Chairs and Directors Training Workshop: Leadership and Communication

1. Chairs and Directors Training Workshop: Leadership and Communication Todd Norton, Associate Professor, Murrow College of Communication

2. Recording date of this workshop is October 2, 2013. Some of the rules and procedures discussed in this workshop are subject to change. Please check university resources before relying exclusively on this recorded presentation.

3. Choose an image that best describes your idea of a “leader”

4. In groups of 3, discuss why this person fits your idea of a leader: • What values or convictions are associated with this idea(l)? • A leader is or should… • What actions do you expect from this leader • A leader does…

5. Leadership worldviews, values, norms • How did the insights about leadership differ for each member of your group? • Was it the case that the same qualities were interpreted by some as positive and others as negative? Why?

6. Leadership Communication Styles • Concern for people vs. production/task • What you say and how you say it Please suggest contexts when the following styles are effective and ineffective • Country club: emotionally supportive • Work assignments are “suggested” • Impoverished: effectively absent • workers can “Fend for themselves” b/c they “know jobs better than anyone” • Middle of the road: balances demands • Team leader: collaborates • Jointly formulate goals, schedules, responsibilities • Authority/obedience: Directs • good in a pinch, but criticizes and assigns blame

7. Convictions& Behaviors

8. Aspects of building an adaptive culture

9. Strong/Weak Cultures • Adaptive cultures are org’s whose employees build momentum to grow and change as needed to achieve its goals. • Org’s with commitment to employees, avoid lay-offs, long-term career paths (promotion), support employee training & development, and supportive work environment, ESOPs, innovative use of org structure to empower worker decision making. • Inert cultures are org’s whose values and norms fail to motivate or inspire employees, leading to stagnation over time (negative entropy). • Short-term employment according to org needs, minimal investment in employees, performance is not clearly tied to reward  social/task loafing.

10. Consistency is key!! Three Building Blocks of Organizational Culture – Andy Freire: • Behavior (how much time do we really spend incorporating the things we say are core to our organization?) • Symbols (how much time is spent on the things we say are core? How are funds allocated and how much do core activities really receive? What stories do we tell about ourselves?) • Processes (e.g., how much does contribution to what we claim are core activities impact raises?

11. Leadership in Adaptive Culture Organizations: • Defines a core mission through simple words (easy to understand and explain) • Aligns words with actions • Serves the customer (stakeholder) • Grows the business • Develops employees

12. Leadership in Inert Culture Organizations • Articulates a confusing and complex mission • Places member needs ahead of customer needs • Emphasizes personal gain over team achievement (example is Enron’s Rank & Yank team assessment)

13. Boeing Vision Statement • The Boeing Vision is: People working together as a global enterprise for aerospace leadership. How will we get there? • Run healthy core businesses • Leverage our strengths into new products and services • Open new frontiers • In order to realize our vision, we consider where we are today and where we would like to be tomorrow. There are certain business imperatives on which Boeing places a very strong emphasis. • Detailed customer knowledge and focus that understand, anticipate and respond to customer needs. • Large-scale systems integration that continually develops and advances technical excellence. • A lean enterprise characterized by efficiency, supplier management, short cycle times, high quality and low transaction costs.

14. 5 Steps to Create/Redefine Organizational Culture • Define 3-4 guiding principles or values that define who you are as an organization. • Use the principles to guide every business discussion and decision. • Words are meaningless unless they spur new behavior • Use guiding principles to guide discussions and decisions • Build the principles into all your people performance and management systems. • Make sure that your people and performance management systems measure reward behaviors consistent with guiding principles

15. 5 Steps to Create/Redefine Corp. Culture • Create a 2-3 day leadership development experience that reinforces the behavior and values consistent with the principles, and insist all senior leaders attend. • You need to constantly reinforce words with action • Create an experience based leadership development program that reinforces the values and behaviors consistent with guiding principles • Expect resistance, but stay the course with passion and patience. • Expect some cynicism at first

16. Organizational Mission Principles, values and convictions are the commitments driving your organization Mission is a clear, concise statement about why your organization exists. Vision is the overall picture of where we are headed, what is possible and what the future looks like Slogan = public messages to represent organizational mission to public Strategic Objectives are deliverable outcomes of your Mission

17. Communication & Leadership • Language is not merely about transmitting information. Sender  meaning  Receiver • Language is a about making sense of the situation / context. (Story of three umpires)

18. Framing Rules 1) Set the Context through framing. Leaders often cannot control the conditions of a situation. But they can control how those conditions are seen in part by framing the context. Example: Think about BPs CEO taking time off from the crisis to go sailing and then commenting that “no one wants their life back more than me.”

19. Framing Rules 2) Define the situation. Framing reality means defining the situation here and now in ways that others can connect to it.

20. Framing Rules 3) Consider the Ethics of choice and persuasion. Framing is, fundamentally, an act of persuasion through language and non-verbal communication.

21. Framing Rules 4) Interpret uncertainty for colleagues. It is the uncertainty and undecidability of situations here and now that provide opportunity for framing through communication.

22. Framing Rules 5) Design the response. Fundamentally leadership is understood and recognized in situ. Leaders must figure out what leadership is in the context they are facing and through framing convince themselves and others to do it.

23. Framing Rules 5) Design the response. Fundamentally leadership is understood and recognized in situ. Leaders must figure out what leadership is in the context they are facing and through framing convince themselves and others to do it.

24. Resources • Fairhurst’s “Art of Framing” is available in ebook through WSU Libraries with additional info on the website (http://www.leadershipframing.com/) • Andy Friere’s material is available at Stanford: http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=1856

25. This has been a WSU Training Videoconference If you wish to have your attendance documented in your training history, please notify Human Resource Services within three days of today's date: hrstraining@wsu.edu