Leading Out Loud

A Guide for Engaging Others in Creating the Future

Terry Pearce

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780470907696
• eBook ISBN: 9781118415443
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

The newest edition of the bestselling guide to authentic leadership communication

Much has changed in the world since the original publication of Leading Out Loud, Terry Pearce's book on authentic leadership communication. Now, more than ever, the development of a leader's message is as crucial to success as the delivery of that message. In the third edition of his classic book, Terry Pearce shows leaders in all sectors how to communicate their values and vision to inspire commitment.

In this important resource, Pearce continues to broaden the application of core principles, putting the spotlight on every day, spontaneous communication. New examples, covering the range of today's multi-faceted communication, show the application of the sage advice Pearce offers. Readers will see how to develop a Personal Leadership Communication Guide that supports any venue, through any media and in multiple cultures. This completely revised and updated version of the bestselling classic is designed to meet the communication needs of today's leaders.

• Pearce expands his exploration of the internal work necessary to create an honest and compelling vision. He emphasizes the deepening of emotional awareness necessary to inspire others
• This edition demonstrates how readers can find their authentic voices and articulate their messages with increasing confidence and empathy
• Some examples carry through across chapters, clarifying how one develops and strengthens the Personal Leadership Communication Guide over time
• The work presents new models that are applicable to the multi-cultural world in which we live. Readers, leaders of any organization, and teachers at any level will find practical illustrations of how differences can be bridged with universal principles
• Foreword by Randy Komisar, General Partner of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and author of The Monk and The Riddle

This new edition offers information, stories and experiences that demonstrate success in authentic leadership communication, in any technology, whatever the field or venue, local or global.

Part One

Leadership Communication: Personal Awareness and Competing Dynamics

In 2004 a friend invited me to participate in a forum at the University of California, Irvine. The two-day agenda featured an address by and some interaction with His Holiness, the fourteenth Dalai Lama. About fifty of us, most from the business world, had lunch together while His Holiness was addressing a corps of the faculty in another building. Our host asked us to formulate some questions for the monk and submit them on note cards—he was to choose a few, and the originator was to ask the question personally.

The auditorium was cleared for security and the Dalai Lama entered with his usual grin and flourish, wearing a visor with the UC Irvine mascot displayed. He spoke to us for a few minutes, but was eager to get to the questions.

I was shocked to hear my name called first. I had listened to His Holiness several times, read many of his works, and simply wanted some solid advice about how to live, given his teachings about compassion and peace. His response: “Do whatever you can to create institutional behavior that will promote cooperation and coexistence.” Then he looked right at me and declared, “There is always a leader. One person begins everything. That has to be you.”

This idea is not new, but neither is it in vogue. Many extol the idea of “leading from the middle,” or “leading by consensus,” and while there is popular appeal in both, neither of these ideas have resonance with history. I believe His Holiness was emphasizing the need for a starter, for one person to be of courage, to state the need for change and begin the process. He himself, of course, mounted a pony at the age of twenty-four and led his people into exile. We can see in the recent revolutions in the Middle East—the “Arab Spring”—that leadership did not immediately rise to the fore. There was an instigator, as His Holiness predicted. Wael Ghonim, a former Google executive then on sabbatical, actually started the revolution, suggesting on his originally anonymous Facebook page that young people assert themselves on a national day of protest. Later arrested and released, Ghonim remained in Egypt as a spokesperson for some in the revolution (primarily young people) but the revolution itself has been co-opted by other interest groups seeking to install themselves in the place of the previous despot. It took more than a year to elect a president in Egypt, and as of late 2012, he still does not have full popularly-supported presidential authority—no one has yet crystalized and spoken for those wanting freedom in a way that expresses a set of principles. I can’t help but contrast this circumstance to those in play when Anwar Sadat led by traveling to the Knesset to solidify a peace with Israel. He led with all his heart, against the advice of his closest friends and family, and took the definitive action that cost him his life. This urge, this conviction, was inside him, not just as an idea but as something that identified him as a man.

As I write, we in the United States are currently experiencing the “Occupy” movement, again with no leaders to state and extol a set of principles in a way that would actually represent change. What we see is a narrow coalition of dissatisfied people expressing their anger and frustration in the public square. Will anything come of it? I think that the Dalai Lama suggests that the answer is “Not until someone steps up to take the lead in a new order of things”—not just rabble-rousing or complaining about the status quo but declaring something new, something growing from a set of principles that reside in the heart of the leader. These principles need to be awakened in others.

