Impromptu

Leading in the Moment

Judith Humphrey

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781119286752
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781119286776
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

Be Prepared to Lead in the Moment: Assess, think, and respond on-the-spot

Impromptu shows leaders how to think on their feet and respond eloquently in every situation. Never have there been so many opportunities to inspire and influence in everyday situations -- elevator chats, corridor conversations, networking gatherings, meetings, and ceremonial events. Indeed, today the most iconic leadership moments are spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment events that reveal the inner workings of the leader's mind. When these impromptu opportunities arise, leaders must be able to listen, think, and respond within seconds. They don't read a script from a page, they convey the narrative that is already in their mind. They can tailor a message—in a meeting, in the corridor, or in a tweet—to influence and inspire any audience. Those who shine in that moment are remembered for their leadership. Those who stumble are remembered for their gaffes, mixed messages, or insensitivity. Nobody remembers the leaders who retreat to their office, formulate a strategic plan, and distribute a memo the following week.

Guided by her entrepreneurial success as founder of The Humphrey Group and her firm's work with tens of thousands of leaders over the past 30 years, Judith Humphrey makes clear the importance of preparing to be spontaneous -- as counterintuitive as that may sound! Drawing upon the best impromptu moments from the Greeks to the present, the book looks at every aspect of impromptu speaking. You will learn how to:

• Think like an impromptu leader
• Quickly read an audience of one or a thousand
• Collect your thoughts and craft a persuasive message
• 'Script' yourself within seconds for any occasion
• Avoid 'um's' and 'ah's' and use the right words at the right time
• Discover improv techniques that will enable you to shine
• Deliver your message with clarity, confidence, and conviction.

The ability to speak on the spot is often seen as an innate gift, a talent of 'natural-born' leaders. The truth is, it's a skill that can be learned—a skill that is quickly becoming a must-have for anyone in a leadership position. Impromptu provides clear, actionable guidance to help you reach your full leadership potential. It will enable you to influence and inspire followers on the many 'small stages' that define our daily lives.

Part I
The New World of Impromptu

1
The Rise of Impromptu Speaking

The way leaders communicate in organizations has undergone a remarkable transformation in the last half century. No longer is leadership delivered primarily by C‐Suite executives standing behind podiums reading words written for them. Today, individuals at every level are leading with impromptu remarks. How and why that transformation has occurred provides the foundation for this book.

The Glory Days of the Formal Speech

Back in the 1980s when I entered the business world, CEOs and top executives in every organization regularly delivered formal speeches and rarely spoke spontaneously—nor was anyone else encouraged to communicate. The law of the land was for managers and junior executives to keep their mouths shut. In fact, when a group of engineers heard that we in the corporate communications department were about to introduce a program that would teach managers how to communicate, one senior engineer wrote an email, “How can we shut this program down?”

My first job as a speech writer was supporting a group of senior executives. It felt like I was joining a secret society. My boss looked me in the eye on that first day of work and said: “I'm going to turn you into a speech writer.” I was a novitiate—and he was the old master passing on the secrets of this sacred craft. He sent me to New York where I took a course with one of the greats: a man who had crafted remarks for Nelson Rockefeller. When preparing a major address, there were elaborate rituals, spread over many weeks or even months. I learned to plan, research, outline, discuss, write, rewrite, and format the script for a thirty‐minute talk. The CEO was involved in most of these activities, and took them very seriously. So elaborate was this process that my boss once told me that we should not agree to write a major speech if the executive did not give us at least three months to make this happen. Three months!

In those days the speech writer worked closely with the senior executive. When a CEO retired, he might pass his writer on to a friend or colleague in the industry. In fact, one retiring CEO I had been writing for called another senior executive in the industry and “offered” me as a speech writer. I didn't take the job but I was honored to have received his endorsement.

I found this work exciting, and through my affiliation with IABC (International Association for Business Communicators), I regularly presented a speech‐writing course in major U.S. and Canadian cities. During these years, which were the heyday of formal speech giving, this one‐day program, “The Art of Speech Writing,” was often oversubscribed.

When, in 1988, I established my own communications company, The Humphrey Group, the demand for speeches was still high. Writing those speeches and coaching executives to deliver them was the bread and butter for my new firm. The demand was so great that I and my husband (an academic who regularly helped out) often worked until the wee hours of the morning to meet deadlines.

