The Statement
A statement that closes a subject and one that extends it are built differently. The difference is whether it contains anything a reader can argue with,…
Read →News & articles
Stories of Idaho leadership.
Leader profiles, participant spotlights, leadership lessons, and updates from across the Idaho Leaders network.
Message Consistency Across People and Time
An organization that contradicts itself is assumed to be concealing something, and the assumption is usually wrong. Most inconsistency is drift, and drift is a design…
Read →Speaking for an Organization
The shift from your view to the institution's position is a real change in what you are permitted to say. Leaders who never make it stay…
Read →The Skip-Level Conversation
Thirty minutes with someone two levels down, run on a fixed rotation, with rules that keep it from undermining the manager in between. Format, questions, and…
Read →Hearing Bad News Well
The person telling you has already decided it was worth the risk. What you do in the following minute sets the price for everyone who hears…
Read →What Silence Means
A quiet room is reporting something, and the four things it might be reporting call for opposite responses. Reading it as agreement is the default and…
Read →Questions That Get Real Answers
Any concerns? reliably returns none, because answering it requires the person to volunteer that something is wrong. The fix is to ask questions whose easiest honest…
Read →Listening Is an Information System
Treated as a courtesy, listening gets the effort left over after the real work. Treated as the primary means by which a leader learns what is…
Read →Delivering a Decision People Will Dislike
Explain the reasoning without reopening the vote. The distinction is between telling people why and inviting them to relitigate, and it is carried almost entirely by…
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