Bell Pottinger chairman Kevin Murray interviewed 60 business bosses to find out how they communicate with employees to inspire them to achieve outstanding results
Take two business leaders, both equally smart and capable of devising strategies to grow their business. One succeeds in executing his plans, the other doesn't. Why? This is the question that had intrigued Kevin Murray during two decades of working with chairmen and chief executives both as a consultant and in the various companies where he was employed.
"The people I was working with were clever," he says. "They didn't get to where they were without being very smart and able to devise strategies that on the face of it should have worked. But I was constantly intrigued as to why some of them succeeded in getting things done and others didn't."
Murray thought that the key factor was how well they communicated and inspired people – both inside and outside the company – to align them to a cause. He interviewed 60 leaders including Sir Stuart Rose, former chairman of Marks & Spencer, McLaren's Ron Dennis and National Trust director general Dame Fiona Reynolds to try to support his theory. "Just about everyone I spoke to identified communication as a top-three skill of leadership, if not the second most important," says Murray. "The ability to think clearly and strategically was inevitably placed at number one. But they always pointed out that the best strategy was useless if people could not be inspired to help deliver it."
Murray believes leadership has been transformed in the digital age. "When I first started working with leaders there was a command-and-control type of leadership – we'll make the decisions and tell everybody else what needs to be done. People now consent to being led and you have to win their support and allegiance. Most importantly you have to win their willingness to give discretionary effort, which is often the difference between an OK performance and an outstanding one."
The digital age has also made leadership more transparent. Murray believes this visibility is one of the biggest drivers of change. "Everything leaders do is much more visible both inside and outside the company. They are scrutinised and challenged. But, crucially, everything moves at such an incredible pace. One person who has a grudge against your company because you've given them bad service
now has the power to get online and get noticed by millions around the world because some news agency has picked up their story. Leaders don't have the luxury of taking their time anymore, they must move at incredible speed."
BE AN AGILE LEADER
So how do you deal with this speed? Murray reckons the answer is to create agility, which means nurturing leaders throughout your organisation. But here lies the paradox. How do you give away decision-making power to more people across the business when any of those decisions can instantly ruin your reputation in such a fish-bowl world?
"This is the big challenge and what all the leaders were talking about," says Murray. "They spent a huge amount of time talking about a sense of purpose, a strong set of values and creating a framework for leaders to make decisions that enable them to do the right thing at the right speed in the right place at the right time."
Lord Sharman, chairman of insurer Aviva, agrees the big issue for leaders is speed. "You don't have as much time to think as you did before. You have to empower people – it's a business imperative. You can only do this through a clear set of ethical and behavioural guidelines. Those values and standards are the most important thing. If you've got that strong framework in place then people understand how to behave and they can make their own decisions about what feels right."
In order to instil these values into employees they must feel part of the story, says Murray. Knowing their part in your business engages people and gives each of them a sense of purpose. He quotes the story of the janitor who spoke to President Kennedy when he visited the Nasa headquarters years before the mission to land a man on the moon. When asked by the president what he did, the janitor replied: "I'm helping to put a man on the moon, Sir."
Softer skills
Murray says emotional engagement is key to the success of leaders but that most are highly rational and all too often choose to focus on the numbers. But although knowing what the organisation's financial or other performance goals are is crucial, it is not emotionally engaging or inspiring to most employees. "The task of a leader is to inspire people to achieve great things and being inspired is all about how we are made to feel," he says. "If we feel terrific, respected and valued, we will do wonderful things. Leaders need to develop these softer skills."
Murray's observations are backed up in a global survey by the Institute of Leadership and Management, which found that HR professionals believe the ability to understand, motivate and inspire others is the characteristic that is most important when recruiting senior leaders.
But although Murray has noticed a significant swing to managing soft skills such as relationships, reputation, trust and engagement, he says the problem is that leaders are not being trained in these areas. "You can be trained to do a media interview or make a presentation but no matter how good an orator you are, if you can't connect with people you can't align them to your cause."
Murray says leaders should place communication and people skills at the top of their training agendas. "Great leadership is what makes the difference, helping us to innovate, develop new products, serve customers better, grow and survive difficult times – and boy have we ever needed it more."
Kevin Murray will be in conversation with IoD Director General Simon Walker on 13 March at 116 Pall Mall, London, SW1Y 5ED. To reserve a place
The Language of Leaders: How top CEOs communicate to inspire, influence and achieve results by Kevin Murray (Kogan Page, £19.99)
Kevin Murray lists his 12 principles of better communication
1. If you aspire to be a better communicator learn to be yourself more.
2. State a compelling mission and a powerful set of values.
3. Combine this with a vivid picture of the future,
which you communicate relentlessly to change present behaviour.
4. Keep employees focused on the relationships that your organisation depends on for success, and make building trust a priority.
5. Make workplace engagement a goal.
6. Understand audiences before trying to communicate with them.
7. Listen in new and powerful ways, and learn to ask the right questions.
8. Communicate with a potent point of view.
9. Use more stories and anecdotes to inspire the right behaviour.
10. Be aware of signals you send beyond your words.
11. Prepare properly for public platforms – your reputation is at stake.
12. Learn, rehearse, review and improve – strive to be a better communicator.
