from their journey extend far beyond mastering a skill or conquering a challenge. You may come to learn that the most humbling lessons are often the ones you learn about yourself. Lessons spoken of with humility about your ability to whether the crucibles of commitment, resolute intention, and perseverance can have a profound impact on your audience extending your message significantly beyond a foundational phrase or your speech’s theme. Humbly sharing the learning from of your experience is a powerful skill that will well serve your humility agility when you speak.

THE POWER OF HUMILITY

Humility is the quality of being humble. It means you have the ability to put the needs of another person before your own. It also means not drawing attention to yourself unless by doing so you can inspire others, acknowledge those who were of support and guidance to you, and create value for others by humbling sharing lessons you have learned along the way.

Dr. Wayne Dyer said, “Practice radical humility. Take no credit for your talents, intellectual abilities, aptitudes, or proficiencies. Be in a state of awe and bewilderment.”

A humble speaker is a modest speaker offering honest wisdom and perspectives they have been blessed to experience and then share from the stage. Master the skill of humility agility and your speeches will have lasting impact beyond your deepest desire.

Thanks for your support as a reader of my blog and I eagerly welcome any comments on how you’re thinking about achieving the possibility of your promise. Also, I would appreciate any suggestions you might have for future posts in this blog on a topic near and dear to you in the comments section below. As always, please feel free to share this post with a friend or colleague.

Bringing Positivity to Everything,
The Brain Tamer

The heart of leadership is 99.9999% communication.

“You do not lead by hitting people over the head — that's assault, not leadership."
Dwight D. Eisenhower

There is a demand these days for leaders to become better communicators. From CEOs to heads of state, people want their leaders to be better at communicating ideas, initiatives and policies. All of this comes on the heels of a generation severely lacking in many of the basic communication skills. Leaders cannot afford the luxury of dismissing solid communication skills as a necessary personal attribute. Why?

Because the heart of leadership is 99.9999% communication. Leaders are charged with being the trustworthy voice and face of their enterprise. Whether you are the CEO of a fortune 500 or the leader of a non-profit, your ability to communicate effectively is the most critical skillset in your leadership toolbox.

Leaders have three basic duties they perform in their role through communication, each of which can have an enormous impact on those they lead. 

These three duties are:

1.    Invitation

2.    Demonstration and

3.    Inspiration

If you’re a leader or aspire to become one, you’ll want to read on.

INVITATION

When you lead others, you are in the enviable position of directing the level of engagement of employees, clients, vendors, supporters, and stakeholders within your organization. A leader’s ability to expand (or contract) varying spheres of engagement, inclusion or exclusion allows them flexibility in communicating vision and most importantly opportunity. Leaders are facilitators of opportunity. The opportunity to learn more, to become part of an initiative, to become more deeply enmeshed in the strategy of growth and development of an organization are prizes or high value and praise.

Through strategic communication and effective presentation, a leader can build consensus, elevate awareness and drive massive culture change by inviting those they lead to seize the opportunity to become part of something bigger that themselves.

When you lead consider communicating the invitation to share and participate in your vision a primary role of your position.

DEMONSTRATION

In recent years, many organizations sought to “right their ship” coming out of the deep economic recession. Enterprise initiatives to increase engagement among employees who had their wages frozen, advancement stifled, and training suspended stumbled out of the gate because the concept of employee engagement was misunderstood by leadership.

Eagerly seeking an instant fix to a problem created by a culture systemically rife with platitudes but little gratitude, organizations missed a critical element of engagement and culture change. They are both top-down driven processes. Employees don’t want to hear about culture change, they want to see the culture change. They want to see the change happen in leadership first so that they will feel supported in their efforts to join the change.

When a leader uses demonstration to communicate to an organization, they allow their actions to speak louder than their words. They inspire by leading from the front.

The next time you have a leadership opportunity, think about how you show up. Are you demonstrating the type of leadership character that will inspire others? Will they be proud to follow you? It has been said that you cannot not communicate. The leader who communicates through demonstration knows how to exploit this rule for the benefit of all.

INSPIRATION

Some leaders have a distorted view of their role. They see leadership as an entitlement instead of as the obligation it truly is. Inspiration is a positive human relations activity. If you do not understand this, you will never be an effective leader. You cannot lift yourself up by beating someone else down. An effective leader will not ask others to do something they would not be willing to do their self.

Leaders are visionaries. They have the ability and the freedom to not only dream “what if” they have the license to put “what if” into play. Using solid communication skills, strategically placed, these leaders can inspire others to join them on their incredible journey. They can attract others to set sail with them to worlds beyond the current event horizon. By effectively communicating their vision of life beyond the “what if”, they can attract investors, workers, vendors and a myriad of stakeholders to unilaterally take the leap of faith only dreamers believe in. Leaders can use their vision to inspire others. When you inspire others, you lift them up.

Great leaders learn how to effectively communicate their impassioned vision to inspire organization and individuals to dream bigger, reach higher and achieve greater than they could dream of individually.

