Communication is one of the core crafts of leadership.  [A craft is a combination of learnable skills and art used to produce something beautiful and useful.]

Leaders need to communicate to groups.  I encourage you to shift your mindset from “I’m talking with a group” to “I’m talking with a series of individuals.”  You know how to talk with a single person, right?  Ok, do that!  Start with one person, then shift your attention to the next person, and so on.  The whole group hears your conversation as you’re going person to person.

Writing a message?  Same mindset – you’re writing to representative people in that distribution list. One of the reasons the typical corporate memo sounds bland is they’re writing to a faceless, non-person named “DL-BigGroupofPeopleIDon’tKnow1234.”

Make your communication to groups more personal and you’ll connect better.  We’re always communicating, so the question is whether you’re connecting.

Personal story:

Some years ago I was asked to be on a panel discussion at the end of a supervisor training session. I scooted into the conference room just in time and took my designated seat at the front of the room. 

The first question that came to me was from a younger lady: “How do you motivate people?” I replied simply, “You can’t.” 

There were a few chuckles, and then the laugher spread. I noticed the HR facilitator at the back of the room put her hand over her mouth. The young lady smiled and pointed at a spot over my head.

I turned to look behind me and realized I was sitting directly underneath a big poster titled “How to Motivate People.”

I laughed and explained my view:

“All motivation is intrinsic. You can’t affect something intrinsic in person directly. You can provide new information. You can give them an alternative frame of reference. You can create incentives for behaviors you prefer, and disincentives for behaviors you don’t prefer. These are all indirect means of influence. Their motivation is 100% their decision. The best leaders tap into their pre-existing motivation. It’s like stepping in front of a parade and helping the parade make turns and go a bit faster.”

Observation:  Few things drown creativity faster than self-censorship.  

I don’t mean that we’re free to say whatever comes to mind, or do what we like regardless of the consequences.  We often think silly thoughts and act in foolish ways. We should be self-disciplined and restrained in our speech and actions.  That’s maturity working in context.  

Self-censorship is the fearful editor that squelches our expression of our convictions.  Self-censorship weighs the opinions of “those people” above all else.  Self-censorship is moral cowardice. 

Hedgehog and Fox is an old and useful concept for strategy and time/effort allocation.  

The first recorded instance is from the ancient Greek poet Archilochus:  “A fox knows many things, but a hedgehog knows one big thing.”  This cryptic comment inspired Erasmus’ “Adagia”, Isaiah Berlin’s famous essay “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” and Jim Collins wrote a chapter about it in in his excellent book “Good to Great.”   

Most of our days naturally fit the fox model – many things, leaping from one to another, managing the unexpected and unplanned but necessary stuff of the day. 

The key is to plan for hedgehog days:  Intense focus on one big thing.  That kind of day doesn’t happen by default, it must be planned.  It must be guarded. 

Practical reality is that with all our obligations we’ll need to do more than just one thing during an entire day.  Don’t let that be your excuse. Go hedgehog on a 4-hour block of focused time and accomplish those big things!    

Inflation is a genuine problem, with many fathers.   Fewer people are paying attention to the drivers of deflation.  For example, these technology platforms (which drive enormous business models) are fundamentally deflationary: 

DNA sequencing 

Robotics 

Sensors 

Machine learning & algorithms  

Blockchain  

By deflationary I mean that these technologies become cheaper rapidly and require less and less human labor to generate disproportionately large economic gains.   Said another way, jobs don’t grow at the same rate as economic gain when organizations use these technologies in their business models.  GDP grows through productivity gains while the hours worked declines. This amplifies the “wealth divide,” particularly when our education systems are still optimized to turn out worker drones rather than entrepreneurs and self-directed learners.  

There are no simple or straightforward “solutions” to these trends.  Neither inflation nor deflation are uniform; there is a distribution of impact severity over peoples and time.   Multiple powerful incentives drive the changes. Riding this tiger is fun until it isn’t, and the dismount is downright scary. 

