Laird Hayes watches Mario Manningham make one of the greatest catches in Super Bowl history.

It’s a stretch to call him a close friend, but through a college buddy of his I’ve gotten to know Laird a little over the last few years. On his last two trips to Phoenix I’ve tagged along on his crew’s Saturday night dinners – quite a treat for a lifelong NFL fan and a guy who recognizes that officials in all sports take way too much heat.

Anyway, Hayes was working his third Super Bowl in a 17-year NFL career, and he had about half a second to decide if Manningham had possession of the ball and both feet in bounds. Perfectly positioned, he got the call right, as the (literally) 10 replays on NBC confirmed. The 38-yard play helped set up the Giants game-winning drive, and as Chris Collinsworth noted on the TV broadcast, “for the next 50 years you’ll be watching highlights of that catch.”

I sometimes talk about NFL officials in my communication classes. Of the major sports leagues, the NFL does the best job of giving its officials clear, unambiguous and useful feedback. Every play of every game is critiqued, and all seven on-field officials get a written review from the league within two days of every game.

Business leaders can learn a lesson about providing such useful and consistent feedback. Like the guys wearing the stripes, employees want to know where they stand too. That always leads to some interesting class discussions about the best ways to offer criticism and start a dialogue about performance. I try to make a strong case that the NFL is on to something with the way it blends clarity, immediacy and consistency when communicating with officials.

Just hours after the game, Mike Pereira, the former Vice President of Officiating for the NFL and now Fox Sports’ officiating guru, wrote that his Super Bowl MVP was Laird Hayes. Now that was an easy call.

(Here’s a link to Pereira’s article: Greatest Call in Super Bowl History?  http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/super-bowl-xlvi-mario-manningham-laird-hayes-eli-manning-sideline-catch-referee-call-right-020512)

(Updated 1/31/12, see below in italics.)

Professional: I resolve to have multiple current clients contact me and ask for new content, or help in a new area. It’s a great feeling when someone you’ve helped with a communication need comes back and asks for help with other projects/issues. FYI, I’m working on new material in media training, interview preparation, business writing (particularly for non-native English speakers) and communication between and among Boomers, Gen-Xers and Millennials. (Still waiting!)

Academic: I resolve to have at least half my students – both in classroom and online settings – report positive and immediate results using the content we discuss in class. This is tougher than it sounds. What I mean is I want an executive MBA student – for example – to relate how something we covered in class last week helped them achieve positive results this week. To me, the test for all the content we cover is this: ‘is it useful now, and can a student readily apply it to their jobs or lives?’  (I’m proud to say that 75% of my current leadership communication class has reported tangible positive results!)

Personal: I resolve to enjoy Arizona more and get more involved in the community through volunteering and events unique to Arizona. (Yes! I continue to volunteer for Arizona Sun Sounds, Phoenix Rescue Mission and Pat’s Run; also serving as an HOA board member, proud season ticket holder for the Suns and Diamondbacks and an avid Cardinal fan.)

Personal – Fitness: I resolve to exercise at least 366 times in 2012. Had to update this one. I originally wanted to work out every day of the calendar year, but I got derailed early-on (January 18) after a third straight day of with annoying stomach issue. (Plus two, after making up for 1/18 and getting in two more workouts!)

Goal-setting is important. Leaders set goals and – very important – communicate their goals to others. And like I said, please hold me to these! — Taylor

Session on sustainable prosperity at the Thunderbird Global Business Dialogue - Nov. 10 and 11, 2011 in Glendale, AZ

Speakers included BP CEO Bob Dudley, former Intel CEO Craig Barrett and political pollster Mark Penn. I took pages of notes, but a couple of sessions – and comments – really stood out.

• Craig Barrett: “The world will always accept talent with open arms.” And, “A small deed done is better than a great deed planned.”
  
• T-Bird professor Kishore Dash introducing session on India, pointing out that India’s growth has been slow, market-driven, disorganized, and without much government help. He said the contrast to China’s rapid, government-supported growth may mean substantial advantages for India.
• Global sustainability is more and more a mindset and companies are getting better at finding a competitive advantage in doing the right thing.
• Mark Penn: “We can’t forecast the future until we understand the present.” Penn also pointed out that the strategists who figure out how to use disruptive technology (such as new social media) stand a better chance of winning.
  

  Parag Saxena (right) talks to conference participants at the Thunderbird Global Business Dialogue - Nov. 10 and 11, 2011 in Glendale, AZ

Nearly 1,200 people from 48 countries attended, including T-Birds from almost every class in the school’s 60-year history. Just in casual conversations, I met people from China, Dubai, Belgium, Germany, and India. Kudos to all at Thunderbird who helped stage the Dialogue, which was fitting of a school that’s ranked No. 1 in the world for international business.

Your team doesn’t trust you. Honestly. They don’t.

Trust is key to effective working relationships; yet, as you climb the corporate ladder, trust seems harder to earn and easier to lose.

What causes a team to not trust their leader? You. Yes, you. You’re unpredictable and your team doesn’t know what to expect from you. But, these are fixable problems.

