Funny Leadership Story - Clear Communication Matters



Business communication styles can come in several harmful flavors. I love the following story that illustrates how your style of communication could lead to big problems in business and personally if you aren’t careful. What’s your leadership communication style?

One night an angry man and wife were preparing for bed. Neither of them had spoken to each other most of the day.
It was normal for the couple to boil in a war of silence for several days. However, this time the man was concerned because he needed to be woken up at 5:00 AM the next morning so that he could catch an important flight. He was a heavy sleeper and relied on his wife to wake him up, otherwise there was a good chance he would sleep right through the alarm!
Letting his pride get the best of him he cleverly decided he would write her a note while she was in the bathroom instead of asking her verbally. He wrote on the piece of paper: “Please wake me up at 5:00 AM, I have a critical flight to catch.” He put the note on his wife’s pillow believing she would for sure see it there. He then tucked himself in and went to bed.
The next morning when he woke up he looked at the clock and it was 7:00 AM! He was enraged that he had missed his flight and was preparing to go up the stairs and give his errant wife a scolding when he noticed a handwritten note on his nightstand.
The note said: “It’s 5:00 AM – get up.”
So again, what’s your communication style? You get what you give. If you aren’t clear, what you get most likely won’t be what you intended. And obviously, some business communication styles are more preferred than others.

Thanks for reading my blog.

Are you Leading?

Dr. Deepak A. Patil

CEO, Lead ThySelf



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Leading in the VUCA World

Image
  The VUCA world In 2020s, there are no hard and fast rules for managing businesses any more — as the world has gone “VUCA” — volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. In VUCA world the hierarchical organization model is finished and new models are emerging but there is no one dominant model that works for everyone. New times call for new rules but there is no thumb rule for every industry and every situation. Out of the five most valuable companies in the world in 2009, only Microsoft still retains a place in the list. In the VUCA world, competency comes with an expiry date, and it is as true for organizations as it is for people. How VUCA impacts on Leadership? The technologies that are amplifying change are also the tools to manage it more effectively. In Deloitte’s “ 2019 Global Human Capital Trends ” survey, 80 percent of respondents agreed that the 21st century has imposed new requirements on business leaders. It is due to various elements of our connected and digital lives. To
Read more

True leaders don't create followers but more leaders

Image
Every one of us is a leader in our own right. Whether we lead an entire company, or a team of people, or a group of friends, or our families, or just ourselves…we are all leaders in some form or fashion. Whatever size our circle of influence may be today, if we work to improve as leaders, that circle of influence will enlarge. I have been in positions of leadership my entire career, and during those years I have learned much about the difference between being a bad leader and being a good leader. Some lessons I learned the hard way, through trial and error followed by the humility that comes from overcoming those mistakes. Other lessons I learned through observing those I esteemed to be great leaders whose example I sought to follow. Through it all I found several traits that I believe are necessary for someone to be what I consider a true leader: True leaders know who they are and what they stand for. They know their values and the rules they will abide by, regardless of t
Read more

Reluctant / Introvert Leaders

Image
  Warren Buffett Topping our list of impressive introverted leaders is the investment guru, billionaire, philanthropist Warren Buffett. Known as the “Oracle of Omaha,” Buffett is one of the world’s richest men and a respected financial leader. Behind the legend and hype, Buffett’s introversion is an indelible part of who he is – presenting both strengths and challenges to his eventual rise to success. The most valuable of those strengths may very well be Buffet’s ability to comprehend the abstract.  Andy Hinds , in his article “ Warren Buffett: The World’s Richest Introvert ,” shares: As Buffett explains in the  Bloomberg documentary , his success is partially due to making concrete sense of the abstract: “If you look at the market as buying pieces of businesses, you will be able to see when the market is wrong.” By peering through the numbers to the underlying reality, Buffett has been able to fly in the face of conventional wisdom and consistently outperform the market. A  2012 study
Read more