Interview Transcript

We’ve talked from slightly different angles about the topic of communication has come up in a number of guises. Clarity and communication are highly sought after. I think the role of a leader, that a leader is constantly communicating internally to shareholders, to the press, to customers. What do you feel or what principles have you relied on to communicate clearly and effectively throughout your career?

The most important one for me that has been a life-long value is, honesty is the most important tool in your tool chest. Ultimately, it’s the toughest thing to deliver in the hardest times. That’s the most important time to deliver it. If you think about what people are trying to get done in an organization and back to my earlier point, people come to work wanting to make a difference and often you realize when you speak to them how passionate they are about doing that. Often, don’t feel that they have the true story, they don’t have the true picture. When times are really tough and when things are really not on track, it becomes most important to have that transparency and that honesty to the extent that you can have, legally or from a strategic point of view as much as you can share. That honesty breaks down a lot of barriers.

Again, what’s probably coming with the honesty is a story that’s not as rosy as you would like to tell. It’s also leaving yourself somewhat vulnerable as a leader to say, “I don’t have all the answers, we have some serious challenges ahead of us.” It’s also inviting other people into the conversation around how they can help. Honesty becomes extremely important. It’s tough to deliver in tough times, but it’s absolutely the most important time to deliver it. Sugar-coating things is fine for a short period of time, but sugar-coating on a lolly, it eventually disappears once you suck it long enough.

That’s not a permanent solution for you. It may be a temporary fix when you get the sugar high, but that goes away. Honesty will prevail. Over time, it will be the thing that people will remember you for as I had an example in India where I made a golden mistake. People years later still remembered that conversation around the mistakes that were made. They still remembered it and they still valued it because they knew that was something, they were now looking for in leadership to help them make better decisions, too. I think to be a good communicator, I mentioned you’ve got to be willing to listen and have that feedback loop.

I think finally with communication comes an importance around having some humility and empathy with people, which does not have to be a sign of weakness. I think a lot of people mistake them that those qualities somehow show you who’s a weaker leader. I would argue that that’s absolutely not true. That’s allowing you to actually make a connection with the people at their level, wherever they are, to understand who they are, ultimately you’re running an organization which is full of people with their own stories, with their own issues, with their own challenges. Some of them come to work and some don’t, but if you have no empathy and you have no understanding for that, and no understanding for their story, then you really can’t make the connection work. That means you miss an opportunity, frankly, to communicate fully with the people at a level that the understand.

Certainly, the best leaders I worked for and worked with are the ones that I really hold, and revere were the ones who could walk the factory floor with me and have an honest and earnest conversation with someone in the factory. In the next instance, we could be talking to politicians in a very senior setting and talking in a totally different level, but it’s still with empathy for them as people, not just as politicians. That has certainly been my own experience. I can recall once having to go to Washington DC to the White House, meet with a very influential senator and it was on a fairly hot topic at that time, which I would say fairly contentious and it involved changes to legislation.

Obviously, we were there to put our case, as the CEO of an organization, but ultimately, the connect point became grandchildren, the fact that there were pictures of grandchildren on the desk. We struck up a conversation around some of the challenges of being in a leadership role, a very senior leadership role and having time for members of family. We were able to connect on these common challenges. Ultimately, it led the conversation in a totally different way to get the messages across without ever seeming confrontational. Actually, it resulted in a very positive outcome. For me, it was just having a moment to be able to recognize us as humans, not just representatives of a very important position in power, which made a difference to the outcome fundamentally.

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