Trust is about an ability to rely upon or expect a predictable outcome. When you act in ways your team doesn’t expect, it erodes trust and makes them wonder what you’re going to do next. The root of all your trust issues lies in not clearly setting expectations of your behavior in the first place. If you want to get a sense for how much your people trust you, you can take this Trusted Leader Assessment online – it only takes 3-5 minutes and you’ll get a comprehensive analysis of your results after taking it.

If you can clearly lay out how your people can expect you to behave in a variety of situations, they’ll have a basic expectation upon which to build a foundation of trust. These expectations, however, cannot simply be broad, buzzword-filled platitudes. They have to be personal and meaningful enough to you that they guide your behavior in a variety of situations. I refer to these guiding principles as “leadership maxims” which are rules of behavior or conduct. The collection of all your leadership maxims becomes your personal leadership philosophy.

Defining Your Leadership Philosophy
I encourage you as a leader to define your own set of leadership maxims. They can be as simple as one of mine which is “What would Nana say?” For reference, Nana was my grandmother. I can use that maxim in a variety of situations to guide my behavior. When faced with a set of difficult choices, I simply ask “what would Nana say?” and my choice becomes clear. To expound upon that, when I explain this maxim to my team, they’ll better understand how I make choices and they’ll see my behavior as consistent with this maxim. It is this consistency that forms the basis of trust.

You’ll need to define your maxims across a range of situations. You’ll need to think about four aspects of leadership:
- Leading yourself: what motivates you and what are your “rules of the road?”
- Leading the thinking: where are you taking the organization and what are your standards for performance?
- Leading your people: duh. This is the one we always focus on usually to the detriment of other aspects.
- Leading a balanced life: if you’re burned out, you’re worthless. How do you define and achieve balance?

How can they get to know the real you?
This isn’t about hanging out with your team and being best buddies over a beer. Helping them get to know you is about being transparent with your beliefs and standards. It’s about letting them know who you really are as a person. It boils down to having a clear leadership philosophy.

Before you run off and throw together a bunch of buzzwords and call it a philosophy, I encourage you to articulate your PERSONAL leadership philosophy in a simple, concise way. Once you’ve defined that philosophy (which needs to be uniquely yours) you’re in a position to share those beliefs with your team members.

Reducing Uncertainty
Once they know who you are and what your leadership philosophy is, you need to live it every day. Predictability is key. If you articulate a philosophy, they’ll be watching for indicators of whether you lead in a manner that is consistent with it or not. Even the slightest departure in your actions from what your philosophy indicates will give them pause. Consistency and predictability are crucial aspects of getting your team to focus less on “what’s the boss going to do today?” and more on the work they’re supposed to be doing.

To help them get comfortable that you’re being consistent, try pointing out instances when you’re taking action based on your philosophy. Help them see how your actions are in harmony with the things you already told them were important. When you do this, two things happen: first, they get more comfortable believing your philosophy isn’t just an empty set of platitudes and second they understand there is logic and reason behind your actions. Those two dynamics go a long way toward building trust between you and your associates.

The Bottom Line
The sooner you commit your leadership philosophy to paper, the better off you are. Be sure it is personal, authentic, and free of jargon or buzzwords. Share it with your team. Live it every day. Help them see you’re really not that complex or unpredictable. Morale, productivity, and trust will all increase as a result. Take the time to take the Trusted Leader Assessment to see where you stack up. The results can make a big difference in helping you build trust with the members of your team.

- Mike Figliuolo is the author of One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership. He’s the managing director of thoughtLEADERS, LLC – a leadership development firm. An Honor Graduate from West Point, he served in the U.S. Army as a combat arms officer. Before founding his own company, he was an assistant professor at Duke University, a consultant at McKinsey & Co., and an executive at Capital One and Scotts Miracle-Gro. He regularly writes about leadership on the thoughtLEADERS Blog.

Using social media as an active part of education is a growing trend, particularly in elementary and high school settings. Good idea? Sure, in the right doses, and as long as we continue to teach the value of true, personal communication.

For the kind of teaching I do (for MBAs, graduate students and executive education clients at Thunderbird School of Global Management and Grand Canyon Univ.) the emphasis is on the interpersonal skills that effective leaders must have. Can a Tweet, a text or an IM truly relate a genuine, sincere, earnest and heartfelt message? For the most important messages, nothing takes the place of face-to-face communication.

But still, leaders should embrace social media as a part of their communication strategy, perhaps viewing it as the “setup” for those important conversations, and/or part of the “drumbeat” that’s so critical to keeping key messages in front of your employees and team members.

The danger is leaning too much on any communication style that devalues true two-way communication, and that’s what can happen when social media goes crazy. Check out these pieces on social media in education and see what you think.

On the growing trend of using social media in the classroom: New York Times article from May 12, 2011 - Speaking Up in Class, Silently, Using Social Media

Writer David Rock thinks it’s an awful trend: Harvard Business Review blog from May 24, 2011 - The Conversation is Over. Long Live the Conversation.

How are you at communicating across cultures? Not just culture culture, but any kind of culture. Language, age, gender, professional, technical?

