How To Guide Against Sabotaging Your Career I

How To Guide Against Sabotaging Your Career  I

Some leaders across the globe most often do screw up their careers either knowingly or unknowingly. These leaders most often than not, are getting the wrong results or the right results in the wrong ways while little effort is put into correcting this wrong attitude. Interestingly, they themselves are choosing to fail.  

They're actively sabotaging their own careers. These leaders sabotage their careers for a simple reason: They make the fatal mistake of choosing to communicate with presentations and speeches rather than giving leadership talks. Speeches or presentations primarily communicate information.  While leadership talks, on the other hand, not only communicate information, they do more: They go as far as establishing a deep, human emotional connection with the audience.  

The question now is: Why is the later connection necessary in leadership?

It is a well-proven fact that leaders do nothing more important than get results.  There are generally two ways that leaders get results: They can order people to go from point A to point B, or they can have people WANT TO go from A to B.  Clearly, leaders who can instill "want to" in people, and motivate those people, are much more effective than leaders who can't or won't. And the best way to instill "want to" is not simply to relate to people as if they are information receptacles but to relate to them in a deep, human, emotional way that depicts having a tendency of greater connection with their followers. YOU DO THIS WITH LEADERSHIP TALKS!

Listed below are a few examples of leadership talks.

For example, when Churchill said, "We will fight on the beaches ... " That was a leadership talk.

When Kennedy said, "Ask not what your country can do for you ... " that was a leadership talk.

When Reagan said, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"  That was a leadership talk.

You can come up with a lot of examples too.  Go back to those moments when the words of a leader inspired people to take ardent action and make people do what they don’t want to do to achieve great results in the first instance. By doing this, you have probably put your finger on an authentic leadership talk.

Mind you, I'm not just talking about the great leaders of history.  I'm also talking about the leaders in your organizations.  After all, leaders speak 15 to 20 times a day: everything from formal speeches to informal chats.  When those interactions are leadership talks, not just speeches or presentations, the effectiveness of those leaders is dramatically increased.

How do we put together leadership talks? It's not easy.  Mastering leadership talks take a rigorous application of many specific processes.  As Clement Atlee said of that great master of leadership talks, Winston Churchill, "Winston spent the best years of his life preparing his impromptu talks."

Churchill, Kennedy, Reagan, and others who were masters at giving leadership talks didn't actually call their communications "leadership talks". Nelson Mandela of the blessed memory also utilized the acumen of a great leader to inspire his people to fight for freedom for his people. The basic fact here is that only thing is common to all of them, they must have been conscious to some degree of the processes one must employ in putting a leadership talk together.

Here's how to start.  If you plan to give a leadership talk, there are three questions you should ask.  If you answer "no" to any one of those questions, you can't give one.  You may be able to give a speech or presentation, but certainly not a leadership talk.   (To be continued)