THE VIEW FROM THE TOP

It’s not easy leading organizations and people. Today, there are more channels to control, more opportunities to misspeak, and more subtleties to language than ever before. But a great leader recognizes the nature of our current communications environment as a controllable element of their role. An effective leader learns to use communication with purpose to manage the flow of invitations to inside access, demonstrate how they can lead from the front through their actions, and strategically craft communications that illustrate the attractive and fascinating possibilities within their vision.

When you become a leader, you can do this too.

Thanks for your support as a reader of my blog and I eagerly welcome any comments on how you’re thinking about achieving the possibility of your promise. Also, I would appreciate any suggestions you might have for future posts in this blog on a topic near and dear to you in the comments section below. As always, please feel free to share this post with a friend or colleague.

Bringing Positivity to Everything,
The Brain Tamer

The ABC' of Executive Speaking: Clarity

"Clarity affords focus."
Thomas Leonard

In my last post, I followed my discussion of the “A” of the “ABC’s of Executive Speaking” framework– Authenticity with an examination of the “B” of the “ABC’s” – Brevity. In this post I will cover the “C” of  the “ABC’s”– Clarity.

CLARITY

Thomas Leonard, one of the founding leaders of the executive coaching industry said, “Clarity affords focus.” For speaking executives this is doubly true. Clarity brings greater focus to what the speaker will say and a greater understanding by the audience of the content that it hears.

But Clarity is a slippery eel for many speakers. Because many executive speakers are also subject matter experts, it is difficult for them to parse out the “noise” that occasionally interferes with the content they are presenting. Achieving Clarity as a speakers means your content must be:

• Coherent

• Intelligent and

• Transparent.

Let’s take a look at each of these qualities.

COHERENT

Being a Coherent speaker is the number one speaking behavior where most executive speakers first lose their audiences. Being Coherent is the act of uniting or forming as a whole an idea or action. When you speak as an executive, your audience relies heavily on your ability to design and refine your content and then opine it effectively. You must be logical and clear in everything you say. Your thoughts must be connected in a way in which the words you say create an image of what you want the audience to absorb or act upon. You cannot obfuscate, hem, haw or otherwise confuse your audience by meandering from idea to idea without some sort of logical pattern. A coherent speaker is a trusted speaker. Just ask any audience.

INTELLIGENT

Intelligence in the executive speaking world can be defined as having Certainty. Certainty is a quality of knowledge about a fact of which there is no doubt.

In an article from the job board, The Ladderstitled “8 Things that Set Truly Confident People Apart”, number 4 on the list was “They speak with certainty.” Here is an quote from that article:

“Confident people speak assertively because they know that it’s difficult to get people to listen to you if you can’t deliver your ideas with conviction.”

Conviction is a level of belief, faith and trust that you develop, as a speaker, from having done the background work, verified the research, and integrated the knowledge you’ve gained into your speaking essence. While content can be borrowed, its delivery should never be faked. Doing so would violate all the elements of being an Authentic speaker (the “A” of The ABC’s of Executive Speaking). Giving a speech prepared by another person is like taking a ten-mile hike in some else’s shoes; you may get into them, but the fit is awkward and over time will produce painful blisters.

I witnessed this happening when I saw two gentleman attempt to deliver a long form presentation created by another person who asked them to step in at the last minute to cover for him. The longer they went on the less intelligent they sounded and the more restless the audience became waiting for them to reach their painful conclusion.

The lack of a speaker’s intelligence is most quickly revealed when they begin to demonstrate a lack of knowledge of their content material.

TRANSPARENT

A Transparent speaker is a Confident speaker. Transparency is in demand these days from every source, authority, and organization. Speakers are not exempt. In fact, speakers must be the standard bearers of communication transparency. By virtue of the public nature of speaking, all speakers including executive speakers, must be confident enough in their content to allow themselves to be open to the public scrutiny of transparency.

Since, as speakers, we hold ourselves to a higher standard, this should not be an issue of concern. Speakers acceptthe unwritten code that “we will do no harm to our audience”. This means, as an executive speaker, you will not knowingly mislead your audience through the purposeful delivery of a misstatement of facts or events. It means that you hold your audience in a higher esteem than you hold yourself.

There can be no other way for you to establish the trust of your audience. After all, their faith in you as a leader rests upon the trustworthiness of what you say.

THE CASE FOR CLARITY

It should be easy for you to see that, as an executive, whenever you speak Clarity is your greatest ally in both getting your point out and getting it across. Listeners respond most favorably to speakers with clear, logical, easy to process language that supports the purpose of their speech.

The primary role of communication is to allow people to connect. It does no one any good if the connection is unclear, muddied by incoherent, unintelligent, and cloudy speech. To be effective, think about becoming a master of Clarity committed to delivering one great Coherent, Intelligent, and Transparent speech after another.

Thanks for your support as a reader of my blog and I eagerly welcome any comments on how you’re thinking about achieving the possibility of your promise. Also, I would appreciate any suggestions you might have for future posts in this blog on a topic near and dear to you in the comments section below. As always, please feel free to share this post with a friend or colleague.

Bringing Positivity to Everything,
The Brain Tamer