Check out my webinar on Wednesday, March 23 titled: Talking to Tech Idiots: Practical Strategies for Communicating in the Non-Technical World.

My friends at the University of Advancing Technology asked me to lead this discussion. Here’s the blurb they’re sending out:

Description of presentation:

When: Wednesday, March 23 11 a.m. Pacific (noon Mountain, 1 p.m. Central, 2 p.m. Eastern)

Register: Talking to Tech Idiots: Practical Strategies for Communicating in the Non-Technical World.

Taylor’s bio:

Taylor Carr is passionate about helping leaders and managers become great communicators. He teaches communication techniques and strategy to MBA and graduate students at Thunderbird School of Global Management and in the Ken Blanchard Executive MBA at Grand Canyon University.

Carr also helps private clients develop awesome presentation skills, prepare for  (and maximize) media opportunities, develop dynamic and effective messages and generally improve internal and external communication. Find his website at Taylor Carr Communications.

He’s the former director of the Ken Blanchard Executive MBA and was recently ranked in the top one percent of online faculty at Grand Canyon University.

What is possibly wrong with MediaCorp’s message? It’s the sales department’s job to sell air time. People DO watch more during a disaster. And this was a message sent to advertisers, not the public.

Following your logic, news organizations should avoid doing specials or extra programming to cover disasters, since those programs are sponsored. (Hey, I’ll agree some of those shows come off as money-grabs designed to capitalize on a disaster. But all MediaCorp was doing was alerting advertisers – not the public – to programming that would have high viewership.)

Here’s a link to the original piece.  PR Daily piece Let me know what you think? To me, it seems like some people just want to be offended.

Mike’s got an incredible resume. He’s a West Point grad, former faculty member at Duke, worked for McKinsey and Company and held other leadership roles. A few years ago he founded thoughtLEADERS which is doing cutting edge work in improving leadership, communication, strategy and operational skills.

One Piece of Paper promises to be a work that helps leaders focus on what really matters. I’ll include a brief preview below. And here’s the Facebook page for One Piece of Paper.

BTW…I hope to be doing some work with Mike in the near future. We both believe that effective leaders have excellent communication skills, and when we can align our schedules I think we’ll come up with some compelling new content. More on that here later; it’s a project I really need to get working on!

About One Piece of Paper:

Based on Mike’s popular “Leadership Maxims” training course, One Piece of Paper teaches leaders how to articulate their philosophy on a single piece of paper. By asking themselves a series of simple yet thought-provoking questions across four aspects of leadership, readers create a concise, powerful and deeply meaningful set personal leadership maxims. The result is a living document that serves as a behavioral touchstone for leaders and their teams.

Dear Jim:

Thanks for the note from Annette and the note on the KJZZ home page regarding NPR’s reaction to the Juan Williams situation. I know this isn’t a problem you created.  But I think the primary way NPR gets a message is through its affiliates.

My concern is that firing Williams in this way merely reinforces a false negative stereotype about NPR. I do see NPR’s point about not wanting its analysts to cross the line into editorial commentary. But Williams presence on FOX News gave NPR credibility with some conservatives. His measured and even-handed style was a near-perfect representation of NPR’s approach to discourse. Williams presence on FOX gave the opportunity for MORE communication about what NPR stands for. Believe me, I’m no fan of FOX News, but it’s a huge mistake to stop communicating with those we disagree with. And I see this move as not only eliminating a channel of communication, but giving credence to the idea that NPR is only interested in promoting a liberal agenda.

I know, I know, it’s much more nuanced than that, and NPR will try to stand on the principles of “true journalism” and its assertion that Williams can’t be an analyst for NPR and a commentator somewhere else. But for the vast majority of the millions of people who hear this story, what they’ll hear is that NPR is so bent on pushing a liberal agenda that it will fire one of its top analysts for merely stating how he FEELS – not what he thinks, but how he feels.

Thanks for listening and for passing this along if possible.

Sincerely,

Taylor Carr

I’ve been a fan of Juan Williams since I heard him speak in Little Rock about ten years ago. He was at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock, talking about his book, Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary. Since then I’ve listened to him on NPR as he’s provided what I’ve always thought was a measured and even-handed perspective on important issues.

In the last few years I was aware he was on FOX News too, which I thought provided an interesting, uh, juxtaposition of perceived views. And I think it’s critical to stress perceived views, because I always saw Williams as a guy who played things down the middle. It was like FOX was able to use an analyst from the left without having to air any left-leaning opinions – at least not from Juan Williams.

It’s probably worth noting that Williams’ role on FOX was that of analyst. His job wasn’t to editorialize on issues, though that distinction – between analysis and commentary – is lost on most people.

Anyway, Williams’ presence on FOX was actually a win for NPR, since it gave a conservative audience a chance to see one of the network’s most popular stars at work. Now I’m afraid that by firing Williams, NPR has reinforced a widely held – and largely inaccurate – stereotype.

Our instinct is always to get ahead of the story and “get something out there.” The great communication/PR lesson here is that immediate action isn’t always best.