I suggest we use two lenses to assess options and consider our paths forward: 

1. Meaningful work which supports families.  There is a correlation between addictions – opioid overdoses killed more than 100,000 Americans in the last 12 months — and lack of meaningful work.  Work is good for us.  Work that supports families is good for our social fabric. 
2. Willingness to sacrifice today for a better future.  There is effectively zero willingness in our political discourse today.  Deferred gratification is no less critical for countries than it is for individual citizens.   

I suggest these because they’re integrated lenses requiring maturity and tradeoffs.  There are those among us who are called to work on foundational and underlying issues – healthy masculinity and femininity, education in an era of exponential technology, practicing forgiveness and citizenship, discernment, rediscovering the value of connecting the divine and the ‘secular,’ and so on.  Yet we still need some way to integrate our efforts, a mechanism that supports conscious optimism.  We choose X even though it’s inconvenient or less valuable to some, because it leads to a better overall outcome.  (In math terms, a global optimum rather than a local optimum.)  The “we” here is important, too.  History is replete with example of the poor choices of a few who were powerful or influential.  The best choices will align with trustworthy revelation, not just what our flawed guts tell us in the moment.

I call on adults to lead.  Eugene Peterson’s translation of Ephesians 4:14-16 show us the way:

No prolonged infancies among us, please. We’ll not tolerate babes in the woods, small children who are easy prey for predators. God wants us to grow up, to know the whole truth and tell it in love—like Christ in everything. We take our lead from Christ, who is the source of everything we do. He keeps us in step with each other. His very breath and blood flow through us, nourishing us so that we will grow up healthy in God, robust in love.

So much project work gets stretched out over days and weeks and months!  Concentrated time to finish a deliverable is powerful.  You’re often better off not working on a small project at all for three or five weeks if you can engineer time for the right people to come together to finish the project with a few hours or days of focused effort.  

I remind you of Leonard Bernstein’s insight: “To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.”  

Do everything you can to squeeze out chronological days.  The return on speed is exponential, not linear.   Efficient execution begets more and better results. This pattern of work will set you apart as a powerful contributor.  

Strengths are things which we’re naturally good at, and things where we’ve achieved some level of mastery.  Uniqueness is the intersection of strengths and life experiences.  Many people have great strengths in an athletic endeavor, but every athlete is unique because no two people have precisely the same experiences.  Many people have become great fathers and mothers, but even though all parents have some common experiences with children, no two parents have precisely the same life experiences.

Key questions: What are your strengths? What life experiences amplify those (or weaken them)?

When I ask someone about weaknesses, they can rattle on for 10 minutes or write 2 pages quickly.  (In my experience narcissists struggle with that.  It’s a tell.)  Most people have more difficulty homing in on their strengths. Think about both what you know as well as what you can do easily compared with others. 

• What work tasks do you gravitate to because they’re easier?
• When you have an unexpectedly free 5 minutes, what’s your first thought about what to do?
• Who comes to you for help and why?
• When do people say “Wow!”?
• List areas of interest where you’ve read more than 3 books, attended conferences, spent more than $2000 in the last year, subscribed to email lists, commented in online forums, been part of a group for more than 6 months, etc….
• What formal degrees and certifications do you have? 
• What subjects from school can you still use and teach to others who don’t know it as well as you do?
• What machines can you run?  Maintain?  Build?
• Where do you have expertise to distinguish professional work from a somewhat competent hobbyist?
• What movies can you quote from, or tell people the entire plot, start to finish?  Which songs do you have memorized?
• When do you quickly decide you need to get someone else to do X because you’re not good at it?  What things do you resist delegating even if you know you should because “it’s easy” for you?

Let’s think about your experiences:

• Where have your lived and what’s it like there?  Favorite and least-favorite memories?
• Where have you vacationed or traveled to?  What do you remember?  What lessons did you take away?
• What jobs have you held where someone paid you?  How and why did you progress from one job to another?
• What volunteer positions have you held for more than 6 weeks or 6 months?
• What do you recognize as big milestones in your life?  (And would others also say they are big milestones?)  Think again, can you think of others?
• What activities tend to leave you more energized?  Which activities do you do as a duty but are draining?

Finally, let’s consider relationships.  (I don’t want to get into a therapy session, but this is a useful way to think about your strengths and experiences.)

