By: Patty Prosser
Welcome to this new Blog Series from The Center for Leadership Excellence, where we will be bringing you bite-sized leadership advice to help you lead with greater impact!
In this first installment, the leadership lesson is about Intent vs Impact!
I was recently engaged by a CEO to work with a Senior Member of his team on techniques to help him be less “prickly” (his words). When I asked him exactly what he meant, he shared some feedback that he had gotten from other team members that “Dave” was always showing up to team meetings with a negative attitude and always taking an adversarial stance, regardless of the problem they were trying to solve. This frustrated the CEO, because “Dave” had a lot of good ideas to share, but they were being filtered out by the team because of his approach.
Intent vs. Impact!
Good ideas often don’t get heard because of the way the leader is delivering the message.
In talking to “Dave”, I found out that this was never his intent and that he was happy to learn ways to “soften” his messaging so that his ideas and suggestions would be “heard” by the team. He felt that because of his training as an attorney, his approach to situations needed to be “direct” and that his fallback approach was typically to play devil’s advocate, but not to be adversarial.
It took a couple of coaching sessions and some practice on “Dave’s” part, but together, we worked on ways for him to learn to “package” his messages differently. We worked on helping him articulate his thoughts while being mindful of their interpretation. We worked on ways he could convey honesty without inflicting harm. In time, this approach helped him foster enhanced relationships, nurture greater trust, and bond more intentionally with other team members so that his “messages” could be heard in the ways he intended. “Dave” was able to learn how to better use his “tone” and his “word choices” in ways that helped his team members appreciate what he was trying to convey – thereby improving his IMPACT!
The Bottom Line…
Recognizing the powerful role of the words you choose in shaping communication outcomes allows for more intentional and effective communication. By focusing on how you respond, and not just what you say, you can create more positive interactions, foster deeper understanding, and ultimately build stronger relationships.
If you or other leaders in your organization are facing similar challenges, please visit our website at www.cleindy.com. And, if you have a “prickly” leadership issue you’d like me to address in future blogs, please reach out to me directly, and I promise to try to address it!
Patty Prosser, Co-Founder and Coaching Practice Leader at The Center for Leadership Excellence,317-727-6464 or at pprosser@cciindy.com.