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

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The book has some solid concepts around how people use language and how that affects people around them. A lot of it is centered around the idea of moving away from Industrial-euro ways of operating where doing the work is separate from thinking about the work. Marquet defines seven areas of work that need to shift, both on the doing and thinking side. And he provides plenty of examples to help picture the range of possibilities. In this conversation with LBC Presenter Matthew Stadlen, Marquet shows managers and leaders how to enable their team through communication. Managers often see hiring and onboarding as simple processes to bring new employees into the company and set them up with their team. However, these processes are also an excellent opportunity to show new hires what to expect from you as their leader, based on how you communicate their role, your expectations for employees, company values and who their team members will be. Organisations can undertake various activities to enhance an individual's leadership capabilities. Our management development factsheet explains how to identify development needs and how to develop leaders and managers.

Leadership Language How to Develop an Effective Leadership Language

You’ve just engaged in the two primary modes of human activity: thinking and doing. You thought about where you wanted to go, and then you went. In your private life, you switch between these modes several times a day. Everybody does. But in the working world, most of us are categorized as either thinkers or doers. That’s because most companies are still run according to models developed in the Industrial Age. Language makes the division between redwork and bluework evident. Redwork says things like, “Make it happen. Bluework says things like, “How do you see it?” (p. 45). Make sure to leave room for the other people to participate in the conversation. If you're not hearing from them, give them time/space. If you want to hear more from your team you need to talk less.

Some books you do not want to finish reading, and you keep highlighting, keep revisiting some of the older chapters, and keep pondering some of the statements and relate to what you do in your day to day life. And this is one such book. In 1906, the English polymath Francis Galton attended a country fair. At one stand, visitors were asked to guess the weight of an ox on display; whoever came closest would win the animal. After the contest ended, the ever-curious Galton collected and analyzed all the votes. What he found was that the collective average of the guesses came closer to the real number than all but a few of the individual guesses. The group, in other words, knew better than almost any individual fairgoer. Let’s imagine an alternate reality in which the crew of El Faro felt psychologically safe enough to question the captain’s decision. In this scenario, the captain took the time to meet with his first mate before departure. “I’m excited you’re on the team,” he told her. “Our differences in age and gender probably mean we’ll bring different perspectives to the table. I encourage you to share your opinions, and I commit to listening to what you have to say.”

Leadership Is Language Book - David Marquet

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. Good book with lot of insights, using right language is critical in leadership. Good set of right vocab to help drive teams to thrive and deliver.

David also explains the uneven “share of voice” that happens inside of so many organizations. Inside of meetings leaders tend to talk the most, which is not good. It is something that leaders need to be aware of. He says, “As a leader, you don’t need to say a lot because you already know what you think and when you start talking, you’re anchoring the group. Basically, the idea is you’re bringing them to your way of thinking, which is what you think you wanna do but it’s actually not. What you want to do is understand how they think and what they think, and at the end, you can decide what to do, whether you could do what they wanna do or what you wanna do, that’s fine. But it’s after uncovering what everybody thinks.” Full of compelling advice on how to lead more effectively by choosing your words more wisely' - ADAM GRANT, author of Originals and Give and Take Complete, not continue: If every day feels like a repetition of the last, you're doing something wrong. Articulate concrete plans with a start and end date to align your team. Changing the way we communicated changed the culture. Changing the culture transformed our results. Changing our words changed our world” (p. 6). — L. David Marquet

Leadership Is Language: The Hidden Power of What You Say and

In one experiment, 129 Jewish Israeli students were asked to rate their level of support for the statements "I support the division of Jerusalem" and "I support dividing Jerusalem." When the statement used nouns (division), participants reported less anger and increased support for concessions. Further, when asked how angry they would be if the policy were adopted, anger was tempered when the question relied on nouns. David Marquet Transcript http://traffic.libsyn.com/futureofworkpodcast/David_Marquet_Podcast_-_DONE_1.mp3 BAZERMAN, M.H. (2020) A new model for ethical leadership. Harvard Business Review. Vol 98, No 5, September. pp.90-97. The consequences of poor onboarding include lower productivity, greater inefficiency and higher employee turnover. Disciplining employees The Connect Play creates a culture where people can be vulnerable, can dissent, and feel cared for.

The redwork-bluework operating system requires individuals at all levels of an organization to be thinkers and doers. Leaders can influence the system in three ways: Overall, I found "Leadership Is a Language" to be a compelling and enlightening read. Marquet's writing style is engaging and accessible, and his personal anecdotes and case studies bring the concepts to life. The real-life example of how David changed his leadership style while captaining a nuclear submarine I do feel the “playbook” approach with defined plays is a bit overly-contrived for me, personally, but it didn’t really distract from the message of the book. When teams are prone to continuing, plan a pause and run The Complete Play. This will allow teams to switch to bluework. They can assess their redwork and decide to continue or not (pp. 252-254).

Leadership is Language - Agile Jottings Brief Summary of Leadership is Language - Agile Jottings

Into the Bluework: Collaborate. “Let the doers be the deciders” (p. 105). Asking open-ended questions, seeking minority and dissenting viewpoints, and voting before a discussion encourages collaboration and avoids coercion. 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 to establish trust and create better long-term outcomes. Your leadership development goals should include learning to use your words carefully, eliminating jargon to avoid confusion, and focusing on the end goals when communicating. Areas where language matters Saving El Faro. Had they been enabled by “the power of connection,” the crew and captain of El Faro would have used language more effectively and constructively, and the outcome would have been entirely different. We all know what happened next: Dunaway announced the wrong winner, the producers of La La Land came on stage to accept the award, and it wasn’t until minutes later that one of them interrupted the celebrations to announce Moonlight as the real winner.

In Turn The Ship Around, Marquet challenged us to change the way we lead; Now, in Leadership is Language, he challenges us to change the way we talk as leaders – dropping the archaic language of command and control and learning the language of creativity, collaboration, and commitment.”” HURLEY, A. (2020) What kinds of leaders will equip organisations to survive crisis and disruption? People Management(online). 26 March. 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. Leaving Bluework Behind: Commit. Commitment is fostered when collaboration has occurred. Commitment is implemented best when both learning and action are valued and tasks are performed in manageable “chunks.” I think because of how I got there that when I say “play,” I often picture football because in that sport there is a break between each action. The field is reset and the offense has time to deliberately decide their next action: run, pass, or something else. So does the defense. And both sides are trying to read the other in determining their plan.