• Where are their relationship joys (even silly and memorable moments) with your family members?
• Where do your relationship scars come from?  How visible are those scars to others?  How have those scars made you today?
• Who can you call at 2am and they won’t think less of you?
• Who is in your closest circle of friends?  (Friends, not Facebook “friends.”)  And in the next circle?  If you haven’t talked with one of these friends in two years, which ones can you pick up a good conversation with immediately, and what does that tell you?
• Who do you consult when you need the kind of advice that a Google search can’t give you?  Who would you never ask for this kind of advice?
• Which local or regional leaders can you contact and expect they’ll listen because of their relationship with you?
• Where does your heart ache for deeper relationships? 

… This exercise is worth an investment of time.  The outcome has ROI!  Make some notes, let it ferment in your mind, and come back to over a few days. 

This simple process will set you apart from 98% of your competitors for the next promotion and career opportunity:

1. Use 10 minutes of focused thinking to identify something which you should be working on 5-8 weeks from now.  Maybe it’s a predictable deliverable like a budget, a process review, or helping a new hire.  Maybe it’s developing a new product or service, or doing market research.  Maybe it’s improving your relationships with key stakeholders.  
2. Get on your calendar and schedule working time for yourself and meetings with others.  You and practically everyone else has plenty of open time on their calendars 5-8 weeks from now.  

Once you get better at this process, use the same approach for longer timescales!  What is something that you should be working on 1-2 years from now?  This is executive-level thinking and action.

Over the years I’ve held different roles and signed up with multiple relevant vendors, conferences, and newsletters.   This created a steady stream of potentially useful information.  

Now that I work in an unrelated area, the emails are still coming in.  I either ignored or deleted them for a long time.  Deleting was especially nice.  You get a little “happy juice” moment in your brain when you shorten your inbox list quickly.  

A few months ago I realized that these were simply distractions.  They aren’t relevant.  I’m not gaining anything by even seeing the subject line.  The sender thinks I’m still a good audience member when I’m not.

Remembering what Andy Stanley says — “What distracts us is never as important as what we’re being distracted from” — I just unsubscribe from each mailing list as they come in.  Takes 30-60 seconds for each, which is an investment in reduced distraction going forward.

Distractions come in many forms.  What can you do to “unsubscribe” from no-longer-relevant signals in your work environment?  

The people in your organization who are easiest to promote, and most likely to given new opportunities are the individuals who are known by more senior leaders.  This is simply a fact about how human organizations work. 

If people in your team aren’t on the radar of more senior leaders, including your bosses boss, then:

• You’ll have a more difficult time getting them promoted.  The decision-makers might say “I’ve never heard of Bob. Why should we believe he’s ready for the next level of responsibility?”
• You’ll have to work much harder to give them a strong rating in a fixed-distribution performance rating process.  “We only have X slots for the highest rating, and how could Jill deserve one if I’ve never heard about her work?”
• You’re going to struggle to defend their contribution in a “steel cage death match” meeting to decide which positions to eliminate.  “Since we haven’t heard about this person’s work, it much not be critical to the organization compared to others.”
• Your team members less likely to be appointed to new roles.  “We decide to ask Jose to stretch into that role, since we know he’s successfully taken on tough challenges before.”

You have a leadership responsibility to help other leaders know about your team members.  Here are four practical suggestions:

1. Invite your team members to give short presentations to your boss, or the whole leadership team.  Give them strong coaching so they can shine.
2. Forward email messages to senior leaders (not just your boss) about project work and accomplishments, even situations where someone is effectively working on a difficult problem.  Add some commentary notes so they have context.  Point out where this demonstrates greater potential for contribution in new roles in the future.  (Bonus level:  Ask your team member to write an email message that’s designed to be easy to forward.)
3. Mention individuals by name.  Don’t only say, “My team….” Give credit to the individual(s).  Repeat their names.
4. Go all out in project reviews, talent reviews, and succession planning to document the capabilities and accomplishments of your team members.  Outline how they’re improving. Give concrete examples of “soft skills” as well as specific deliverables. 

These are important leadership habits and practices.  Savvy senior leaders will notice what you’re doing and give YOU better opportunities in the future, too.