Archives for February 2016

The interest we have received regarding need for improving remote communications has been amazing.  Everyone, it seems, understands the need to communicate better remotely.  Interestingly, our paradigm of looking at face-to-face communications in terms of visual, vocal, and content is also very helpful in looking at remote communication.  Desktop video-conferencing is quickly becoming the norm for the most effective remote communicators. WebEx, GoToMeeting, Join.me, Skype for Business, and others have dramatically improved the technology.

As leaders, we need to also dramatically improve our use of the technology. For your next desktop conference:

Visually make sure you have good lighting — soft light from the front and no bright back-lighting or distractions. Use a good webcam and fill the screen.

Vocally use a good noise cancelling microphone close to your mouth. Earphones are much better than computer speakers.

Content needs to be clear, concise, relevant and interesting.

The skill of running good meetings has always been important. In remote communications it’s even more important. Here are the basics from our book, as a reminder …

Meeting Basics that Really Make a Difference in Remote Communication

You can decide to have excellent meetings. Even in an environment where meetings are poorly run, you can be the exception. The following guidelines are meeting fundamentals, which can help you display executive presence. They’re common principles, which are constantly violated. The challenges of communication remotely via audio-conference or video-conference make the advantage of the basics even more important!

If You are Running the Meeting:

1. Be clear about the purpose of the meeting, even if it’s a routine team meeting. Ask if there is a better way to achieve the objective than having a meeting. If it is a regular meeting, can you do it half as often and be just as effective?
2. Only invite those that can bring value or have a need to know; and be clear about your expectations.
3. Have a timed agenda distributed well in advance of the meeting. If people only need participate for a small segment of the agenda, let them come and go for their time slot. Indicate if the agenda item is for decision, discussion, or feedback.
4. Start and end on time (or early if possible). We know a Vice President who locked the door at the start time of his staff meetings. Anyone who was not there was not able to attend. He only had to do this a few times to make the message clear. Start on time even if not everyone is present, because it is respectful to those who do arrive on time.
5. Be clear why each person attends and be clear about his or her role. Even if higher level people are in the meeting, remember that you are running the meeting.
6. Stick to the agenda, but promote discussion and debate.
7. Bring each point to conclusion, and document the conclusion. If there are follow-up actions, be sure the responsibilities are clear and accepted in the meeting by someone who is in the meeting. If the action is for someone not in attendance, someone present in the meeting should have that action until it is accepted by someone else.
8. Make the meeting interesting. Show a movie clip to illustrate your concept or read an email from a satisfied customer. Break up the routine positively.
9. Send out minutes with the action items to the meeting participants. Copy those that have a need to know and were not at the meeting.
10. Seek feedback from participants on how future meetings could be improved. It demonstrates you value their time.

Participating In Meetings with Executive Presence:
If you are a participant invited to a meeting, you can ask the organizer about the purpose and your role in the meeting if they have not already offered that information. You can be selective in the meetings you attend or delegate. Once you decide to attend … participate well. Be a role model for being prepared and engaged in the meeting by doing the following:

1. Know what you want to achieve in the meeting.
2. Monitor your talk-time to see that you are participating enough without talking too much.
3. Pick your battles.
4. Continually look at the Other Person’s Point of View (OPPOV™) being demonstrated by the other participants.
5. Be as authentically supportive of others in the meeting as possible.

From Seeing Yourself as Others Do — Authentic Executive Presence at Any Stage of Your Career by Carol Keers and Thomas Mungavan, 2009.

Chief Marketing Officer and the Chief Information Officer Need to Work Together

Humor can be a great teacher …

One dramatic shift in the need to work together is the dramatic change in the relationship between the CMO and the CIO. Matt Ariker, Martin Harrysson and Jesko Perrey from McKinsey report: Getting the CMI and CIO to Work Together as Partners

“The situation reflects a central truth in today’s big data world: both the CMO and CIO are on the hook for turning all that data into growth together. It may be a marriage of convenience, but it’s one that CMOs and CIOs need to make work especially as worldwide volume of data is growing at least 40 percent a year, with ever-increasing variety and velocity. That’s why many CMOs are waking up to the fact that IT can’t be treated like a back-office function anymore; rather, the CIO is becoming a strategic partner who is crucial to developing and executing marketing strategy.”

We have successfully worked with [more …]

Hardest Thing for a Leader

“The hardest thing a leader has to be in charge of is him or herself.”

Dr Henry Cloud

iPhone Tip: Accessibility

I found it by accident.  Somehow the phone on my iPhone was magnified so I could actually read it … but only the small part of the screen that was visible. It turns out that by double touching my screen with three fingers, I could magnify my screen. Doing it again sent the screen back to the normal size.

Accessibility functions are designed to assist those with seeing or hearing limitations. If you go to the General Settings > Accessibility there are many options for you to choose from in the categories of Vision (zoom, voice over, gray scale, screen speak, large text, etc.), Interaction (custom gestures, call routing, keyboard settings, etc.), Hearing (hearing aids, LED flash alerts, mono-audio, etc.), Media (subtitles, captioning, audio descriptions) and a Learning section.

Making a Difference One Person at a Time

After 30 years of coaching, we are working with customers where we are grooming the third generation of CEO for the company.  It is truly an honor to be a part of such transitions.  In a recent dinner with the retiring CEO in one of those companies, he shared how he would not have had the job if we had not coached him to be ready. He wants that for the new CEO who will soon take over for him.  It’s very rewarding to hear such comments. That is our mission.

It is not uncommon for us to talk with clients we have worked with many years ago and hear them say similar comments about our impact on their professional and personal lives.  We hope to celebrate our 30th Anniversary by collecting some of the touching stories and experiences we have heard from our clients.