5650 Grad assignment

Preface

The first edition of Leading Out Loud, published in 1995, focused on public speaking and emphasized the importance of authenticity. The second edition (2003) expanded the understanding of the principles to include all communication aimed at inspiration, every encounter from the casual conversation at a water cooler or in a war theater to e-mail, voice mail, and cross-cultural video. It also included a framework for a message platform, a tool to guide leaders to go deep enough to find the stuff of inspiration—to ask the proper questions to find their own source of meaning in the message. This third edition of Leading Out Loud brings the field of leadership communication up-to-

date, offering insights and practica to those who strive to inspire others to take action to effect change. If you have not been introduced to the ideas of leadership communication, you will find that this work stands very well on its own. If you have read an earlier edition of Leading Out Loud, you will find a new experience here. This version incorporates principles of the first and second editions, and extends these works with four important additions.

This edition explores important factors that make leadership communication a distinct skill aimed at inspiration. These distinctions are central to understanding what’s needed to hone this skill. This edition includes the implications of the remarkable new neuroscientific evidence regarding empathy, impulse control, and brain plasticity. This science shows the possibility of developing characteristics, traits, skills, and perspectives that contribute to the mastery of leadership communication cross-culturally and in various media. Revisions to this edition reflect my own further education in mythology and depth psychology, fields that facilitate an understanding of the unconscious movers of our civilization. After the second edition went to press, I completed a degree in these fields with the hope of gaining understanding of the common drivers of inspiration. This edition refines and expands the array of tools designed to assist leaders in preparing for the entire range of communication and thereby become more effective in inspiring themselves and others. The message platform introduced in the second edition has been supplemented and refined into the Personal Leadership Communication Guide, a more comprehensive tool that calls for more introspective insights as well as compelling evidence.

This work is also rearranged and supplemented with new stories and examples. The cast of characters has changed a bit to reflect my own change in clientele and emphasis, and I chose to provide a bit more continuity by weaving the same sample Guides throughout the book to help create greater understanding of how a Guide is actually constructed, revised, and developed over time. In presentations, classes, and readings over the years, I have enjoyed speaking with the

book’s readers and with consultants around the world who are using Leading Out Loud as a

Pearce, T. (2013). Leading out loud : A guide for engaging others in creating the future. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. Created from ambertonlibrary-ebooks on 2022-01-28 18:03:20.

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source work. Readers and consultants alike invariably ask me about the individuals I reference in the stories and case studies—they are interested in what happened to these people and how they have continued to use the methods and suggestions in the work. I thought it was wonderful that readers considered the material personally, so I’m bringing you up-to-date on the lives of these exemplars as best I can—how what they learned and applied has worked over the years. They are a truly remarkable group. My challenge, as it is with any author, has been to make this book relevant. The ultimate

question is, How does reading this book make a difference? Accordingly, I’ve tried to keep this work straightforward, accessible, and real. If, as I hope, you find yourself applying what you read here, then I will have met my goals with this new edition.

What’s Here? The nine chapters of the book are presented in two distinct parts. The first four chapters pertain to the internal development of the leader, and the second five chapters are focused on the nature and content of the message. Making distinctions between the known and the unknown is a wonderful way to learn. The

introduction to Part One takes up the task of clarifying the distinctions that make the target clear to the reader. The differences between motivation and inspiration are central to this approach. Clearly one is extrinsic—carrot and stick—and the other is intrinsic, coming from within and involving meaning. Underlying this fundamental pair are words representing concepts that can either compete or complement. For example, change can be fear-inducing, upsetting, and psychologically demotivating. (Remember when you changed schools when moving to that new town, state, or country?) Yet progress is heard as forward-looking, beneficial, and potentially exciting. With each pair, both are necessary, one to operate the organization and achieve your objectives, the other to inspire the greatest engagement and ownership in those involved in creating needed shifts in operation. Chapters One through Four develop the principles the leader needs in order to communicate

with these distinctions in mind. Discovering What Matters is the prerequisite to communicating from a sense of purpose and is the subject of Chapter One. The second principle has been broadened to Deepening Emotional Awareness and Chapter Two explores new material that neurobiologists have developed in the past few years, going well beyond the psychology of emotion to include the hard physiological brain research and its social implications. The chapter explicates the nature of empathy, how that capability can be developed, and also looks at the biology of reaction versus response. Enhancing this area of relating is central to leadership that inspires. As it turns out, human beings can always discern one another’s intentions, albeit not always consciously. Ignoring this discernment results in a spaghetti-wired web of pretense characterized by lack of clarity, lack of trust, and (in practical business terms), lack of ability to compete. Connecting With Others, the third principle, is described in Chapter Three, which explores

the power of the narrative forms of mythology, story, and personal experience and the universal

Pearce, T. (2013). Leading out loud : A guide for engaging others in creating the future. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. Created from ambertonlibrary-ebooks on 2022-01-28 18:03:20.

