Leonard Downie, who has served as Executive Editor of The Washington Post for the past 17 years, articulated his management approach. It is brilliant and deceptively simple:
"You hire people smarter and more talented than you and enable them to do their best work."
Three of the 7 business story types provide perfect vehicles for talking about your leadership approach in a way that sticks:
- The story that tells who you are as an individual: Rather than making a statement or declaration, you think back over your career and identify specific times when you did hire a smarter person and stood back to let them do their best work. You may have felt nervous (the crisis) have faced obstacles (a demanding board of directors or the public) and yet you kept your promise to yourself and to the other person and the outcome was positive.
- The story that transmits the company values: This management approach relates to core values such as integrity and trust. If you articulate this approach when you're hiring people, you must stick to it even when things seems shaky or it would expedient to do it yourself. Crafting a story that demonstrates these long-term, intrinsic values communicates to the audience that when you say core values, you mean core values.
- A future story: The essence of a future story is that you paint a picture of the future that engages the listeners and helps them imagine their part in the eventual outcome. When you're speaking to senior executives and directors, you can ask them to "imagine a year from now and we are at the top of the list of Best Places to Work. How did we get there? We got there because we hire people smarter than we are and we enable them to do their best work. For example,..."
How do you use stories to create a sticky message about your leadership approach? Post your thoughts in our comment link.
Recent Comments