Leadership Is Language: The Hidden Power of What You Say and What You Don't

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At Toyota they use the Andon cord. Andon is the Japanese word for a traditional paper lantern. At Toyota, manufacturing workers pull an Andon cord when they encounter a problem in the production system. The cord turns on an indicator light. Before Toyota made cars, they made sewing machines. Sakichi Toyoda, the founder of Toyota, designed one of the first automated loom designs, which immediately stopped the machine when the nee-de broke. This prevented wasted material and defective product. When Toyota started building cars on the assembly line, the managers wanted a similar system, whereby workers could signal that they needed to stop production, thus avoiding unnecessary waste. So the plant designers installed pull cords that illuminated lanterns (andons). A worker simply pulled the cord to light up the andon, letting a supervisor know there was a problem at the production station. Hence the term Andon cord. Losing El Faro. Communication records from a sunken container ship, El Faro, show that collaboration and communication were not fostered onboard. The crew’s concerns – which could have saved the vessel had they been heeded – were never given serious consideration. The tragedy is Exhibit A of the strictly top-down leadership style that needs to be retired in many arenas today. How you speak to your team – whether making a statement or responding to a question – impacts them. Effective communication is essential for success, allowing you and your team t This book talks about six plays that one can employ, and all of them makes sense as you go through them.

Leadership Is Language - Penguin Books UK

On October 1, 2015, a tragedy occurred in the Bahamas. After navigating into the eye of a hurricane, the container ship El Faro was lost at sea. None of the 33 crew members survived. David Marquet is the bestselling author of the 2013 book, Turn the Ship Around! A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders and the new book, Leadership is Language: The Hidden Power of What You Say and What You Don’t, which comes out on February 4th. The Enabling Play: Connect. “Flatten the power gradient” to encourage caring, open connections between people so that the rest of the principles above can be achieved (p. 244). If someone else had to take over this project, what would you say tot hem to make it even more successful? They continued following a monolithic plan to take the Atlantic route when they should have completed one section at a time—to the first decision point at the top of the Bahamas and then to the second decision point at Rum Cay.

Learning the language of leadership

But humans, unlike burgers or car parts, are variable. We can’t be divided neatly into the doers and the thinkers. Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management needs a revamp.

Language Sunk the El Faro – Leadership is Language How Language Sunk the El Faro – Leadership is Language

Make a statement one way and you’ll get one response that leads to an outcome. Say it slightly differently and you’ll wind up with a different response and a different outcome” (p. 248). Share of Voice is “the proportion of words attributed to each person in a conversation and is an excellent indicator of the power gradient within an organization” (p. 32). Share of voice can be indicated using a tool called the Team Language Coefficient (TLC). With this tool, individual contributions in team conversations are measurable and observable. The TLC can provide data to help a team achieve a balanced share of voice, resulting in “more team thinking and better decision outcomes” (p. 33). People professionals used to rely on "best practices" to develop people management strategies. However, best practices become soon irrelevant in an ever-changing world of work.The language is hesitant, self-diminishing, deferential, and nervous. This makes it easy for the captain to reject the unwanted information. The captain’s previous comments were having their intended effect: they suppressed discussion; but of course, they did nothing to suppress doubt or alter the strength of the winds and seas. Our servers are getting hit pretty hard right now. To continue shopping, enter the characters as they are shown Executives of a big international company are attending a leadership seminar run by the author. After people break into small groups, he assigns them a task. Each group has 90 seconds to come up with an educated guess about the results of an experiment the author has just recounted. At every table in the room, the same thing happens: one person – usually a senior executive – throws out the first guess. Others offer guesses slightly above or below that one. And then everyone discusses and agrees on a choice. The result? Each group’s final estimate is always somewhere around that first guess, no matter how far off that first guess was.

Leadership Language How to Develop an Effective Leadership Language

What you don’t realize is how much more effective it would be to tell yourself you don’t eat sugar. Saying “can’t” implies there’s an external force trying to keep you from consuming sugar. When you use the word “don’t,” on the other hand, the power comes from inside you. You won’t raid the cupboard because you are a person who does not eat sweets. This type of intrinsic motivation is much more powerful in driving human behavior than compliance with an outside force. eat sweets. Turns out that telling yourself you don't eat sweets is more powerful. You'll end up eating fewer sweets with "don't" than "can't" because, by using the word "don't," the motivation comes from within. "Don't" identifies you as "a person who does not eat sweets." It allocates the power to you. On the process, not on the person – because focusing on the process prevents defensiveness about past behaviors and personal characteristics. Ask: “What improvements could we make to the process?” (p. 205).

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The captain and crew of El Faro were doomed because they’d also been programmed to run certain plays, behave in certain ways, and use certain language. They were trapped by an outdated playbook and unable to see a different way of doing things. Even if they could envision an alternative approach, it would have been extremely difficult to break out of patterns they’d been following their entire careers. We see the angst in the words of the officers as they try—and fail—to break these hardwired patterns. In a fast-paced age of innovation, we need new leadership strategies, starting with language. “After all, what is leadership but language?” Let’s consider another tragic accident on the water. In April 2010, gauges on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig began to indicate that a dangerous amount of pressure was building inside the drilling riser. Bridge operators triggered the temporary seals to shut down drilling, but none of them activated the emergency disconnect switch, a last-resort option that prevents blowouts. After nine minutes of emitting hydrocarbons, the rig erupted in flames. Eleven people died, and five million barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico. ROSS, S. (2019) Why some talented leaders succeed while others derail. Human Resources (online). March. pp38-40.

Leadership Is Language: The Hidden Power of What You Say-And

First, working products were to be delivered frequently, as frequently as every two weeks. These short bursts of work were called "sprints." Early and frequent testing exposure to users allowed early and frequent adjustments. Second, the team would work with the product owners to decide which features they would include during the next sprint. Rather than the Industrial Age approach of separating doers and deciders the agile approach turned the doers into deciders. The terms "leadership" and "management" are linked and used interchangeably because early leadership research focused on senior managers. Leadership is often defined as developing an initial vision and inspiring others to achieve it. Management involves translating the vision into reality by guiding team actions and behaviours. Both aspects play a role in achieving organisational objectives. The Connect Play is the “enabling play” for all the other plays. “The Connect Play is about caring – caring what people think, caring how they feel, caring for their personal goals. Instead of judging from a position of power, we walk alongside from a position of encouragement” (p. 219). Marquet lists four principles of The Connect Play: AZIZ, H. (2019) Why is humility so relevant for leaders and can it be developed through coaching? Strategic HR Review. Vol 18, No 1. Reviewed in In a Nutshell, issue 85.David Marquet imagines a ​world where everyone engages and contributes their full intellectual capacity, a place where people are healthier and happier because they have more control over their work–a place where everyone is a leader. Give information, not instructions – to let people choose and experience the consequences (p. 130). Applying the Redwork – Bluework Principles in Workplace Situations. Language changes can turn effective bluework on – or off. Craft your language to make it clear that you want discussion and collaboration. Use the principles above to move fluidly between decision-making and doing. Every time you use your senses of sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell, electric signals travel throughout your body and into your brain, gathering in your frontal lobe (just behind your forehead) to form a perception about the world in front of you. These sensory signals pass through the emotion-creating limbic center just before reaching the reasoning area of your frontal lobe, giving you an emotional, intuitive picture of the world around you. Accompanying these intuitions are physical responses: a lump in your throat for sadness, flushing with heat for anger, paralysis for fear, rapid heartbeat and sweating for anxiety and anticipation. These emotions are finely tuned, sophisticated tools that have evolved over millions of years-ignore them at your peril.