Simple steps build belief
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It’s funny how tiny things can create, maintain or destroy belief. According to most body language specialists, Gordon Brown’s brand is insincere because he smiles with his mouth but not his eyes. Whereas Tyra Banks made a fortune on front covers because she smiles with her eyes - she calls it to ‘smize’. You think it’s trivial. Gordon Brown is staring at political disaster. Tyra Banks is fast on her way to being a one-woman billion-dollar corporation.
Little things. Big impact. In fact, carefully managed small activities can do wonders for the effectiveness of an organization, movement or campaign. It’s about those incremental advances rather than Gulliver-esque strides. America’s current top model of perfection for getting your message across is of course the 44th President of the United States. Not only has Barack Obama deployed his skills to be a great communicator he has also always communicated greatly. One year in the job and it pays to reflect on how he used media smartly, raising funds, earning trust, creating belief from the ground up. Coming from Main Street, not Corporate Row.
Great leaders do this. They create belief in their views not necessarily from big grand gestures or happenings; that can sometimes take too long, be too hard, leave people wondering, ‘when’s something going to change?’ Smaller things can be more immediate, gain more traction and create a momentum that can then build up to something big. Great organizations might find it useful to do this more. Even those, or perhaps particularly those, with a high proportion of smart overly educated types floating about the organization. Professional services businesses; law firms, management consultancies, accountancy firms and the like. With a vision all mapped out, a top notch CEO or Managing Partners should be able to use some smart brand tools and marketing communications techniques to help them understand what the he or she wants and help them achieve their goals.
Good communicators use symbolism and employ signals to transmit their key messages. Sport provides a useful example of this. A new football manager, while his ambition might be enormous, winning the league, dominating Europe, that would be the ultimate ambition - does smaller things first to assert his beliefs. He might change diets, alter training schedules, change the strip, and even ban wives and girlfriends from games. Things that demonstrate his beliefs. Of course, they need to work. Otherwise, it’ll feel a bit hollow. Do things certainly, but make sure they’re going to be effective. So it pays to play to strengths to start with. Achieve some achievable things. Then tackle the big prizes once belief has been created. Also, it’s the manner and style that they’re communicated that matters almost as much. How you say it as much as what you say.
Yes, good leaders need to be good communicators. Because sometimes some of their ideas might be hard to embrace at first. Interestingly some of the smarter professional services firms do this well. Typically they’re populated with an opinionated bunch, people that always need proof. Or a carefully orchestrated process of immersion. Key messages, at the right times, delivered in the right way. They use new ways to be unexpected and surprising in order to open up a window of opportunity to influence. They deploy appropriate, but possibly maybe even hitherto unconventional channels or vehicles to reach and engage with audiences to clarify their purpose, cause or idea. They might do this to motivate and inspire a particular behaviour, participation or action.
And ultimately they do this is a way that can drive and encourage change for the better. Or at least, the change they’re after.
