Mission Critical Principle 6- Communicate Persuasively

"I really want to listen.  I want to engage, but I have to shut up."

There is not shortage of leaders willing to reveal what has worked, or sometimes failed, in their own exercise of power.  Inevitable, some of these accounts are exercises in vanity, self-promotion, or self-justification, but the best of such self-reporting furnishes useful insights from the front lines of leadership.

CEO Dawn Lepore of online retailer Drugstore.com with revenue in 2010 of 450 million, offered that while she was "very comfortable with ambiguity," when "you're leading a large organization, people are not as comfortable with ambiguity, and they want you to be clearer about what's happening, where you're taking them.  So I had to get better at communicating what I was thinking."

Communicating must also be two-way, reported Carol Bartz, CEO of Internet provider Yahoo, who saw the act of hearing as essential, if not always natural: "I have a bad habit--you get half your question out and I think I know the whole question, so I want to answer it.  And so I actually had to be trained to take a breath.  I really want to listen.  I want to engage, but I have to shut up."

ACTION POINT: Communicate clearly and listen intently.