Inspiring and Motivating Individuals-1-Becoming A Visionary

Inspiring and Motivating Individuals
Becoming a visionary
1 - Visionary Leadership
A. Reactions to Steve Jobs' Vision for Apple

So you just saw a two-minute clip,
the intro of Steve talking with his employees at Apple.
Remember, eight weeks back at the company, September 1997, and
his initial vision for where the company is today and where it could go.
What are your initial reactions?
What did you hear?
What did you feel as he was talking?
Some of the language that was very striking to me,
Play video starting at ::42 and follow transcript0:42
great product, great marketing, great distribution.
Those were the three things that he emphasized the company needs.
He talked about getting back to basics.
He used that language, back to basics, several times.
I'd be interested in learning more about what you heard him say,
Play video starting at :1:3 and follow transcript1:03
what you took away from just a very small segment of his interaction and
his presentation to the employees.
At this point, go to the discussion forum.
Go the section on Steve Jobs' vision at Apple
and share your point of view on what you heard, what you saw as effective,
what questions arose as you listened to Steve, again in a very short segment,
talking about where the company is today, defining the current reality, but
then also talking about where the company is going and what it needs to get there.
B. Welcome
Welcome to Becoming a Visionary Leader.

In this course, you're going to learn how to create and communicate a vision for
your team, a vision that creates a shared understanding of
where you're going in your team, a direction for your team.
To begin,
I want to share with you a short video of a voice that I expect you will recognize.
This is Seve Jobs back in 1997,
approximately eight weeks after rejoining Apple,
the firm he founded and ultimately has taken to the firm that we know today.
I want you to imagine you're in the crowd, an employee in Apple
listening to Jobs about where he sees the future of Apple going.
I want you to pay attention to the language he uses,
the words he chooses to use.
And I want you to put yourself in their position and
think about, is this a vision that I could get behind, and
try to understand why this is either an effective or
ineffective articulation of where Jobs sees the company going.
Let's look at this short video, and
then we'll talk about our thoughts and reflections on what we take
away from what he says to the Apple employees who were in the room that day.
Welcome to Becoming a Visionary Leader.
In this course, you're going to learn how to create and communicate a vision for
your team, a vision that creates a shared understanding of
where you're going in your team, a direction for your team.
To begin,
I want to share with you a short video of a voice that I expect you will recognize.
This is Seve Jobs back in 1997,
approximately eight weeks after rejoining Apple,
the firm he founded and ultimately has taken to the firm that we know today.
I want you to imagine you're in the crowd, an employee in Apple
listening to Jobs about where he sees the future of Apple going.
I want you to pay attention to the language he uses,
the words he chooses to use.
And I want you to put yourself in their position and
think about, is this a vision that I could get behind, and
try to understand why this is either an effective or
ineffective articulation of where Jobs sees the company going.
Let's look at this short video, and
then we'll talk about our thoughts and reflections on what we take
away from what he says to the Apple employees who were in the room that day.
C. The Business Case for Visionary Leadership

You've seen the jobs video, where he shares with his employees,
an initial vision for where the company is today and where it's going.
We'll come back to that interaction, that meeting with his employees.
But first I want to share with you some cutting edge research,
that we've been conducting over the last decade or so.
On the business case for why visionary leadership, why having leaders who
can create compelling visions that bring people together around a shared direction.
Why this visionary leadership is so important.
The data that you see here, is from one of the most comprehensive studies to date.
We published this study back in 2011.
We looked at over 900 studies,
beginning in the 1940's and 1950's.
Over 900 studies, that had examined the impact of leadership on team performance.
We found that the leader of a team, accounts for
31% of whether that team performs well or not.
Of the 31%, we looked at what are the most critical, most essential behaviors,
that leaders are engaging in, that enable teams to perform well.
And we found that the three behaviors you see here,
were three of the most important.
Note the first and most important, is to create and communicate a vision
that provides that team a sense of shared direction and meaning.
The behavior of creating and communicating a vision, accounted for over six percent.
That one behavior, accounted for
over six percent of the variation to whether teams perform well or not.
Other behaviors that are important, structuring the team, roles,
responsibilities, defining the intersections and
points of interdependence.
That's a behavior we will talk about, when we talk about how you design and
manage teams.
Another behavior is being able to show consideration for individual team members.
That's a behavior that we will talk about, when we discuss how you can motivate
individual team members, by understanding their needs and their values.
But coming back to the ability to create and communicate a vision.
Your ability to be able to define reality, and create and
communicate a vision that gives shared direction to your team,
is quite possibly the most important behavior you can engage in,
if we look across all of the studies published in history on team leadership.
Another study that we've looked at, the impact of visionary leadership,
not only on teams, but also how firms perform.
A good friend of mine,
Dave Waldman out at Arizona State, has conducted studies in large organizations.
Looking at the impact of visionary leaders,
on firm performance in terms of profitability, growth.
And what he's found, is that your ability as a leader to create and
communicate a vision, is most important in times of uncertainty.
When the market around you is extremely dynamic and
changing very rapidly, very fast, what he's found is,
that visionary leadership is most important in those times of change.
Much like the organizations that you work in today, or
that you will work in in the future.
Here's a study by another set of colleagues of mine, Baum and Locke.
Published back in 2004, where they looked at over 200 CEO entrepreneurs.
And the impact of visions for
growth on firm performance, in small startup high growth organizations.
So the ultimate outcome they were interested in,
was how fast do these firms grow?
They controlled for how fast the firm was growing prior to the study,
how old the firm was, how big it was, where it was in terms of region.
These firms were all in North America, but they were in different regions.
So they controlled for region.
They controlled for things like access to financial capital from VCs, or
other investors.
And then they controlled for
how passionate the CEO was about the firm, how engaged that CEO was.
All within idea of trying to understand the impact of the vision articulated and
communicated by that CEO entrepreneur, and the impact that it had on the firm.
And here's what they found.
The ability to communicate a clear vision,
from the CEO to the organization, did a number of things in that organization.
Most importantly, was it enabled
stretch goals to be created and cascaded down through the organization.
The vision was the definition of where are we today and where are we going.
And then that enabled managers in the organization to create very specific, but
stretch goals, for their employees and their teams within the organization.
Those stretch goals, actually increased the confidence level
of the employees within the organization.
That confidence was a big predictor of how fast the firms
ultimately were able to grow.
The numbers you see here on the screen on the slide, those are the effect sizes
of each component of the model on the next.
So the ability to communicate a vision had a significant positive impact,
on the presence of stretch goals in the organization.
Which then had a significant positive impact,
on how confident the employees were, which then ultimately had a significant and
positive impact on the rate of growth for each of these firms.
But the real question here, and this is the question that I have been exploring
now for the last several years, is what are those successful CEOs,
those successful entrepreneurs doing when they communicate a vision
that ultimately spawns confidence and motivation among the employee.
These CEOs, the entrepreneurs that are successful,
what do their visions look like?
The CEOs that are less successful, what do their visions look like, and
what can we learn by comparing those?
And that's the model that I'm gonna share with you in this course.
It's beginning to unpack, what is an effective vision.
What are the components?
And I'm gonna give you a framework for understanding.
What is the content of an effective vision?
Ultimately, what is the vision?
And then second, is how do you communicate it?
So first, what is the vision, the content of that vision?
And then second, how do you communicate that vision,
in a way that compels people to want to be part of your team and your organization.
How a Clear Vision Creates Energy

I will say that Menlo is, it's some part for me a personally selfish journey.
I wanted to create a place first and
foremost that I wanted to come to every day.
And so a lot of what you see at Menlo today, the big wide open room,
the flexible workspace,
the people working in pairs all day long, the noise and the energy,
the space, the focus on keeping human energy up as high as we can possibly go on
a consistent and regular basis throughout the day, first and foremost, energizes me.
And I find that when people see an energized leader, especially one who can
clearly communicate a vision for where we are heading as a company, it becomes
an infectious kind of enthusiasm that permeates the entire organization.
Now, you have to communicate that vision, you have to let people know
where are we headed, why are we going in this direction, what's its purpose?
And by me as a leader, continually communicating that
message to our team and reinforcing it, not just through words, but
through every practice inside the company, everything we do that
speaks both verbally and physically to what we're trying to accomplish.
And what's neat for me is when visitors come in to see us,
and we'll have over 4000 people this year alone just walk in our doors to come and
see what it is we've created.
I will often walk in the door with them to Menlo, and I can hear it on their lips.
They open the door, and they say wow,
because they can feel the palpable energy in the room.
And quite frankly, I get that feeling every day I walk in the door, and
I think everybody who walks in to work at Menlo gets that same feeling.
1—2-A Model for Creating and Communicating Your Vision
A. Why Do We Do What We Do?

To be clear, before we move forward, what I need to explain is,
what are we not talking about when I use the word vision.
Oftentimes when I talk about creating and communicating a vision,
people think about the words that are written up on the walls in
the foyer of organizations, that this is our mission statement, this is our vision.
And those are needed.
They're necessary.
But that's not exactly what I'm talking about today.
When I talk about a vision,
what I'm talking about is what you actually say to your employees.
When you're with them every day, what are you communicating about the current
reality that we're in and ultimately where we're going?
So, remember, what we're not talking about here is the fancy words,
the marketing speak that shows up on the walls in your organization.
You need that.
That's important.
It reinforces the vision that you're communicating on a daily basis.
But what we're really talking about here is what are you communicating every day
through your words and your actions.
So just keep that in mind as we go forward,
about what we're not talking about and what we are throughout.
The model that I'm going to share with you for creating and communicating your vision
articulates not only what you say but how you say it.
Some people like to talk about it as substance verses style.
There's an old adage that says it's not important or
it's not about what you say, it's all about the style.
It's all about how you say it.
And to be very truthful and honest, that's nonsense.
Both are critically important.
What you say is important as well as how you say it.
I can be fancy.
I can be able to stand up and give a very compelling talk in the short term.
But if the substance of what I'm saying is not there, ultimately, long term, people
stop believing in that vision that you're trying to communicate or articulate.
So, remember, it's what you say and how you say it.
As part of our discussion here,
we're going to break down both of these components.
I'm going to start with what you say, and then we'll transition to how you say it,
both verbal and non-verbal body language,
as you think about communicating your vision to your team.
In terms of what you say, I've been studying now for
the last several years CEOs, entrepreneurs, small business owners,
educators, in terms of what are they saying to
capture people's attention to motivate and engage them in a compelling vision.
And what I've learned is,
in all of these visions that work, that really motivate and engage employees,
each of these visions answers three fundamental questions.
And so I'm going to walk you through each of these questions and
give you an opportunity to think about the impact of that
question on the team that you're either part of or possibly managing.
The first question is really getting at the core purpose of why your team exists.
The question is why do we do what we do.
Why do we exist?
Again, really that core purpose question.
Let me share with you a few examples.
The first one that I'm going to share with you,
I want you to think about what company is this.
If you just read the words without knowing anything else, can you guess the company?
So here's the first one.
To be the Earth's most customer-centric company for four primary customer
sets: consumers, sellers, enterprises, and content creators.
Now, I took these words directly from the CEO of this company.
So let me pause.
Can you guess what company this is?
You have it?
Maybe even write it down.
Here's the company, Amazon.com.
Now, interestingly, if you go back prior to Amazon
getting into the digital media business, movies, streaming content, etc.,
interestingly, the core purpose, the statement around why do we do what we do,
and who are we at the core was we want to be the place
online where people from around the world can come to buy anything they want.
The question I ask you is, which of those is clearer and
which of those is most compelling to you as a statement of why do we do what
we do and who are we at the core.
Let me share with you another example.
To refresh the world, to inspire moments of optimism and
happiness, to create value and make a difference.
Three statements, all part of a vision,
all part of the question, why do we do what we do.
Going back, to refresh the world, to inspire moments of optimism and
happiness, to create value and make a difference.
Three statements, all part of this company's communication
of why do we do what we do, part of their vision, again, to refresh the world to
inspire moments of optimism and happiness, to create value and make a difference.
Again, let me pause.
Can you guess, maybe write down, who you think this company is?
Do you have it?
Okay. Here we go.
This is Coca-Cola.
To refresh the world, to inspire moments of optimism and happiness,
to create value and make a difference.
I wonder if from this statement if you were able to identify that this is
Coca-Cola or could that be any beverage company, for example.
So you can see in both of these statements of why do we do what we do,
there's some ambiguity here.
And the question that I want you to think very carefully about,
is are they specific enough to guide employees,
around our core purpose, why do we do ultimately what we do.
Let me give you a couple of other examples from history.
This is a statement that I took from historical documents of the company
back in around 1950.
The statement was to change the worldwide poor quality image of Japanese products.
Now, the irony is today we think of Japanese products as being of the utmost,
the highest quality, but in 1950 that was not the case.
Any guesses on who this company is?
Now, remember, this is a for-profit company.
A for-profit company with, as part of its mission,
as part of its purpose ultimately to change the image of Japanese products,
not just their products, but the entire country's set of products,
to change the worldwide poor quality image of Japanese products.
I'll pause.
Take a minute.
Take a guess.
Any ideas on who this company is?
That company is Sony.
If we think about where Japan is in the global landscape of business today,
I would say Sony was pretty successful in changing the worldwide poor
quality image of Japanese products, certainly not alone, but
certainly a key player in that purpose.
Let me share with you one more.
To democratize the automobile.
Now, we have to go really far back here.
This is 1900, at a time
when the automobile was only for the elite, it was a luxury good.
Clearly today that is not the case for most people around the world.
Which company is this?
But, again, remember, this is a for-profit company who has part of its purposes,
part of its mission, articulated its answer to the question why do we do
what we do, and part of that answer was to democratize the automobile.
That company was ultimately Ford.
And so what I'd like you to do now is take a few minutes on your own,
stop the lesson, maybe take five or ten minutes and
reflect on your team, on the people that you manage.
Maybe it's a team at work.
Maybe it's a team in your community, in your social life, a sport team,
or in your social life even, but a team that you're part of.
And I want you to spend five or ten minutes and see if,
in a paragraph, you can clearly articulate the answer to the question,
why do we exist, why do we do what we do as a team.
Take a few minutes and do that exercise.
B. How Starting with WHY is Essential

I was really drawn to the message of Simon Sinek in his book Start With Why.
And the message that resonated with me from that book
is that people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it.
And I had to stop, and
think about why is it that we do things the way we do them?
What do we believe?
What is our fundamental belief?
And quite frankly, the deeper I got into that, for me,
what I realized was, we can sum up Menlo in a single word, and that word is joy.
The business value of joy.
And what we want to do more than anything else is delight the people we serve.
We're a software design and development firm, we do contract work for others.
What we want to do is create software that goes out into the world and
people love that software when they touch it.
Now having that fundamental purpose behind what we do to create
joy in the world with the work of our hearts, our hands, and our minds.
Now we can begin articulating that purpose first to our team.
As a visionary leader of the company I need to communicate what is our purpose,
our mission is to end human suffering in the world as it relates to technology.
We take that mission very seriously.
We can say that kind of thing tongue and cheek and people will chuckle about it but
everybody knows they've been tortured by technology at some point in their life,
and we didn't want to create that kind of pain in the world.
What we wanted to do was create just the opposite.
And so by communicating that first and foremost to the team, my heart and
vision to this team is to what our purpose is, why are we here, and
the fact that the goal, the purpose of is externally focused.
They were talking about who are we serving in the world and
what do we want to do for them, can really energize a team.
I fundamentally believe people are wired to work on something that's
bigger than themselves, and we get a chance to do that.
The work we do is hard.
We can't possibly be happy every minute of everyday with what we're doing.
But with that long arch of joy as our goal, we can keep a team
energized around a fundamental purpose of what we're trying to do as a company.
C. What Does Success Look Like?
So we've talked about the first question, why do we do what we do, the core purpose.
The second question that we've discovered as part of these visions that really
compel people and create a shared sense of direction, the second question that you
have to be able to answer for your team is, what does success look like.
Some organizations that I've worked with call this their definition of victory or
their definition of success.
I'm going to share with you a couple of examples.
And just like the former question, then I'm going to ask you to, for your team,
think about what does success look like and how clearly is that defined today.
So here's an example of a core purpose statement.
This organization answered the first question,
why do we do what we do as follows.
To prevent and alleviate human suffering in the face of emergencies
by mobilizing the power of volunteers and the generosity of donors.
And guesses as to what organization this is?
This is ultimately, still to this day, the American Red Cross,
who operates globally when there are events that cause human suffering.
And their purpose is to prevent and alleviate
that human suffering by mobilizing their resources, both people and money.
But what's really interesting about the American Red Cross as a global
organization is how they've defined success for
the organization, for the teams within that organization, and
ultimately the employees that choose to be part of this organization,
as well as all the partners that work with the American Red Cross.
This is how the American Red Cross has answered the question,
what does success look like.
I want you to think about the organizations that you either work in
today or that you worked in before.
Were those organizations as crystal clear as the American Red Cross about defining
what success ultimately looked like?
The American Red Cross, through its strong network of volunteers, donors,
partners, is always there in a time of need.
We aspire to turn compassion into action so that.
And this is the really important piece of what the American Red Cross is doing here,
is they're defining for all of their various stakeholders, their, quote,
unquote, customers, what success looks like.
So for all people affected by disaster across the country,
around the world, that they receive care, shelter, and hope.
Our communities are ready and prepared for disasters.
Everyone in our country has access to safe, livesaving blood and blood products.
All members of our armed services and their families find support and
comfort whenever needed.
And, finally, in a time of emergency, there are always
trained individuals nearby, ready to use their Red Cross skills to save lives.
I want you to think about what you see here.
How is the American Red Cross defining its vision
of what success ultimately looks like?
One key point is they're defining each of their stakeholders,
whether it's the people affected by disaster,
whether it's the communities they work in, their home country,
members of the armed services, again people affected by emergency or the people
who need to go to these emergencies to help the folks who are in a time of need.
It identifies all the various stakeholders, but then it goes one step
further, which is to say, if we are successful as the American Red Cross,
then what is true for each of those stakeholders.
So for the people affected by disaster, they receive care, shelter, and hope.
For the communities that we work in, they are ready and prepared.
For people, everyone in our country, they have access to blood and blood products.
So they're defining what this vision of success ultimately looks like.
In historical military terms, commanders often called this the commander's intent.
They knew that when soldiers got onto the battlefield, lots would change.
Everything they had planned for,
there would always be something that was uncertain.
And so they talked about a commander's intent as being the vision for
ultimately what success looked like, so that when the soldiers went to battle,
they ultimately could figure it out in times of changing markets or changing
resources or changing environment, but they still had a vision for
what success looked like at the end of the day and they could adapt accordingly.
And that's why it's so critical, so important that you answer this second
question about what does success ultimately look like.
I would encourage you to go around to all of your team members,
even if you're not the formal leader of that team, and
ask them, do you have a clear understanding of what success looks like,
if we're successful, what does our world look like, for our customers, for
our employees, for any other stakeholders that you might have, and
see if you can get clear answers to that question.
And if you cannot, that presents an opportunity for you to then go engage with
those team members and work together to define what success looks like.
Let me give you another example.
We've done the American Red Cross.
Now let's go to a for-profit example.
This is again back to 1950.
We've talked about this company, so now you'll know it.
This is again from a historical document.
With the company articulating if we're successful as a company,
here is what the world will look like.
Here is what they said.
We will experience the sheer joy of innovation.
Let me stop there.
How many of you have ever worked in a team, a company,
an organization where that company was about the sheer joy of anything?
In this company, ultimately Sony, their first statement about
if we're successful was, we will experience the sheer joy of innovation.
And to continue, the application of technology for
the benefit and pleasure of the general public.
We will create products that become pervasive around the world.
We will be the first Japanese company to go into the U.S.
market and distribute directly.
We will succeed with innovations that U.S.
companies have failed at, such as the transistor radio.
Remember this is 1950.
If you do not know what a transistor radio is,
you should go search on the Internet to find out.
Fifty years from now, our
brand name will be as well known as any in the world and will signify innovation and
quality that rival the most innovative companies anywhere.
Important, Made in Japan will mean something fine, not something shoddy.
Again, if we think about this vision of what success looks like,
I would say Sony was pretty successful in their pursuit of
that vision of success, and their answer to the second question,
which is if we're successful, what will the world look like.
What's our definition of success?
D. How Must We Act to Ensure Success?

Okay, we've done the first two questions.
First question, why do we do what we do?
Getting at that core purpose.
Second question, what does success look like?
Really defining that vision for
success, that if we are successful as a team, here's what we will create for
our customers, stakeholders, employees and otherwise.
Now time for the third question.
This is potentially one of the most important questions that you have to to
answer as a leader in your team, which is, how must we act to ensure success?
This question is ultimately getting at the values that will guide the choices and
behaviors for yourself, but even more importantly, your team members.
One of your responsibilities as a leader, because you're not gonna always be there
in the room when people are behaving, making decisions, and acting.
You need to be able to provide what I call guideposts,
the values that are going to guide decisions and guide actions.
And ultimately these values have to be embedded
in the vision that you are creating and communicating for your team.
So let's again look at a few examples.
This time I'm gonna show you some examples that maybe don't necessarily
always have the intended impact that we might aspire, or want.
Here's the first.
This is a good example of what you might see, when you walk into an organization,
up on the wall.
These words of values, in this case they are respect,
integrity, communication, excellence.
With the quote that says we treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves,
the golden and rule if you will.
But what's interesting in this organization in the 90s the 1990s was
a client of mine this organization had to add something to its value
statement that was shared internally and ultimately the language they added
was as follows we do not tolerate abusive or disrespectful treatment.
Ruthlessness, callousness and arrogance do not belong here in this organization.
Now, to be perfectly honest if you have to add that language formally
to the value statements that you are communicating internally to your company.
You can only imagine the actual culture and
behavior that exists within the teams in that organization.
Ultimately that organization was one that we now know as Enron,
that no longer exists and the history is well documented.
So let's look at other examples where they have defined the values.
How must we act to ensure success so
that we are able to achieve that vision that we aspire to?
Let's look at an example, Johnson & Johnson.
If you've ever been to a Johnson & Johnson office location,
and this is true for many of their locations around the world.
You will see something whether it be in the foyer.
You'll see it throughout the organization, at people's desks,
whether it be on a mouse pad, or an image somewhere around the office.
A statement that Johnson & Johnson calls our credo.
This credo is ultimately a statement of its values.
A statement of not only if we're successful here's what our world looks
like but it clearly communicates a set of values that guide choices and behavior.
So here's the credo that is shared with every Johnson & Johnson employee and
is reinforced in many different ways throughout the organization.
And I'm not going to go into depth or
detail and read all of the different sentences and paragraphs in the credo.
This is the credo in it's entirety so you can read it on your own.
But I wanna make one important point.
I want you to look at the first paragraph.
The first statement.
We believe our first responsibility, now I have bolded and
underlined first because I think that's a really important word in this credo.
We believe our first responsibility is to the doctors, nurses, and patients,
to mothers and fathers, and all others who use our products and services.
Ultimately, Johnson & Johnson is articulating here,
is their first priority, their first responsibility is to the customers,
the people who actually use their products.
Then skip to the second paragraph.
We are responsible to our employees.
Everyone must be considered as an individual.
So the second paragraph is articulating that employees come next.
Our customer becomes first, second paragraph our employees.
Now jump to the third paragraph.
We're responsible to the communities in which we live and
work and to the world community.
So Johnson & Johnson as a global organization
is making a commitment to the communities in which they work and live.
So again, customer comes first, employees come second, communities come third.
Then look at the fourth paragraph, and again I bolded and underlined one word
in the first sentence our final responsibility is to our stockholders.
Business must make a sound profit.
We must experiment with new ideas and so on.
But think of the importance,
the statement that's being made here by Johnson & Johnson.
And again, go look at their stock performance over the course of history.
It's one of the most successful organizations in the world in terms of
financials, profit, and ultimately shareholder value.
But what they're stating here is that our customer comes first,
our employees come second our communities come third.
And ultimately our stockholders,
our shareholders, are our final responsibility.
So what's the importance of this value hierarchy, or this value prioritization?
Well, there will come times when you as leaders, and
your teams, and your employees have to make choices.
Because you can't always satisfy the needs of everybody.
You can't always satisfy the needs of your customers, your employees,
your communities, and your stock holders.
There will come a time and
there will come a day when you have to make really tough choices.
And engage in behavior that satisfies one stakeholder,
potentially a customer, over the benefit of one of the other stakeholders,
whether it be an employee, a stockholder, or otherwise.
So Johnson & Johnson has had this credo for decades.
Why is that important?
It's going to guide, again, decisions, actions, behavior.
They've had this credo for decades, and
in 1982 they were the prime target of an attack.
And this attack put a lot of pressure on Johnson & Johnson.
About what it was going to do and really put this credo to test.
So let's look at that example, so
what happened was an individual who has actually never been found,
walked into a pharmacy, stole or shop lifted bottles of Tylenol.
Laced those bottles opened them up and
laced them with a poison called cyanide which is lethal or fatal.
And then this person put this bottles of Tylenol back on
the pharmacy shelf to be sold.
Unsuspecting innocent people came bought those bottles of Tylenol,
got a headache got sick, took the medicine and ultimately passed away.
Seven people in total had died.
You can imagine the crisis that now Jonson & Jonson is faced with.
But if you go back to the credo, the question becomes, what do you do?
As a leader within Tylenol, what do you do?
So you have to remember, the first priority is to the customer,
the people who use the products.
So let me pause.
If you were a leader within Tylenol, what would you choose to do?
Ultimately, what the leadership of Johnson & Johnson did is they
pulled every single bottle of Tylenol off the shelf.
They recalled every single bottle.
Was it free?
No, it cost the north of one hundred million U.S. dollars.
But that's a stockholder concern.
Their first priority was to the people who use the product,
thus resulting to recall the product or pull the product of the shelf.
The financial implication, the stock price dropped over 17% in one week.
Earnings estimates dropped 35% immediately.
Wall Street certainly was penalizing the company.
Their market share in the category dropped from 37% to 4% in as little as one week.
Again, the financial implications were enormous.
And for a company, a public company, that is responsible to its shareholders,
this was a pretty risky move some might say.
But if you have the credo if you have a very clear understanding of
how do we have to act?
What are the values that we have to act on in order for our company to be successful?
And in the case of Johnson & Johnson and not to say that their credo is right for
every organization.
But in there case, they had articulated for
themselves their values and their priorities that were gonna guide choices.
And these were the choices they were making.
Now remember, the second priority in that credo
is to the employees of Johnson & Johnson.
If you take that big of a financial hit due to this crisis many companies
would respond by laying off employees who come from that organization.
Johnson & Johnson saw it as their responsibility
to keep all of those title and all employees.
So they redeployed them to other product lines and so on,
until they figured out what actually happened.
Ultimately once Tylenol, the business was back up and running,
they deployed those employees back to the Tylenol business.
They ultimately, relaunched Tylenol.
With what we now know today as that tamper-proof packaging,
the seal that is at the top of any pill bottle.
So ultimately, this crisis turned into an innovation, that we now all benefit from.
Interestingly, they continued with their first priority being the customer,
which is providing the customer a coupon for
essentially free Tylenol, or free Johnson & Johnson products.
And they did all of that within a 10 week period.
But again, without this credo what choices would they make?
It could go many different directions.
In this case, they had very clear guidelines about in this time of crisis
how are we gonna act in order to be successful?
And that in many ways is attributed back to that clear statement of
values in the credo.
Let me share with you one more example and then I'll have you reflect on your values
your teams values and how those serve as a guideline for choices and behavior.
Here's a statement from a company that we all know today.
We believe that we're on the face of the Earth to make great products and
that's not changing.
We are constantly focusing on innovating.
We believe in the simple not the complex.
But now pay attention to the next words.
We believe that we need to own and
control the primary technologies behind the products that we make, and
participate only in markets where we can make a significant contribution.
That is a value statement.
That is a statement about how we must act.
We must make tough choices in order to be successful.
One tough choice is we're gonna own and
control the technologies behind our products.
Another tough choice is we're only going to engage in markets where we know
that we can make a significant contribution.
But again, this provides a set of guidelines,
guide post for making tough choices.
We believe in saying no to thousands of projects so
that we can really focus on the few that are truly important.
As my friend Adam Grant once said to me, you have to say no to many things,
so you can say yes to the things that really matter in life.
And this organization is embracing that value.
As part of its company's vision.
Ultimately, this company is one that we've talked about already in
this course, Apple.
And in this case, this is Tim Cook's
articulation of the values that are embedded in this company.
So we have our three questions.
Why do we do what we do?
What does success look like?
And how must we act, to ensure success?
I'd like to pause now and have you reflect on this third question.
Have you clearly articulated for your team the values that are gonna shape and
guide the choices that people make and the behaviors that they engage in.
Take a few minutes on your own and write down what you see as the values and
have you clearly articulated those.
E. Does Jobs Answer the Three Questions?
So you have the three questions.

Again why do we do what we do?
What does success look like?
And how must we act to ensure success?
You've thought about those three questions with respect to your team and
whether you've answered those questions sufficiently or whether if you're a member
of that team, if you're clear on the answers to those questions.
What I'd like to do now is revisit a video that we started with.
This is Steve Jobs, again, remember, September 1997,
approximately eight weeks after he rejoined the firm.
We heard approximately the first two minutes.
Of his conversation that he was having with Apple employees, about where he saw
the firm being today, in 1997, and ultimately where he saw the firm going.
I'm gonna share with you the next segment of that video.
And I want you to take these three questions and
pay very close attention to what Steve communicates to his employees.
And I want you to see if you can pick up his answers to each of these three
questions.
So you just heard approximately seven more minutes of Steve talking
with his employees, back in 1997 when he had rejoined Apple.
What'd you think?
Did you hear him answer each of the three questions?
Was it effective?
Why or why not?
I would encourage you at this moment to go to the discussion forum, again around
Steve Jobs and his vision for Apple, and converse with your fellow students,
and hear what they say about his answers to those three questions.
And offer your own perspective.
Again, putting yourself in the position of an Apple employee.
If you're sitting in the crowd that day, are you clear
about how Steve thinks about answering each of these three questions?
And ultimately how could you apply those same three questions to your teams,
whether it be at work, home, in your social life,
wherever it may be most relevant to you?
1-3-A Checklist for Creating and Communicating Your Vision
A. Part 1: Visionary Language

Now when you sit down to create your vision,
it's one thing to be able to answer the three questions that we've talked about.
But you also have to think very carefully about the language that you're going to
use to communicate that vision.
Over the past decade or so, we've been doing a lot of research around
the language that leaders use to communicate visions to their employees,
to people, in ways that will compel those individuals to want to be part of
the organization, to want to be part of this team.
And what I am going to share with you right now is a simple framework,
a simple checklist,
around the language that you can use to communicate a really compelling vision.
The first in this checklist is to refer to a set of fundamental values.
Again, your answer to our third question,
How must we act in order to be successful?, really gets at these values.
You want to refer to those values when you're
communicating your vision to your team.
Refer to them, not necessarily explicitly,
by calling out the value of x, the value of y, the value of z.
You can do that.
But even more effective is to use stories, anecdotes, metaphors or
analogies as communication vehicles to transfer the meaning of those values.
It's one thing to say that we value integrity.
It's another thing to tell a story about an employee who did, quote unquote,
the right thing when nobody was watching, if you will, the definition of integrity.
So think very clearly and carefully about what values do I wanna communicate, and
then what stories would best resonate with my employees.
And what stories would resonate with my employees may be completely different than
the stories that resonate with yours.
What anecdotes, what metaphors, what analogies.
You have to think very carefully about what's going to resonate with my audience.
You also want to use rhetorical questions, much like I'm doing with you here,
where I ask you questions that don't necessarily have an answer to them, but
that provoke thought.
And that's the rhetorical question.
You also wanna think carefully about using three-part lists.
If you pay attention to presidential candidates, for example,
in the United United States during election season who are going around and
sharing with American citizens their vision for the country.
If you pay careful attention to many of them, not all, but many of them,
you'll pick up on a theme or a trend, and that is they start their speech with,
Here are the three things I'm going to tell you.
Then they will go through and tell you those three things at length.
Then when they conclude they will remind you of that three-part list.
It's a very effective technique for
enabling people to remember the message that you're trying to communicate.
So again, rhetorical questions combined with a three-part list,
very effective communication vehicle for articulating your vision for
your team to the people in that team, your employees.
You also want to outwardly express moral conviction.
And what I mean by moral conviction here is, why does it matter?
Here you want to go back to your answer to the first question,
Why do we do ultimately what we do as a team?
In some of our latest research,
we've found that referring to the beneficiaries of your work.
Again, why do we do what we do?
Who are we benefiting through our work?
Referring to those beneficiaries is hugely impactful.
A colleague of mine and friend, Adam Grant at Wharton Business School,
has been doing a lot of research on the motivational
benefits of referring to these beneficiaries of your work.
And we will share with you some of that research when we talk about motivation and
what people value.
But that work comes back to this notion of expressing moral conviction about
why we do what we do and why does it matter.
The more you can clearly communicate to your audience that moral conviction,
why we do what we do and why it's so important, the more they will embrace and
get behind that vision that you're trying to communicate.
You also want to pay very careful attention to the language you're using
if you are the so-called leader.
Whether your title is CEO or manager or
otherwise, be very careful not to use words like I.
I want this, or I see our vision as being whatever you ultimately see it as being.
Instead of I language or me language,
what you want to do is use what we call inclusive language.
We, our, our team, we as a collective are going to accomplish and be successful.
The more you can use inclusive language, the more your audience will feel
part of the vision that you ultimately are trying to create.
They'll buy into it, they'll get behind it,
even if their ideas aren't the ones that are ultimately supported.
If you go back to Steve Jobs in the 1997 video,
he explicitly states it's not as if all of your ideas are gonna be supported.
But what he does is uses inclusive language to get them on board
with the vision such that even if their idea is not the one that's accepted,
ultimately they understand why and they're part of something bigger than themselves.
This inclusive, collective language.
And then finally is you want to repeat.
You want to repeat your message multiple times.
Any time you have an opportunity to communicate to your team,
this is an opportunity to reinforce the vision that you have.
And when you're communicating, make sure that you're repeating the key message.
So again, if we go back to the Steve Jobs video, you'll remember
language that he repeated multiple times, getting back to the basics.
I was not in that room that day, but
I expect the people who walked out of that room who were there and when they left,
statements or phrases like getting back to basics were the ones they remembered.
Part of the reason they remember that is because of the repetition.
So now you have a checklist.
So as you sit down to create the vision and
think about how you wanna communicate that, use this checklist as a tool,
a framework for creating the language that you ultimately want to use.
And what I'm gonna do now is share with you a short video clip from a film.
The main lead character in this film,
Robin Williams, one of the great comedians of our time, if you will.
The film is Dead Poets Society.
A little context on the film.
Robin Williams is a new teacher.
He's a English poetry, literature teacher in an all-boys,
very conservative private school.
In this school, the boys are taught from a very early age, from the headmaster,
their parents and so on, that career pursuits that are worth their
attention and their talents include medicine, law, business.
Poetry is probably the furthest thing from their minds.
Yet he is a new teacher in this school responsible for engaging
these students in a shared collective activity, which is to learn about poetry.
Remember, he's new, they all know each other, and the video clip
that I'm going to share with you is his second interaction with the class.
In the first interaction he has with the class, he takes them out into the hallway,
shares with them the trophies that
prior students at the school have won and all of the accolades.
And he talks about the opportunity that they have before them to really
seize the day.
The famous quote, carpe diem from the movie, seize the day, and
really the opportunity for these students to do something special in their lives.
But it's really in the second interaction that he begins to
communicate his vision for these students.
And what I'd like you to do is watch the video clip for
a few minutes, and I want you to have the checklist beside you.
And I want you to pay attention to how he uses the room, uses language.
And see if you can take a count of the devices from that checklist that
Robin Williams uses to communicate his vision to this team or
this class of boys at this all private, extremely conservative,
school where poetry is not exactly at the top of their priority list.
>> Gentlemen, open your texts to page 21 of the introduction.
Mr. Perry,
will you read the opening paragraph with the preface entitled Understanding Poetry?
>> Understanding Poetry by Dr. J Evans Pritchard, Ph.D.
To fully understand poetry, we must first be fluent with its meter,
rhyme and figures of speech.
Then ask two questions.
One, how artfully has the objective of the poem been rendered?
And two, how important is that objective?
Question one rates the poem's perfection.
Question two rates its importance.
And once these questions have been answered,
determining the poem's greatness becomes a relatively simple matter.
If the poem's score for perfection is plotted on the horizontal of a graph and
its importance is plotted on the vertical,
then calculating the total area of the poem yields the measure of its greatness.
A sonnet by Byron might score high on the vertical but
only average on the horizontal.
A Shakespearean sonnet, on the other hand,
would score high both horizontally and vertically,
yielding a massive total area, thereby revealing the poem to be truly great.
As you proceed through the poetry in this book, practice this rating method.
As your ability to evaluate poems in this manner grows, so
will your enjoyment and understanding of poetry.
>> Excrement.
That's what I think of Mr. J Evans Pritchard.
We're not laying pipe.
We're talking about poetry.
How can you describe poetry like American Bandstand?
Well, I like Byron, I give him a 42, but I can't dance to it.
>> [LAUGH] >> Now I want you to rip out that page.
Go on, rip out the entire page.
You heard me, rip it out.
Rip it out!
Go on, rip it out.
[SOUND] >> Oh.
>> Thank you, Mr. Dalton.
Gentlemen, tell you what.
Don't just tear out that page.
Tear out the entire introduction.
I want it gone, history, leave nothing of it.
Rip it out, rip!
[SOUND] Be gone, J Evans Pritchard, Ph.D.
Rip, shred, tear, rip it out!
I want to hear nothing but ripping of Mr. Pritchard.
We'll perforate it, put it on a roll.
It's not the Bible, you're not gonna go to hell for this.
>> [LAUGH] >> Go on, make a clean tear.
I want nothing left of it.
>> We shouldn't be doing this.
>> Rip it.
>> Rip it out, rip!
[NOISE]
[CROSSTALK]
>> Rip it out.
>> What the hell is going on here?
>> I don't hear enough rip.
>> Mr. Keating.
>> Mr. McAllister.
>> I'm sorry, I didn't know you were here.
>> I am.
>> So you are.
Excuse me.
>> Keep ripping, gentlemen!
This is a battle, a war, and the casualties could be your hearts and souls.
Thank you, Mr. Dalton.
Armies of academics going forward, measuring poetry.
No, we will not have that here.
No more of Mr. J Evans Pritchard.
Now in my class, you will learn to think for yourselves again.
You will learn to savor words and language.
No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.
I see that look in Mr. Pitt's eye, like 19th century literature
has nothing to do with going to business school or medical school, right?
Maybe.
Mr. Hopkins, you may agree with him, thinking yes,
we should simply study our Mr. Pritchard and learn our rhyme and meter and
go quietly about the business of achieving other ambitions.
I have a little secret for you, huddle up.
Huddle up!
We don't read and write poetry because it's cute.
We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race,
and the human race is filled with passion.
Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and
necessary to sustain life.
But poetry, beauty, romance, love,
these are what we stay alive for.
To quote from Whitman, oh me, oh life, of the questions of
these recurring, of the endless trains of the faithless,
of cities filled with the foolish, what good amid these, oh me, oh life?
Answer, that you are here, that life exists and identity.
That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.
That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.
What will your verse be?
B. Part 2: Visionary Language - Reflecting on Dead Poets

Society
So what'd you see?

You've seen the video,
you've seen Robin Williams interact with this class of boys in this poetry class.
What'd you see?
Use the checklist.
For example, did he refer to fundamental values?
Do you recall, for example,
him referring to what it means to be a member of the human race?
And the relevance or the importance of poetry.
To that fundamental value of being human.
Did he repeat?
He repeated his message multiple times.
Did he ask rhetorical questions?
For example, how he ends the conversation he's having
with the boys when he says, what will your verse be?
And then he actually repeats that.
What will your verse be?
This is a classic and a wonderful example of someone who's taking
a group that is not exactly on his side, that is just there,
not engaged, maybe even actively disengaged.
And using a vision and a compelling vision that uses the language that
we've articulated being necessary in this checklist to compel these
boys to at least be interested to want to hear what he wants to say,
which then gives him the opening to create the class that he wants.
The same is true for your teams.
You can use this checklist to craft how you're gonna communicate to your
team to create that opening to engage them where they want
to be part of this vision that you are trying to get them on board with.
Now you're not going to go and necessarily huddle.
Why does he huddle up and have the boys surround him?
Well, what do teenage boys do?
They play sports in many cases.
And a huddle is exactly that.
We're part of a team.
Why does, for example, Robin Williams get himself lower than those boys?
Well, those boys have always been in the environment where the teacher
is the powerful one, and they are the student.
He is shifting that mindset, where he is one of them.
That's the inclusivity that is behind the use of inclusive language.
Using language like we and our as opposed to me, the teacher, or me, the leader.
You can see when the Head Master of the school walks in and
questions what they're doing.
There's that separation between power, between the Head Master and the students.
Robin Williams comes back into the room and acts as if nothing is wrong.
Again, we, our, and we are up against the establishment.
That sense of community and
collective nature of the team is ultimately what he's after.
The same is true for you.
How do you use language that brings people into your vision,
as opposed to creating separation?
This checklist will help you to do exactly that, and ultimately help you create
a vision that people want to support, they're compelled to get behind.
And then you're using that vision to enable their
actions to create the success that you have in mind.
C. Part 3: Visionary Language - MLK Speech

Now you watched Robin Williams in the Dead Poets Society.
So you had both the what he's saying, as well as how he's saying it.
What I'd like to do now is shift to a different example,
where you see just the text, the transcript of what someone is saying.
And one of the best examples that I have of this, is Martin Luther King Jr.
In the 1960s gave what is now a very famous speech, his I Have a Dream speech.
The historical context is really around the civil rights movement in
the United States, where you had, at the time, the minority population, mostly
the African American community, vying for equal rights in the United States.
And Martin Luther King Jr.
was one of the primary leaders behind the Civil Rights Movement.
One of the best orators, communicators, in history, of any time really.
But what's really powerful when you look at the speech he gave that day
is not only how he said it, but what he said.
And so what I'd like you to do is,
online you have access to the transcript of his speech that day.
I'd like for you to use the checklist that I gave you, and
analyze that transcript for
each element of the checklist, from referring to fundamental values.
You'll note, for example, that Martin Luther King Jr.
doesn't refer necessarily to the values of the minority.
The question I have for you is, what values does he refer to and why?
You will see him repeat I have a dream.
You'll see him repeat some of the key phrases.
You'll see him use other rhetorical devices and communication devices.
And the moral conviction that he uses to talk about why this is so important.
Use the checklist, analyze the transcript, and see how you might use
some of those same vehicles, some of those same communication devices.
Not only in how you communicate, but when you're crafting a message that you want
to share with your audience who you're trying to compel and motivate.
To get behind this vision,
really to inspire them to want to support your vision.
So, analysis that speech and then we'll pick back up.
1-4- Application: Developing a Vision for Your Team

A. Developing a Vision for Your Team
So we've talked about what you say to create and communicate a compelling
vision, to motivate and inspire people to want to get behind that vision.
You have the three questions.
You have the check list.
You've seen examples and
now you've applied those tools those frameworks to your own team.
Now what I want to do is transition to the how you communicate that vision.
So transitioning from what you say to content,
the substance, to how you say it to style.
I'm gonna begin by sharing with you a video.
It's a video of someone who's communicating to their audience,
their employees.
Ultimately, you get to decide whether or not this is how you would
want to communicate, or how you might not want to communicate.
The video is of someone who I've had the opportunity to interact with
Steve Ballmer, the former CEO of Microsoft, and here you see us working
with him on a new leadership development application that we were developing.
And Steve is one of the most gregarious,
most extroverted individuals I've ever met.
A very passionate individual.
The video I'm gonna share with you is a collection of
videos that are taken of him interacting with either Microsoft employees,
developers who are developing for the Microsoft platform, or otherwise.
And I want you to pay attention to what you see him doing
in terms of how he is communicating.
Not necessarily what but what's the language he's using,
what's the verbal and the nonverbal language?
And what's the meaning of that language to you, what meaning does it communicate?
1-5The importance of non-verbals in communicating your vision
A. Verbals and Non-Verbals

So, you've had a chance to see Steve Ballmer in action.
You've had a chance to discuss it with your classmates.
One of the implications of that video,
or one of the things that many people take away Is the importance of the nonverbals.
It's not just what he's saying but it's how he's saying it, these nonverbals.
So, before we go forward, and I'll show you other examples as we go along, but
I wanna take a step back, and first talk about the importance of these nonverbals.
My colleagues around the world and I have been studying these nonverbals for
many years now.
And in particular, the importance of nonverbals in communicating your vision in
a way that inspires and motivates people to want to get behind you.
And what we're finding is that up to about 60% of the meaning of your message,
in this case, your vision is actually conveyed by your nonverbals,
not your verbals.
And so, it's critically important that you are very aware and
attentive to the nonverbals that you are bringing to that interaction.
In the case of Steve, you see somebody who's very loud, gregarious,
very extroverted, very boisterous.
But at the same time, his colleague,
Bill Gates who is also extremely effective at communicating a vision,
does so in a very dramatically, different way.
Much more reserved, much more introverted.
And so, it's not simply about being loud or extroverted.
You can be introverted and
be very effective at communicating your vision to your audience.
It's not just about being loud.
What it is about is these keys to success listed here.
In the research that we've been doing, we've identified three critical
success factors, around nonverbals that are hugely important for
your ability to communicate this inspiring, motivating vision.
The first one is to vary your tone,
you intonation of your voice, as well as the volume and pitch.
So, it's not simply about being loud or soft but
what you want to do is vary the volume and
the pitch of your voice to keep people engaged.
In the Robin Williams Dead Poet Society,
a clip that I had you watch earlier, you saw him do exactly this.
There were times in that video where he's very loud, very boisterous,
using language that captures people's attention very quickly.
At other times when he wants to capture their attention, he gets very soft.
He huddles them up, and
it's that variation in tone that really keeps your attention.
What I'm gonna do now is show you a short clip of a 1940s film.
The Protagonist, or the lead character in this film, is Charlie Chaplin.
It's actually one of the few films that he ever made that
wasn't silent, and in this film, he's giving a speech.
And what I'd like you to do is pay attention to how he varies the tone,
the pitch, and the volume of his voice.
Ask yourself, why does he do this?
What is the result of him varying the volume?
At one point, he has a crescendo where he gets very engaged, very loud.
His body language changes, his facial expressions change.
And then, he gets very soft.
I'd like you to understand or at least think about why is he doing that and
what is the effect.
So, let's cut to the clip, show it.
Go to the discussion forum.
Charlie Chaplin sharing his vision in the Great Dictator film.
Share you perspective, your reflections,
your thoughts with your fellow classmates about what you see.
Is it effective, why or why not?
And then, we'll come back together and
keep discussing these nonverbals that are critical to your success.
>> I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor.
That's not my business.
I don't want to rule or conquer anyone.
I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, Gentile, black man, white.
We all want to help one another, human beings are like that.
We want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery.
We don't want to hate and despise one another.
And this world has room for everyone, and the good earth is rich and can provide for
everyone.
The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate,
has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.
We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in.
Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want.
Our knowledge has made us cynical.
Our cleverness hard and unkind.
We think too much and feel too little.
More than machinery, we need humanity.
More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness.
Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
The airplane and the radio have brought us closer together.
The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for
universal brotherhood, for the unity of us all.
Even now, my voice is reaching millions throughout the world,
millions of despairing men, women, and little children.
Victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.
To those who can hear me, I say do not despair.
The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed,
the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress.
The hate of men will pass and dictators die.
And the power they took from the people will return to the people.
And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.
Soldiers, don't give yourselves to brutes.
Men who despise you, enslave you, who regiment your lives.
Tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel.
Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder.
Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men!
Machine men!
With machine minds and machine hearts!
You are not machines!
You are not cattle!
You are men!
You have a love of humanity in your hearts.
You don't hate.
Only the unloved hate.
The unloved and the unnatural.
Soldiers, don't fight for slavery, fight for liberty.
In the 17th chapter of St. Luke it is written, the Kingdom of God is within man,
not one man nor a group of men, but in all men, in you, you, the people,
have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness.
You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful,
to make this life a wonderful adventure.
Then, in the name of democracy, let us use that power.
Let us all unite.
Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work,
that will give youth a future, and old age a security.
By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie.
They do not fulfill that promise.
They never will.
Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people.
Now, let us fight to fulfill that promise.
Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers,
to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance.
Let us fight for a world of reason.
A world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness.
Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us all unite.
>> [APPLAUSE]
B. Part 2: Verbal and Non-Verbals

So you saw Charlie Chaplin in the Great Dictator.
You saw how he started the speech, you saw the crescendo.
You saw how he ultimately ends this speech.
You've discussed with your classmates around the impact of that variation in
tone, pitch, and volume, and the impact that it has on the message,
the non-verbals ultimately keeping you engaged.
What I'd like to do now is shift to some of these other non-verbals.
That are hugely important.
The smile.
The facial expression.
We’ve been doing research here recently showing that leaders,
their emotions are contagious.
You walk in happy, your employees are more like to be happy.
You walk in sad, or frustrated,
or angry, your employees are more likely to be frustrated, sad, or angry.
Even, maybe scary for many of you, is the motions that you
feel at work that are often communicated through your facial expressions.
We published a study a couple of years ago that shows that
those emotions get communicated through your facial expressions in many ways
to your home life.
And so
the facial expressions that you carry are hugely important for communication.
In the case of your vision,
what we're finding is the smile is particularly important.
And in particular, a genuine smile.
So if you come in sad angry and with a big frown on your face, that's contagious.
It undermines the motivational impact of the vision you're trying to communicate.
What we're finding is that a genuine smile, what I mean by a genuine smile is,
there are researchers all they study are facial expressions.
And what they're finding is that if you fake a smile, the smile essentially is not
aggressive enough to create the wrinkle lines around your eyes and
people subconsciously actually view the smile as fake or disingenuous.
And what we're finding is that a genuine smile when you are really engaged and
excited about what you're doing.
Very positive thus creating the smile.
Actually then communicates to your audience in this case your team members.
Your employees or whoever it might be that you are truly passionate,
truly engaged with the vision that you're trying to communicate.
Which then has the positive benefits on the other end of the contagion effect.
Where they want to get engaged in the same vision because you are and
you're communicating that through this smile.
So, don't forget when you walk into the office that next day.
The facial expression that you're carrying with you.
And ultimately, make sure that there's a smile and a genuine smile that you're
using to communicate your passion for what you're trying to accomplish.
The third critical success factor that we've found is what we called
an open body posture.
This was made famous by a TED talk from a colleague of mine at Harvard University,
Amy Cuddy, who's a social psychologist, who's studied open and
closed body postures and how our non-verbals enable us
to communicate to others and influence others.
And her work is fascinating in this area.
And there are many others who are carrying on this work.
But what we've found is there are basically two different types of
body postures.
There's what we call a closed body posture which often has us with our arms crossed,
our legs crossed.
Very closed in how we sit or stand.
We also refer to these as low power body postures.
Relative to what we call open body postures.
Which are the open arms.
Or sitting back in your chair in ways where you have a very open
frame to the people you're meeting with or your audience.
But in particular, the open arms and the open chest,
and this open body posture, and
what we call also as a high power pose, or high power body posture.
So to give examples of some of the highest power body postures that we see in
business or the arts with your hands on your hips as you stand is much
more the high power body position than if you were to cross your arms, for example.
Or as you see in politics, politicians are trained
extensively on how they carry themselves in their non-verbals.
You will more than likely see very open body postures.
Or models, for example, where they are instructed to project confidence.
And the way they project that confidence is often with their hands on their hips in
this very sort of aggressive stance.
What we're finding in our research is very counter-intuitive.
What's intuitive is that these high power very open body postures have
an effect on the people you're trying to communicate with, where,
for example, with this open body posture, you are bringing them into how you wanna
communicate, and the message you're trying to deliver, and that is absolutely true.
We find that in our research, is when I have an open body posture, you are much
more likely to be engaged with the message I'm trying to communicate and otherwise.
But the counter-intuitive point that we're finding, which I find
very interesting, is the effect that it has on you as they communicate,
or the person trying to communicate your message.
Amy Cuddy, and others, Dale Carney and some others,
have done some fascinating research on the physiology of these positions.
One study in particular that I'll share with you,
was published in 2010, back in psychological science.
It's one of the most fascinating studies that I've ever seen, to be honest.
What they did is they brought people into a lab environment, and
they had them individually, in private,
assume either low power very closed body postures or
very high power open body postures for 1 minute, 60 seconds is all it took.
And then after that intervention if you will where they
randomly assign these people to one of these two conditions either high power or
low power body postures, again, remember only for one minute.
They had them do a task, and they had them hooked up
to these physiological monitors that monitored your hormones.
And in particular, two very important hormones, one being cortisol,
which is actually the hormone most tied to your stress levels.
So the higher your cortisol level, the higher your stress.
And then the second was testosterone,
which is the hormone that is most tied to your energy levels.
And the results were very striking and interesting.
So for example, the people who were in the high power condition,
where, remember all they did was stand with their hands on their hips or
an open body posture, their hands held high, for example.
For one minute, relative to the people who sat or stood in very low power or
closed body postures, the people in the high power condition had
a 25% decrease in their cortisol
levels after or following this one minute intervention.
At the same time, they had a 20% increase in testosterone.
Again, that hormone for their energy level.
Again, these body postures are not only having an effect on the people
you're trying to communicate with, they're having a profound impact on you.
They're reducing your stress.
While at the same time increasing your energy levels,
which actually enables you to communicate more effectively to your audience.
Those effects are profound because now prior to going into that
team meeting where you wanna communicate your vision to your team.
Maybe you wanna close your office door.
And stand in one of those high power body posture positions.
Open arms, wide chest, hands on your hips.
And the effect will be profound, such that your stress will go down,
your energy will go up, and you may not even realize it.
But, the effectiveness of the vision that you ultimately communicate to your team
will be that much greater as a result.
So you saw Charlie Chaplin in the Great Dictator.
You saw how he started the speech, you saw the crescendo.
You saw how he ultimately ends this speech.
You've discussed with your classmates around the impact of that variation in
tone, pitch, and volume, and the impact that it has on the message,
the non-verbals ultimately keeping you engaged.
What I'd like to do now is shift to some of these other non-verbals.
That are hugely important.
The smile.
The facial expression.
We’ve been doing research here recently showing that leaders,
their emotions are contagious.
You walk in happy, your employees are more like to be happy.
You walk in sad, or frustrated,
or angry, your employees are more likely to be frustrated, sad, or angry.
Even, maybe scary for many of you, is the motions that you
feel at work that are often communicated through your facial expressions.
We published a study a couple of years ago that shows that
those emotions get communicated through your facial expressions in many ways
to your home life.
And so
the facial expressions that you carry are hugely important for communication.
In the case of your vision,
what we're finding is the smile is particularly important.
And in particular, a genuine smile.
So if you come in sad angry and with a big frown on your face, that's contagious.
It undermines the motivational impact of the vision you're trying to communicate.
What we're finding is that a genuine smile, what I mean by a genuine smile is,
there are researchers all they study are facial expressions.
And what they're finding is that if you fake a smile, the smile essentially is not
aggressive enough to create the wrinkle lines around your eyes and
people subconsciously actually view the smile as fake or disingenuous.
And what we're finding is that a genuine smile when you are really engaged and
excited about what you're doing.
Very positive thus creating the smile.
Actually then communicates to your audience in this case your team members.
Your employees or whoever it might be that you are truly passionate,
truly engaged with the vision that you're trying to communicate.
Which then has the positive benefits on the other end of the contagion effect.
Where they want to get engaged in the same vision because you are and
you're communicating that through this smile.
So, don't forget when you walk into the office that next day.
The facial expression that you're carrying with you.
And ultimately, make sure that there's a smile and a genuine smile that you're
using to communicate your passion for what you're trying to accomplish.
The third critical success factor that we've found is what we called
an open body posture.
This was made famous by a TED talk from a colleague of mine at Harvard University,
Amy Cuddy, who's a social psychologist, who's studied open and
closed body postures and how our non-verbals enable us
to communicate to others and influence others.
And her work is fascinating in this area.
And there are many others who are carrying on this work.
But what we've found is there are basically two different types of
body postures.
There's what we call a closed body posture which often has us with our arms crossed,
our legs crossed.
Very closed in how we sit or stand.
We also refer to these as low power body postures.
Relative to what we call open body postures.
Which are the open arms.
Or sitting back in your chair in ways where you have a very open
frame to the people you're meeting with or your audience.
But in particular, the open arms and the open chest,
and this open body posture, and
what we call also as a high power pose, or high power body posture.
So to give examples of some of the highest power body postures that we see in
business or the arts with your hands on your hips as you stand is much
more the high power body position than if you were to cross your arms, for example.
Or as you see in politics, politicians are trained
extensively on how they carry themselves in their non-verbals.
You will more than likely see very open body postures.
Or models, for example, where they are instructed to project confidence.
And the way they project that confidence is often with their hands on their hips in
this very sort of aggressive stance.
What we're finding in our research is very counter-intuitive.
What's intuitive is that these high power very open body postures have
an effect on the people you're trying to communicate with, where,
for example, with this open body posture, you are bringing them into how you wanna
communicate, and the message you're trying to deliver, and that is absolutely true.
We find that in our research, is when I have an open body posture, you are much
more likely to be engaged with the message I'm trying to communicate and otherwise.
But the counter-intuitive point that we're finding, which I find
very interesting, is the effect that it has on you as they communicate,
or the person trying to communicate your message.
Amy Cuddy, and others, Dale Carney and some others,
have done some fascinating research on the physiology of these positions.
One study in particular that I'll share with you,
was published in 2010, back in psychological science.
It's one of the most fascinating studies that I've ever seen, to be honest.
What they did is they brought people into a lab environment, and
they had them individually, in private,
assume either low power very closed body postures or
very high power open body postures for 1 minute, 60 seconds is all it took.
And then after that intervention if you will where they
randomly assign these people to one of these two conditions either high power or
low power body postures, again, remember only for one minute.
They had them do a task, and they had them hooked up
to these physiological monitors that monitored your hormones.
And in particular, two very important hormones, one being cortisol,
which is actually the hormone most tied to your stress levels.
So the higher your cortisol level, the higher your stress.
And then the second was testosterone,
which is the hormone that is most tied to your energy levels.
And the results were very striking and interesting.
So for example, the people who were in the high power condition,
where, remember all they did was stand with their hands on their hips or
an open body posture, their hands held high, for example.
For one minute, relative to the people who sat or stood in very low power or
closed body postures, the people in the high power condition had
a 25% decrease in their cortisol
levels after or following this one minute intervention.
At the same time, they had a 20% increase in testosterone.
Again, that hormone for their energy level.
Again, these body postures are not only having an effect on the people
you're trying to communicate with, they're having a profound impact on you.
They're reducing your stress.
While at the same time increasing your energy levels,
which actually enables you to communicate more effectively to your audience.
Those effects are profound because now prior to going into that
team meeting where you wanna communicate your vision to your team.
Maybe you wanna close your office door.
And stand in one of those high power body posture positions.
Open arms, wide chest, hands on your hips.
And the effect will be profound, such that your stress will go down,
your energy will go up, and you may not even realize it.
But, the effectiveness of the vision that you ultimately communicate to your team
will be that much greater as a result.
C. How to Design your Office to Reinforce your Vision

When people walk in the door of our space, they're confronted with one of those
vilified open office environments, the one that Fast Company Magazine said was
an idea born in the mind of Satan in the deepest caverns of hell.
And people ask me, they say, Rich, their psychologists approved these kind of
open work environments don't work, why does it work for them though.
And I tell them that we didn't create an open and collaborative work space,
a work space that quite frankly is free of walls,
of barriers in human communication, but that wasn't our focus or intention.
Our focus was to create an open and collaborative culture, a transparent
culture, a visible culture, and our space is a manifestation of that culture.
So when you walk in our doors,
the first thing you notice is what is not in the room.
There are no barriers to human communication.
The human energy is high because everyone is in conversation with one another, but
it's not chitchat.
It is actually the noise of work.
And that noise of work becomes the self-reinforcing component of our culture
where, in fact, people will,
they will enjoy the serendipity of overhearing the ideas of others.
And we want that to happen.
One of the strongest rules we have at Menlo is you can't wear
earbuds while you're working.
You can't shut yourself off from other human beings.
All of those components lend themselves to that human energy that people
feel when they walk in the room.
Then we wrapper the place with all of these boards
that you can pushpin artifacts into.
Our most important artifacts are out in the room for all to see.
We have this paper-based management system that's very visual and inviting,
and so there's kind of a visual noise to the room that draws people in.
And that's very important for us.
We didn't want it to be this sterile work environment where, quite frankly,
I've worked in places where you had to get permission to do anything to a wall
anywhere you go.
There is none of that at Menlo.
We have no space police.
We have no people who are in charge of the space.
The team has full control over the space they work in, and because they do, they
take ownership of it and they feel good working in that space every single day.
D. Learn to be Charismatic
So by now, hopefully I have your attention,
that with these very subtle nonverbals you can actually have profound impact on your
ability to communicate your vision to your team.
What if I take that to an entirely other level and
tell you that you can actually learn to be charismatic?
Most of the audiences that I work with around the world,
whether they be in business government or otherwise.
Many people assume that charisma is either something you are born with or not.
Something I like to call you can either think or blame your parents for,
that hardwired genetic code.
And what we're actually finding is that's not the case at all.
What we're finding is that with some very subtle but
impactful feedback mechanisms and
training mechanisms you can actually learn to be charismatic, and ultimately be
able to communicate more effectively these visions that we're talking about.
One study I'll share with you in particular.
I had the opportunity to be one of the editors
on an article that John Antonakis wrote.
He and his colleagues wrote in the Academy of Management Learning and
Education journal back in 2011,
where it was the first time we'd ever published a scientific study
looking at could we actually develop, train, and learn this notion of charisma.
And what they did is they took a group of executives, and
they created a baseline charisma score.
Because some of us are naturally more charismatic than others, or
some of us have more practice, and so they took a baseline score of charisma.
They controlled for your age, whether you're male or female, speech length.
So they had them deliver speeches on camera and
the speeches were of different lengths.
So they wanted to control for that.
They also controlled for your language, whether or
not English was your native language or not.
And they took those baselines and then they created a training intervention.
And the training intervention consisted of three major components.
The first was a lecture on techniques for how to be more charismatic,
many of which I've included in the course that we're talking about now.
They also had you watch films or clips,
videos of people who were displaying many of these techniques,
much like the Dead Poet Society clip or the Charlie Chaplin,
Great Dictator clip that I had you watch as part of this course.
Then they also had you do one coaching session,
where you had an opportunity to work with a coach on a feedback report
where you were receiving and responding to feedback
on the speeches that you had delivered as part of this training intervention.
So very simple intervention.
Again, simple lecture, watching some video clips of people in action, getting some
coaching and some feedback on how you've done when you've delivered these speeches.
Then they followed up, with these people over the course of about three months.
And three months after that training intervention,
they measured their charisma again.
And, what I would like to share with you is the results of that.
Most notably,
what they've found is that with this very simple training intervention.
Three months gone by after that training intervention,
you saw a 13% increase in perceived charisma.
Meaning, how charismatic people,
other people saw the participants who had participated in the training.
Interestingly, you also saw a 14% increase in
the extent to which other people perceive those individuals as being competent.
Now interestingly, we find that charisma and competence.
The perceptions of those two factors are two very important factors for
determining whether people see you as leader-like or not.
And so when you think about your team, your organization,
whether they see you as a leader.
The extent to which you engage in many of the techniques,
the communication techniques, what you say and how you say it,
that we've talked about in this course, will ultimately determine how
charismatic other people see you as being, as well as how competent they see you.
And ultimately whether they see you as someone who is fit to lead
them into the future.
Critically important.
As you go forward.
One last study I'll share with you, one of my favorite studies
on this notion of visionary leadership and the idea of charisma,
is Bob House and his colleagues in the early 1990s.
So now, many years ago, published a study on presidents for
the United States dating back to George Washington all the way up to Carter.
They analyzed speeches, editorials written by and about the presidents.
They analyzed biographies.
All with an idea of getting an assessment of the charisma
of each of these presidents in the United States.
Some of these presidents, Tyler, Pierce, Buchanan, and
others, were deemed as non-charismatic.
These were individuals that had not learned how to be charisma.
There were presidents like James Polk and Truman who were considered more neutral,
sort of in between non-charismatic and charismatic.
And then there were presidents, Jefferson, Jackson, Abraham Lincoln,
JFK, Kennedy, who were determined based on the speeches, editorials,
biographies and such, to be extremely charismatic.
The techniques, the verbals,
the non-verbals, everything that we've talked about as part of this course.
And what's interesting is they study the extent of which these presidents were
reelected and the data's actually pretty striking.
17% of the presidents who were deemed non-charismatic, only 17% were reelected.
66% of the neutral and 100% of the presidents who
were determined to be charismatic, either reelected or
unfortunately assassinated, which maybe assassination is a metric for
whether you have a vision that is one of change.
That may be some people like and others don't like.
But the importance here is really around the likelihood of getting reelected
as a US President is clearly predicted by how charismatic you ultimately are.
Maybe you'll be a president one day, maybe you won't.
Ultimately, at the end of the day, the degree at which you are charismatic will
shape whether you can clearly communicate an effective vision that compels people,
inspires people and motivates people to want to be part of your team.
1-6-Recap: Becoming a Visionary Leader

We've come to the end of our discussion on how to become a visionary leader.
We've talked about how to create and
effectively communicate a vision that inspires and motivates people.
That brings people together around a shared direction,
where we are today and where we're going.
What I'd like to do now is do a quick recap on some of those key lessons.
You recall we talked about the Michigan model of leadership.
And that model specifies a set of behavior that you engage
in to effectively lead your team, your organization.
For example that green quadrant around inspiring innovation and enabling change.
The skills and the techniques we've talked about in terms of visionary leadership
will be critically important as you go forward to create a vision for where
we are today but where we need to be going forward and how we're going to get there.
That green quadrant.
This vision will be critically important, for
example, in the yellow quadrant as you're thinking about bringing people together.
The vision actually becomes a vehicle of reason
why people actually come together and create these collaborative communities.
Another example as you think about that blue quadrant in terms of
creating the motivation for delivering results, even when those results
seem as if they're far into the future, and maybe even unachievable.
This vision will create the motivation,
the commitment to motivate, compel your employees, your team members,
to pursue success and ultimately those results that you wanna create.
So the techniques, the skills we've talked about
apply across all aspects of that Michigan model of leadership.
So, to recap very quickly, we talked about the business case, the data for
why visionary leadership is so important.
We talked about the impact that
a clear vision has on your team, in terms of predicting its performance.
We talked about the data in the business case for
why the vision is critically important to organizational success,
whether it be profitability, productivity, or otherwise.
We then shifted to how you actually create and communicate your vision.
We talked about what you say.
For example, the three questions.
The first question, why do we do what we do?
Second question, what's our definition of success?
Third question ultimately being, how must we act In order to ensure success?
Really the question around values.
Then I shared with you a checklist that's comes form our science,
our research around how you communicate that vision, the language you use.
For example, repetition, rhetorical devices, three-part list.
Make sure you use that checklist.
Then we transition to not only what you say, but how you say it,
the non-verbals of communication.
And we talked about three critical success factors there from the non-verbals around,
your tone and the inflection,
the variation in volume and pitch around your voice.
So that your not always loud.
Sometimes your loud sometimes your soft.
We talked about the body postures in terms of open and
closed body postures for example.
And then we also talked about your facial expressions and
really important that smile.
That communicates the emotion, the passion that you have for
this vision you're trying to create.
We also gave you an opportunity to practice.
You saw a lot of video clips of people in action doing this, some doing it well,
maybe some doing it less well.
Ultimately you've been able to analyze the different
components of the videos that you've seen.
I've also given you an opportunity to apply these techniques and
these skills to your own team, and I hope you've taken advantage of that.
I would encourage you as you go forward to continue rounding out this vision.
Go practice it.
Ask people for feedback on not only what you say but how you have said it.
Both the verbals the non-verbals and the intended message.
That feedback seeking process is critically important for
your own personal development.
And at the end, remember repeat, repeat, repeat.
Your message is important.
Your vision is critically important.
It's essential that you repeat that message time and time again.
Reinforcement is critically important as you go forward in your team,
to enable this vision that
may seem to be in the future to ultimately become a reality for you and your team.

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Inspiring and Motivating Individuals

A. Reactions to Steve Jobs' Vision for Apple

Welcome to Becoming a Visionary Leader.

C. The Business Case for Visionary Leadership

How a Clear Vision Creates Energy

A. Why Do We Do What We Do?

B. How Starting with WHY is Essential

C. What Does Success Look Like?

D. How Must We Act to Ensure Success?

So you have the three questions.

A. Part 1: Visionary Language

B. Part 2: Visionary Language - Reflecting on Dead Poets

So what'd you see?

C. Part 3: Visionary Language - MLK Speech

1-4- Application: Developing a Vision for Your Team

1-5The importance of non-verbals in communicating your vision

A. Verbals and Non-Verbals

B. Part 2: Verbal and Non-Verbals

C. How to Design your Office to Reinforce your Vision

1-6-Recap: Becoming a Visionary Leader

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