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import of symbol and image, metaphor and analogy. Chapter Four emphasizes the need for Disciplining the Voice. Because of the proliferation of new vehicles for communication and the myriad opportunities to communicate (some conscious and with forethought and some involuntary or nearly so), it is ever more incumbent on leaders to formulate ideas, feelings, stories, and experiences. Unfortunately, the concept of a message platform has been used in the corporate and political worlds to help leaders “stay on message.” Professionals create the central themes and sound bites, and devise ways to return to these themes without regard to the forum or the question asked—so often that listeners often wonder, “Didn’t you just say that?” As noted, the message platform of the second edition has evolved to the Personal Leadership

Communication Guide. Far from a series of sound bites, the Guide is a complete, well- considered organic document, created and constantly updated by the leader who uses it, and it incorporates all the passion, facts, experiences, stories, metaphors, and evidence to weave the mosaic of urgency and progress inherent in any attempt to forge a future different from the present. Because it flows through and from the leader, it is highly personal and authentic. It can be used in all circumstances, for all audiences, and in any forum using any media. The Guide reflects a more complete communication, focused not only on the messages themselves but also on the leader’s motivations and emotions. The components and content of this Guide are the subjects of the second part of the book,

Chapters Five through Nine. Chapter Five focuses on competence and trust, the prerequisites for any communication to be heard and deeply felt. Here I explore what kind of communication actually conveys empathy, what facts and impressions are necessary to convey competence, the value of gratitude, the revelation of personal motivation, and the search for and revelation of vulnerabilities. Chapter Six takes up the building of shared context, including not just the history of an issue, but the broader implications of the necessity for change. How does one decide on priority? What are the stakes? And most important, where did you (the leader developing the Guide) come in—at what point did you discover this issue and how does the status quo affect you? All these questions are contextual, vital to understand, and vital to understanding. Chapter Seven looks at how a leader imagines and then conveys a state not yet in existence. Is prophecy an act of prediction or creation? Chapter Eight is about action, first how the organization must proceed and then a revelation of what you are willing to do to make your own conviction about the future a reality. Only when you have decided what you are willing to risk and declared it do you have the right, indeed the obligation, to ask others to follow. Chapter Nine discusses how authenticity, competence, and connection can be sustained in various communication channels, including initial presentations or speeches, question-and- answer sessions, informal discussions, and in particular in the electronic networks of e-mail, voice mail, video, and web-based conferences. Finally, the Epilogue emphasizes the current desperate need to break with convention and practice authentic communication in international discourse as well as everyday personal interaction. If there is, as there seems to be, a paucity of understanding and community, this practice could help us all move into a more sustainable world. Two appendixes supplement the material in the text. The first provides information on the

Pearce, T. (2013). Leading out loud : A guide for engaging others in creating the future. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. Created from ambertonlibrary-ebooks on 2022-01-28 18:03:20.

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choice and use of evidence in leadership communication. The second presents the framework for preparing your own Personal Leadership Communication Guide. The appendixes are followed by the notes and a recommended reading list. Leading Out Loud is laced with stories that are highly personal. I feel so strongly that

leadership is absolutely personal that I simply couldn’t write this work from any other point of view. I still can’t go to Washington, D.C., without wending my way around the Tidal Basin to the Jefferson Memorial to reread his immortal words—“We hold these truths to be self- evident”—and then move on to the other quotations of this amazing futurist dreamer. It was personal to Jefferson, just as many centuries earlier it was personal to Lao Tzu, Siddhartha, Mohammad, Jesus, and the founders of all religions. It was personal to Martin Luther King, Steve Jobs, Anwar Sadat, Margaret Thatcher, Nelson Mandela, John Kennedy, and Thomas Watson. It was also personal to Osama Bin Laden. In all cases, these leaders’ declarations came from their beliefs, their times, and their hopes for the future. They were deeply felt and very personal, and they have been taken up by millions since their utterance. Yes, leadership is personal, and that is no more evident than in descriptions of a future that

exists only in the leader’s own mind. This is no prediction for the leader; it is the first act of creation.

Who Should Read This Book? This edition has been written during very trying and yet exciting times in the world. We are in the throes of a financial crisis; new freedoms are being born in countries in the Middle East and Africa; China is emerging as a dominant geopolitical force. India, Brazil, and a new Russia are moving into world prominence with their economic growth. Nearly everyone on the globe is at some level reassessing what is important, what is essential, and what is absolutely unnecessary. We are in a virtual cauldron of change, and leaders are emerging to influence the outcome in their own favor or in favor of their own values. Information is accumulating so fast and is so universally accessible that it can be used by anyone to serve or to manipulate. But the most important information is not online, it is felt somewhere right under your

sternum. Accordingly, you don’t have to sit in a corner business office or be a public politician to benefit from this book. Nearly everything written is in some way an advocacy for change, an arrow meant to pierce a metaphorical heart with such force as to cause shifts in possibility. If you feel deeply about the need for progress in any field, or if you want to discover more about how people emerge to lead change, Leading Out Loud will prove valuable to you. It is meant to support the revelation of the human soul, vulnerability, and courageous action to bring people together rather than surrendering to petty partisanship and self-aggrandizement. If you want to stir yourself or any others to make a difference in this world, I believe what’s here will benefit you. I hope it helps you step up, and gives you confidence to keep doing so.

January 2013

TERRY PEARCE

Pearce, T. (2013). Leading out loud : A guide for engaging others in creating the future. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. Created from ambertonlibrary-ebooks on 2022-01-28 18:03:20.

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Larkspur, California

Pearce, T. (2013). Leading out loud : A guide for engaging others in creating the future. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. Created from ambertonlibrary-ebooks on 2022-01-28 18:03:20.

C o p yr

ig h t ©

2 0 1 3 . Jo

h n W

ile y

& S

o n s,

I n co

rp o ra

te d . A

ll ri g h ts

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rv e d .