My preparation for a talk on effective leadership brought me to research findings that answer the question: What exactly are the traits of an effective leader? Well-known performance psychologist and leadership consultant Stan Beecham’s words resonated with me, being at a point in my career where I have set a new higher goal for myself while I’m at a crossroads. Dr. Beecham said, “You have to be scared…a little.”
He argues that “you should only be 60 percent sure you are going to achieve a goal that you’ve set either for yourself or for your team.” He said thinking about your goal should make you sweat, just a little. According to a study published in the Journal of Consumer Research, being ambitious actually makes a person happy. The results of the study revealed that people who set high goals are more satisfied than their counterparts who set low expectations for themselves and their organizations. When you set big goals you will get big rewards. My explanation here is simple: when you set a goal to be excellent, you also raise the bar, motivate and push yourself further and farther. So even if you are not able to reach perfection, at least, you have brought yourself or your team just a few levels away from it. In achieving this, you have been victorious. If you are too confident about reaching your goals, you won’t be proactive anymore. Being overconfident can leave us blindsided. If we are not a little scared about our ambitions, we will not be able to foresee possible problems that may come our way, leaving us unprepared and incapable of implementing contingency measures.
I emphasized the same message that resonated with me to leaders of the Society of English, Communication and Math Majors in the College of Arts & Sciences of STI West Negros University when I gave a talk during their leadership training. I told them that in order for them to be effective leaders not only in school but also in the organizations that they will be part of a few years from now, is to abandon that false sense of entitlement, especially when they perceive their leadership roles as one that gives them the privilege to order people around and boss team members into doing what they want them to do. A genuine leader is a human behavior hacker – one who leads and bases his or her actions on how humans work. He is fascinated with people. He discovers the forces that make humans tick. Understanding the behavior of people in organizations is a leader’s super power.
Since an effective leader is an expert at motivating his people, the attendees who were officers of the Supreme Student Government, SECOMM, Kasadyahan Core Committees, class mayors and organization advisers were introduced to the Pygmalion Effect which every leader must embrace. This principle simply tells us that if you want to motivate the people around you, put away your wallet! Yes this may sound counter-intuitive because most of our society is structured around using cash motivators (salary increase, bonus, etc.) to increase our happiness. But the study of a professor and his associates on social rewards found that receiving praise and not cash was the best way to motivate participants.
Researchers asked 48 participants to complete a finger tapping activity and found out that the groups that received praise showed a significantly higher rate of improvement relative to participants who received cash. WHY? The researchers discovered that social rewards such as praise are registered in the same part of the brain that lights up when the subject is rewarded with money.
What does this tell us? When we assign someone with a positive label such as being highly intelligent or diligent or an extra miler, that actually cues the individual to live up to that label and then he or she performs better. If you are a genuine and effective leader, you give your team and those around you genuinely good labels. You will highlight all the people in your life to be their best selves.
My favorite part of the talk was asking the attendees what they think the world’s great leaders use in order to persuade those working under them and with them to do something: logic or emotion? Logic appeals to the head and includes language that establishes reason, proof and insight, often citing research and statistics to support main arguments. Intuition appeals to a person’s gut. It establishes credibility through language that convinces audiences to see the speaker as an expert including achievements, testimonials and case studies. Emotion on the other hand, appeals to the heart. These are stories that include the imagery and metaphors that help audiences become personally invested in the message.
Researchers from Quantified Communications analyzed the communication patterns of global leaders on Fortune’s 2016 list to see if they communicate differently. Using their analytics platform, they measured content samples from each leader to measure persuasion to analyze 3 different tactics: logic, intuition, and emotion. Surprisingly, the global leaders are using an unexpected blend of tactics. Instead of relying on logic alone, the world’s greatest leaders like Jeff Bezos (No.1), founder and CEO of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel (No.2), and Apple’s Tim Cook (No.5), used 2.9 times more appeals to emotion and 3.4 times more appeals to intuition.
Vanessa Van Edwards, author and behavioral investigator said this preference from emotion and intuition-driven language over logic and data was universal among the leaders on Fortune’s list. “Your leadership takeaway: leaders should use a blend of emotion, intuition and logic to appeal to their audiences. But, focusing on the heart is more important than focusing on the head,” underscored Van Edwards.
Spending hours doing something and then realizing later that it was a complete waste of time is very frustrating, right? But most of us are guilty of this unproductive practice. Van Edwards calls this empty calorie time which means wasting time doing nothing but still using valuable brain energy. A good example is skimming social media pages instead of meditating or getting a good sleep or exercising. She likens empty calorie time activities to eating cotton candy when one is starving. You keep on eating but you will never get satisfied nor will you ever get nourishment.
“Leaders are extremely purposeful with their mental calories. They do not waste mental energy on junk activities just because they are procrastinating, or delaying to do a task that they dread, or are just bored. They consume and stick to nutritious mental nuggets. If you wanna take a break, take a real break instead of watching TV or surfing the net,” she explained.
According to one study, when people were mind wandering, they reported being happy only 56 percent of the time, that is because in mind wandering the brain cannot rebuild. It’s stuck in limbo. Effective leaders are judicious with their mental energy. If they need a break, they take a real break like exercising and creative activities that can boost mental activity.
And finally, every effective leader invests in communication skills. In our hyperconnected world, leaders have to be the best in class communicators and they have to do this in a variety of settings and across countless channels. Here are some very interesting facts: leaders spend 75 to 80 percent of their working hours communicating, more than 60 percent of consumers say their perception of a CEO affects their opinion of the company as a whole and millennials who account for 21 percent of consumer purchasing power, buy based on purpose and cause from brands they love led by people they believe in. Leaders are expected to be role models of stellar executive communication because they inspire, motivate and empower people around them. Without exemplary communication skills, a leader would never be heard nor understood by others.*