Doing so in today’s world requires communication that is substantially different from what was needed only a decade ago. Recent research by the leadership consulting company BlessingWhite indicates that when asked what characteristics are most desirable in leaders, followers favor empathy, business competence, trustworthiness, external attunement, and depth.¹ Leaders still communicate the facts, the information that is necessary to make and implement a decision. For this, leaders have to be logical, suggesting that moving from where we are to where we are going is a needed, cogent, and doable change. More important, they also must constantly communicate the why—what makes the action meaningful—and by doing so, engage others more deeply. Whether they are heading up a volunteer effort, a business, a club, a theater, an orchestra, a city, a country, or a revolution, leaders must include the emotional and the spiritual implications of the actions they advocate, and those implications must live in the soul of the leader. These are internal necessities, the personal awareness that must be in place. Such integrated communication not only conveys consistency with the goals and strategy of the organization or movement, it also suggests consistency with the values of the leader and the organization.

The distinctions that separate leadership communication from operational communication reflect the difference between a set of instructions and an internal connection. My purpose in discussing these is to discover the substantive differences in communication that inspire rather than merely motivate. Extensive research suggests that we perform much more effectively when we are inspired than when we are merely motivated by rewards or punishments.² Indeed, most of us understand the difference intuitively. The essence of inspiration is, as Joseph Campbell offered, not only in the meaning of life but in the “experience of living.” It is up to the leader to bridge the gap between doing and being, between dreams and the actions that make those dreams real. Commitment and passion enable us to cross that emotional bridge.

Like it or not, commitment and passion are spiritual words. They are not generated from the body or the mind. We do not merely figure out commitment; it is an integrated phenomenon, encompassing our entire selves, mind and heart. Commitment gives rise to passion, the driving and exciting force in which meaning reveals itself. A real surge of excitement comes with knowing that you can actually make a difference in the world. We need only to look to our volunteer activities to discover that we are committed to what we believe in, to the causes that create meaning in our lives. Is this too much to ask of our country or our company? Not at all. In fact, great organizations with good leadership provide lots of opportunity for such expression, right in the public square or in the workplace.

Where do passion and commitment reside? In inspiration.

How do we access this inspiration in ourselves? Like other somewhat ethereal and less accessible goals, this elevated state is elusive when approached directly, but when we are able to point in the right direction, we often see what it is not, and we are therefore led to it indirectly. One method of access is to assess competing dynamics, one of which is more logical, digital, and direct, while the other dynamic, the one we are seeking, tends to be more flowing, analog, and emotional. Two pairs are central to a leader’s success: first, change and progress, and next, compliance and commitment.

The leader is not a “change agent,” as often declared in the popular literature, but is rather a “creator of progress.” The distinction between these two is the communication lifeblood of the effective leader. There is adequate psychological data to prove that on the whole people hate change; it can seem whimsical, upsetting, and without purpose. Change does not necessarily have a positive direction—it can put us out of our routine and leave us without bearings. Change can also be associated with a lack of ability to control our own environment. Change as such seems imposed, by some authority or by chance, rather than being self-generated, and it is often felt as having unpleasant consequences. The word change connotes short-term and perhaps temporary conditions that may seem negative.

As much as people hate change, almost everyone loves progress—it connotes moving forward toward a condition or set of circumstances that is new and favorable. Progress is an agreed-to positive result of change. The difference between change and progress can be communicated by the leader who has thought through the implications of change against a set of values and a desirable future. Only then is it reasonable to expect to make progress toward resolving the second set of competing dynamics, compliance and commitment, favorably.

Compliance, of course, implies an outside power commanding obedience. This may sound harsh, but whether it is the voice of your boss, your parent, the police department, or the tax collectors, the dynamic is one of you doing what is required. It is quite possible for an individual to convert this other-motivated action to an internally inspired one, transforming the experience of obeying to one of contributing from the heart. Are we internally dedicated to the values of our company? Do we respect our parents’ judgment over our own? Are we internally convinced of the value of the rule of law and therefore willing to give up some freedoms for the principle? Do we really believe in contributing some of our wealth to the public good through a democratically elected set of officials in order to support the community, even as we understand that some of our tax money may well be squandered? If the answers to these questions are “Yes,” then we are voluntarily committed to principles rather than compliant to authority.

It is the leader’s job to communicate in such a way that the supporting values are clear, that people have an opportunity to be fully invested in the outcome of their actions. Such communication necessarily has to do with the principles at stake, the goals they are trying to jointly achieve, and how the leader’s own personal values are aligned with the greater purpose. Such reflection will allow the leader to inspire commitment rather than merely motivate compliance. Doing so takes a great deal of introspection.

In March 2010, William Deresiewicz, American writer, literary critic, and former Yale professor, addressed the plebe class at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. In his remarks (titled “Solitude and Leadership” and later printed in American Scholar) he made some observations about what leadership is not: “Leadership and aptitude, leadership and achievement, leadership and even excellence have to be different things; otherwise the concept of leadership has no meaning.”³ He further decried the way leaders have been seen in society as “people who can climb the greasy pole of whatever hierarchy they decide to attach themselves to.”

As Deresiewicz implies, this was not an effective characterization. Rather, he asserts that leadership is about the courage and discipline to think things through for ourselves and the moral courage to stand up for what we believe to be right. He then asserts, and I agree with him, that self-knowledge can only be gained through introspection, frequently in solitude. In short, he argues for reading books rather than e-mail, for reflection as much as conversation, and for as much solitude and focus as it takes to discover who we are and what we will stand for. Only then can we decide how to deploy our own character in the world. Only then will we have the ability to distinguish for ourselves, and then for others, the differences that will make commitment rise.

The distinctions between change and progress and compliance and commitment are proxies for the distinction between motivation and inspiration. There are others: for example, we can articulate and communicate the strategy of our enterprise, but can we articulate the values that call that strategy forward? We can have tremendous clarity about where we are going, but can we transmit the depth of what we are up to? We can define what results we want to accomplish, but can we convey the meaning in accomplishing those goals—meaning that actually makes a difference in the quality of how we live and how our efforts create the same meaning for others? We may be able to articulate the institutional objective of our action, but can we also convey our personal motivation in accomplishing that objective? We can point logically to the right thing to do, but can we also align that action with the emotional and perhaps spiritual payoff in doing it? And finally, do we generate mere satisfaction from those who engage, or do they have a sense of loyalty to the leader and the cause?

These are the fundamental differences that define leadership communication: change and progress, strategy and values, clarity and depth, results and meaning, institutional objectives and personal motivation, logical payoffs and emotional and spiritual rewards, and satisfaction and loyalty. By communicating in a way that integrates these dynamics, a leader demonstrates both competence and trustworthiness, and can then inspire rather than motivate, creating commitment rather than mere compliance.

The four chapters that follow take up the four principles to be employed to develop the capacity for such authentic leadership communication. The first three—”Discovering What Matters,” “Deepening Emotional Awareness,” and “Connecting with Others”—form the basis for the leader’s internal development, while the fourth, “Writing–Applying Discipline to Authenticity,” describes the documentation process of the Personal Leadership Communication Guide.

Notes

1. BlessingWhite: External attunement is the penchant of the leader to listen to others’ points of view. This differs from empathy, which is the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, or feel what they are feeling. Depth deals with the creation of meaning from the task ahead, rather than merely stating the desired result. See Empathy Matters Most for Effective Leadership, December 26, 2007; available online: www.blessingwhite.com/docDescription.asp?id=216&pid=6&sid=1

2. Daniel H. Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (London: Penguin, 2009). For further information, see works by Edward Deci and Richard Flaste, Why We Do What We Do (New York: Penguin, 1996) and Dan Ariely, The Honest Truth About Dishonesty (New York: HarperCollins, 2012).

3. William Deresiewicz, “Solitude and Leadership,” American Scholar, Spring 2010.

Chapter One

Discovering What Matters

The raw material of leadership communication is something besides flesh, bone, and expertise in a field. To inspire others means not only developing the talent to operate in a given domain, but also cultivating the character traits, habits, and internal response patterns that attract others’ engageme...

Table of contents

• Cover
• More Praise for Leading Out Loud
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Foreword
• Preface
• Prologue
• Part One: Leadership Communication: Personal Awareness and Competing Dynamics
• Part Two: The Personal Leadership Communication Guide: Biography with a Purpose
• Epilogue: Communication: The Cauldron of Leadership
• Appendixes
• Recommended Reading
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Index
• Terry Pearce
• BlessingWhite