And then in the 1990s something odd but unmistakable occurred. The demand for formal speeches declined, while the number of people asking The Humphrey Group for assistance with impromptu remarks soared. I remember a conversation with a chief financial officer at that time. He had just come from speaking to analysts about the company's quarterly results. I said to him, “Where is your speech?” He pointed to his temple. I thought he was a genius to speak simply and confidently from a mental outline, but that is exactly what leaders had begun to do. The focus of leadership communications was evolving from prepared speeches to impromptu remarks.

I remember in the early 1990s coaching a senior executive—the head of engineering for a large utility—who transformed his style dramatically when he scrapped his speech and spoke from notes. In his elaborate scripted text he had highlighted certain words in yellow, in a desperate effort to draw them out. There was so much detail—numbers, information, technical data, jargon—all on the subject of metallurgical engineering. As he spoke I realized the text was dragging him down. His tone did not change from thought to thought. His pace did not change. His face was without expression. He was buried alive in all that verbiage.

I turned the videotape off and we both agreed his scripted remarks had been awful. Together we revised the text. We ditched the long, cumbersome sentences and created “memory joggers” that would remind him of his message and key points.

The transformation was remarkable. Now he was looking up, not dropping down into the text. He was talking, not reading. He embellished each point with an illustration. He was free. Free to improvise. This, I thought, was what the informal speech should be.

For good reason formal speechmaking has lost its devotees. As Bart Egnal, my successor and CEO of The Humphrey Group, says: “Over the past fifteen years that I've been with the company one trend that has never changed is the decline of formal speaking and the rise in extemporaneous communication. The speech has died—and is being replaced by the conversation. Audiences are craving authentic conversations; formal, overly scripted performances are rejected. Leaders who take note of this trend and build their skills to capitalize on such everyday moments are winning hearts and minds.”

Today more and more leaders—pressed for time and anxious to be authentic—are scrapping the script. Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, hired Dex Torricke‐Barton, Mark Zuckerberg's speech writer, but was quick to point out in a tweet that “Dex will do comms, but my speeches are just a conversation w the audience. No time to rehearse & don't want to read from a prompter.” One fan tweeted back, “That's JUST the way we like you, Elon! Off the cuff & personal.” Another replied, “I agree 100%. Don't change the way you talk.”¹

This transformation of leadership communications from scripts to spontaneity, from the big stage to the small stage, reflects a new era of impromptu speaking.

The Three Reasons for the Rise of Impromptu Speaking

The rise in impromptu speaking (and the decline of formal addresses) reflects three closely related developments that have changed our world.

First, the Flattening of Organizations

Businesses large and small, governments at all levels, charities, and even volunteer associations are very different than they were twenty (or even ten) years ago. There's still someone at the “top.” But there are now fewer layers, and fewer barriers between top and bottom. Knowledge and decision-making are decentralized.

The change that emerged in the 1990s was a long time in coming. Deborah Ancona, a professor of management and organizational studies at MIT, chronicles an evolution that began with the “super bureaucracies” of the 1920s. And while there were modifications in the intervening decades, the most significant changes have occurred in recent years. The result has been today's workplace with “what's called variously eco‐leadership, collaborative leadership, or distributed leadership.”²

As Ancona and Henrik Bresman explain in their book, X‐Teams, “The shift from a singular reliance on command‐and‐control leadership to more of a distributed leadership mind‐set requires additional dialogue and alignment up and down the organization.”³ That's because “critical knowledge and information that used to flow vertically from the top is now flowing not only both ways but also laterally across units and organizations.”⁴ Everyone now is expected to bring forward their ideas and inspire followers. Communications are no longer the sole responsibility of those at the top. Leadership is expected at all levels of the organization. Even a junior analyst must be able to present a clear summary of his thinking to someone who might be a C‐Suite executive or a portfolio manager. Nobody gets off the hook! Leadership does not reside in a title. It exists in this ability to inspire people up, down, and across the organization.

Today's leaders must communicate in a more open, authentic, and informal manner than was previously done at the top. This approach requires listening, consensus‐building, and collaboration in meetings, one‐on‐one encounters, and parking lot or elevator conversations. Leadership is based on everyday encounters where one feels the need to lead in the moment, speak spontaneously, and share an idea or a vision of what's possible. This is leadership in the organizations of the twenty‐first c...

Table of contents

• COVER
• TITLE PAGE
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• PROLOGUE
• INTRODUCTION
• Part I: The New World of Impromptu
• Part II: The Impromptu Mind‐Set
• Part III: The Leader's Script
• Part IV: Impromptu Scripts for Every Occasion
• Part V: The Impromptu Stage
• CONCLUSION
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INDEX
• END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT