If you don’t read Whitney Johnson’s Disrupt Yourself newsletter you’re missing a gem. This from last month’s issue caught my eye: “After taking over as President of the World Bank, Dr. Jim Yong Kim asked former Ford Motor Company CEO Alan Mulally for advice. This former CEO of the Year said: “You have a nice smile, smile more.” He then added, “In your position, your face isn’t yours anymore.”
When you are a leader your face isn’t yours anymore – at least not when you are at work. Your team (even if it’s just five people) is watching you all the time.
If you don’t say hello or nod pleasantly to an employee in the elevator, he may think that you don’t like him, that you thought his performance last quarter wasn’t great, that you are going to promote someone else and lay him off, that he’ll never get a new job, etc., etc. You may be busy thinking about how irritating it is that your contractor can’t come fix your roof for six weeks. Meanwhile the person standing next to you is already mentally filling out an unemployment form.
Why? Because, as I wrote last July on poseyblog, humans have deeply embedded (mostly unconscious) patterns and beliefs about authority figures. They don’t consciously decide to see you through this lens of biases and fears. They just do.
At the same time, they do consciously study how you’re behaving to see what they can learn about how the company is doing. They do this because their livelihoods are at stake. A nervous angry leader’s face and body language communicate danger to your team. They think ‘Maybe the company is hurtling into oblivion! I’d better quit now!’ A calm, focused leader’s face and body language telegraph confidence and perspective. This makes your team think, ‘I love working for this CEO – she knows exactly what she’s doing!’
So, smile more. Say hi. Maintain a zen-like demeanor. And, if you are simply not a zen-like person, be a transparent person. If I was insanely cranky when someone walked into my office, I’d just immediately tell them it wasn’t because of them – it was because of that ridiculous conference call I’d just been on. And then I’d smile and ask them how I could help them.
Communication is the essential last mile in finding and motivating the right teams, acquiring strong allies, powerfully bonding with customers, and capturing mindshare with compelling stories. Nothing will serve you and your vision better than developing exceptional communication skills. If you’d enjoy finding pragmatic communications advice in your inbox every month, please click here to receive poseycorp’s newsletter.
