If you’re a corporate leader trying to transform your organizational culture, Leading Out Loud would be a good book to read in order to plan how to align your personal values and your organization’s values with a communication plan that resonates with people. Even if you aren’t, it might be a good read if you often sketch out a vision of the future and work on getting other people involved.
Let’s see if it works on the small scale. What would my Personal Leadership Communication Guide look like? I’m not leading anyone through an organizational change, but it might be worth going through the steps anyway.
I. Establishing Competence and Building Trustworthiness
Clarity of Purpose: I care about remembering and sharing what we learn. The problem is that we waste time by forgetting. We waste opportunities by hoarding what we know or being self-conscious about what we can teach. Think of all the time you spend rediscovering solutions to problems you’ve already solved. Think of when you stop and wonder, “Where did the time go?” with nothing to show for it. We learn so much, but it disappears. If we can get better at learning and sharing, imagine how much more we’d be able to do. I want to learn more about learning and sharing so that I can not only share my life, but also inspire and help other people share theirs.
Credentials and vulnerabilities: I’m not an expert. At 29 years old, I can’t even claim to have learned very much. I get things wrong. I make mistakes. I forget.
But it turns out that you don’t have to be an expert, and sharing probably even works better if you aren’t. I’ve been sharing my learning notes for more than ten years. I’ve been learning about drawing and screencasting as ways to share more effectively. I’ve even been working on learning how to interview people so that more people can share their lessons learned through me.
Empathy: I wouldn’t be this comfortable with learning and sharing in public without the amazing support of people who have taught me and encouraged me throughout the years. When I wrote about an obscure topic and heard, years later, from someone who used one of my tips to solve a problem, that appreciation spurred me to write more. When I made a mistake in my server configuration and sent hundreds of e-mails in a short span of time, people forgave me, and that forgiveness helped me be less afraid to experiment. I learn from comments, conversations, questions, role models, and inspirations. There’s so much out there, and that’s a real gift.
I know what it’s like to worry about whether you’re going to waste someone else’s time or mess up someone else’s work. Sometimes that keeps me from writing or publishing, but I’m getting better at going ahead anyway. More often, I struggle with not feeling that I understand something well enough to write about it – and then I remind myself that “showing my work” helps other people learn from or even correct it.
There’s a lot I need to learn about sharing more effectively. Writing with a plan. Cutting out excess. Making things clear. Drawing, editing video, and so on. I need questions and answers and feedback. I think it will be a good adventure.
Commonality: We’re all learning, and we all have more to learn.
Willingness to be known: Why does this matter to me personally? I was a child when I realized that life is too short to spend figuring everything out on my own. I devoured books – voracious enough that my grade school principal said I wasn’t a bookworm, but a booksnake.
I started finding the gaps that I couldn’t learn from the books I read. I started learning things on my own and from other people – and, too often, forgetting. I share because I don’t trust my brain, and because I’m curious about what I can learn from people if I help them leapfrog me. I don’t want writing to be limited to authors or drawing limited to artists. I want people to feel comfortable using whatever they want to capture and perhaps share what they learn.
II. Shared context
Blogging made it easier for people to share their thoughts, but still, surprisingly few people do it. New technologies make it easier for people to draw, but people tell themselves that they can’t doodle. I wonder what’s next, what could encourage people to share more, what could help me share better.
I don’t have a burning platform; it isn’t a timely issue. Except, perhaps, that life is short, and I forget, and things unshared are conversations that don’t happen. So yes, I have a very selfish reason for sharing. =)
III. Declaring and Describing the Future
Here’s the future I imagine: an awesome life. A life filled with doing and learning and sharing, saving other people time or inspiring other possibilities. It’s a small vision, an individual one. The bigger vision is to help other people live their own awesome lives. =) Better than a foggy life, yes?
What does that future look like and feel like? I imagine I’d follow my curiosity, dipping into my outline or list of ideas for more inspiration. I’d read, try things out, talk to people, write, draw, share. We’ll ask questions together, dig into things deeper, explore more. It’ll be useful and fun.
But it has to be more than that. It would be good for me to learn how to order my thoughts and write books, so that I can help people who are new to a field instead of just people who are in the middle of it. It would be good to learn how to make the most of whatever new tools are developed. It would be good to get better at encouraging other people to share.
IV. Committing to Action
Here are some steps I need to take:
- Practise writing with objectives, outlines, and plans.
- Practise illustrating ideas – mine and other people’s.
- Practise talking to people and sharing what I learn from them.
- Practise experimenting and breaking out of my comfort zone.
- Dig into workshops and virtual meetups as a way to help other people learn and share.
If you want to help out, comments, questions, and suggestions welcome!
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Disclosure: I received a copy of this book for review.
