Chapter 12: Leadership Through Effective External Relations

Chapter 12: Leadership Through Effective External Relations

Managing external relations effectively is essential for organizational leaders In this chapter you will learn to develop an external relations strategy, build and maintain a positive corporate image, work with the news media, and handle crisis communications.
All communication activity that touches a company’s outside constituencies-such as advertising, sale promotions, direct marketing, or public relations-falls into the category of external relations.

All of these are important and influence how the public perceives a company. Also, these activities must all be coordinated as part of an overall external relations campaign so that all messages are consistent and delivered effectively. However, the focus of this chapter is primarily on the activities usually considered public relations, including press and media management, philanthropic activities, community involvement, investor relations, and external publications.

Companies must manage all aspects of external relations very carefully. They all affect the company’s public ethos. In most organizations, the leadership communication skill of the manager has the greatest impact on that external ethos through their involvement in public relations.

All leaders of organizations must realize that their companies’ reputations depend on their internal ethos and the perceptions of their many external stakeholders. They cannot ignore the importance of establishing and maintaining a positive reputation or the need to manage external relations to keep it.

Question

1. What are the best practices of companies valuing reputation?

·        Design campaigns to promote the company as a whole

·        Carry out ambitious programs to champion product quality and customer service

·        Maintain systems to screen employee activities for reputation side-effects

·        Demonstrate sensitivity to the environment

·        Hire internal communication staff and retain public relations firms

·        Demonstrate ‘corporate citizenship’

2. What is the Strategic Communications?

The Strategic Communications function of External Affairs encompasses two areas:

·        Media Relations
As the primary liaison to external news media, we promote USF St. Petersburg as a whole, including the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Education, the College of Business and the Nelson Poynter Memorial Library. We coordinate incoming media requests for faculty experts, USFSP information and other data. We initiate stories that convey the dynamic research, teaching and service that takes place at USFSP.

·        Web Services
Web Services is the starting point and a resource for web development of official USF St. Petersburg University Web pages. Web Services is responsible for leading university-wide Web site development and design projects. This includes strategic development and integration of related technologies, such as multimedia and content management systems, as well as drafting of appropriate best practices.

3. Steps to Developing a Strategy

·        Identify your major audiences or stakeholders

·        Draft, refine, and test your major messages

·        Select, limit, and coach your spokesperson(s)

·        Determine the most effective media

·        Work out the best timing

·        Monitor the results

Chapter 11: Leadership through Strategic Internal Communication

Chapter 11: Leadership through Strategic Internal Communication

This chapter focuses on establishing leadership through communicating effectively with an organization’s internal audiences. It describes the strategic role employee communication can play by ensuring that employees are well informed and, therefore, positioned to contribute to the success of the organization.

The leader in this situation will be inspiring cultural change, a transformation in the way group decision makers think about their own operations and behave toward other group leaders.

Communication helps shape the culture of any organization and effective internal communication is absolutely essential to bring about any transformation in that culture.

In Conclusion, from the day-to-day exchanges to the major efforts associated with organizational change, internal communication is important to success of any organization. The strategy for internal communication consists of the basic components of any effective communication strategy, such as audience analysis, targeted messages, and appropriate media, but it is also much more than processes and products. Leaders need all their leadership communication abilities to inspire, motivate, and guide employees to support their visions and their goals for the organization.

Question

1. What are Strategic Objectives?

·        Strategic objectives help to make a vision more meaningful and actionable

·        They should be Specific actions designed to help accomplish the vision and bring sustainable competitive advantage

·        Longer-term measurable targets, usually divided into two categories:

- Quantitative goals

- Qualitative goals

2. What is a Vision?

·        The vision is what the company wants to become.

·        An effective vision does the following:

- Reflects the company leaders’ willingness to project into the future       Expresses aspirations

·        Describes an inspiring new reality, achievable in a reasonable time frame

Guides internal actions

·        Usually starts with the words “to become” or “to create”

3. Why Use Mission and Vision Statements?

·        Establish a firm foundation of goals, standards, and objectives to guide corporate planners and managers

·        Satisfy both company’s need for efficiency and employees’ need for group identity

·        Inspire individual action, determine behavior, and fuel motivation

Provide direction to keep everyone moving in the same direction

Chapter 10: High-performance team leadership

Chapter 10: High-performance team leadership

In this chapter, we learn that, because teams are so commonly found in most organizations today, there is need for managers to learn how best to work with teams and to help ensure that teams perform at their peak.

There is need for careful thought to be put into deciding whether to form a team for a particular purpose to meet a particular need, or to work through individuals acting alone and once the decision to form a team is made, there is need to ensure that the team has focus and delivers the results for which it was formed.

Leaders have to establish the team work processes by creating the team charter, use action and work plans, delivering the results and learn from the team experience

Team bring together the best talent available to solve a problem, one way to improve the team emotional intelligence or ability to work together is for the team to know about each other’s position and responsibilities, team experience, expectations, personality, and cultural differences
More and more professionals are using virtual teams to connect to and work with other around to globe. Today most team work is virtual.

Managers need to understand the people side of teams and learn how to address issues such as cultural differences, different personality types within the group and varying expectations of members from the team and the team experience.

In the organized private sector here in Nigeria, there is a prevalence of teams in many organizations. There are sales teams, marketing teams; production teams etc. focused on helping organizations achieve their set goals and objectives. Hence, understanding team dynamics is crucial to one’s success as a manager.

Question

1. What is a high performance team and what is teamwork?

·        A team is a small group of people with complementary skills, who work actively together to achieve a common purpose for which they hold themselves collectively accountable.

·        Teams are one of the major forces behind revolutionary changes in contemporary organizations.

The nature of teamwork.

·        Team members actively work together in such a way that all of their respective skills are utilized to achieve a common purpose.

·        Teamwork is the central foundation of any high performance team.

2. What is team building?

·        Team members and leaders must work hard to achieve teamwork.

Team building helps in achieving teamwork.

Team building: A sequence of planned activities designed to gather and analyze data on the functioning of a group and to initiate changes designed to improve teamwork and increase group effectiveness.

Five step process.

·        Problem or opportunity in team effectiveness.

·        Gathering and analysis.

·        Planning for team improvements.

·        Actions to improve team functioning.

·        Evaluation of results.

3. What can be done to improve team processes?

·        Increased emphasis on teams and teamwork:

·        Presents challenges to people accustomed to more traditional ways of working.

·        Creates complications due to multiple and shifting memberships.

·        Requires team leaders and members to deal positively with group dynamics issues.

·        Requires ongoing team building.

Chapter 9: Meetings: Leadership and Productivity

Chapter 9: Meetings: Leadership and Productivity

This chapter will help leaders and other meeting planners avoid the seven deadly sins of meetings.

The Seven Deadly Sins of Meetings

1. People don’t take meetings seriously.

2. Meetings are too long.

3. People wander off the topic.

4. Nothing happens once the meeting ends.

5. People don’t tell the truth.

6. Meetings are always missing important information, so they postpone critical decisions.

7. Meetings never get better.

Meetings can be small or large, internal or external, frequent or infrequent. Meeting leaders or planners need to define a clear purpose and analyze the audience to determine whether a meeting is the best forum for what they want to accomplish. Meetings often have multiple objectives, but effective meetings, like good presentations and e-mails, usually have one main overall purpose. The purpose of an informational meeting could be as significant as introducing a new vision or as mundane as providing a progress report intended to expedite a project. In determining the agenda topics and the meeting tasks, leaders need to estimate the time it will take to cover each topic and accomplish each objective as realistically as possible. Selecting the right attendees is important to the success of a meeting. The attendees we invite should be the ones who can contribute to achieving our objectives.

Leaders will want to consider the best setting for the kind of meeting they plan to lead. The setting considerations should include locations, equipment, and layout of the room. The meeting will be more productivity if the attendees know and use common problem-solving tools: Deciding on the Decision-Making Approach, Clarifying Leader and Attendees Roles and Responsibilities, Establishing Meeting Ground Rules, and Using Common Problem-Solving Approach. Leaders will be able to stop or at least minimize most of the usual meetings problem by careful planning and by developing and enforcing ground rules. Skilled facilitators should be prepared to (1) handle some of the most common meeting problems, (2) manage meeting conflict, and (3) deal with issues arising from cultural differences.

Ensuring That Meetings Lead to Action: Assign specific tasks to specific people, Review all actions and responsibilities at the end of the meeting, Provide a meeting summary with assigned deliverable included, and Follow up on action items in a reasonable time.

Question

1. How to Improve Business Meeting Productivity and Effectiveness?

Companies have business meetings where several employees are gathered together in a room to discuss a plan or issue. Meetings need to be productive and effective since time is diverted from employees' schedules to accommodate the meeting. Being aware of the importance of business meeting productivity will help you consciously strive towards making your company meetings work for your team.

2. When it just doesn’t work our the way you planned—The failure of teams?

·        6 out of 10 work teams fail

·        It may take a year or more for new teams to reach pre-team performance levels

·        SDWT’s work least well during downsizing (when most needed)

·        58% of executives express frustration in developing and sustaining team motivation

·        >50% of teams fail due to unclear or changing objectives, lack of accountability or management support

·        Managers report limiting effort on 56% of their teams

3. Differences between teams and individuals

·        Social facilitation: people are more motivated to perform better with others, especially on motor tasks, when comfortable, well-trained, & good work habits

·        Learning: Teams learn faster than individuals when there is division of labor, contributions are additive, feedback is available & accepted

·        Risky Decisions: Greater risk taken with teams that are excessively cohesive, under great pressure to decide, norms against reflection, & diffusion of responsibility

·        Problem Solving: teams produce more and better quality solutions, based on interest in task, most skilled members, and error checking

·        Time Efficiency: Teams usually take more time to complete a task

Idea Production: Teams continue to produce after individuals run dry,    especially with training and cohesion.

Chapter 8: Cross-Cultural Literacy and Communication

Chapter 8: Cross-Cultural Literacy and Communication

In this chapter, we learnt how emotional intelligence relates to leadership style and how cultural literacy relates to how effectively one communicates as a leader. There are definite steps that can be taken to improve one’s emotional intelligence and how well one. As a leader, one’s listening skills can also be improved upon. In communicating, there is need to pay close attention both verbal and non verbal communication elements in order to succeed as a leader. Mentoring is key part of leadership communication and providing feedback is essential to developing staff that report to us as managers. In the context of emotional intelligence, psychological tools like the MBTI can be used to understand one better and help identify possible areas for improvement. Leaders need to understand culture diversity, called cross-cultural literacy. First of all they have to understand a definition of culture. Culture is a fuzzy set of attitudes, beliefs, behavioral conventions and basic assumptions and values that are shared by a group of people and that influence each member’s behavior and their interpretations of the meaning of other people’s behavior. These five variables are important to all cultures that are context, information flow, time, language, power and equality, collectivism vs. individualism, and spirituality and tradition. These are the variables anthropologists use most often when making distinctions about culture. When we interaction in new social medium, we should be open and respectful, know the social customs, learn as much about the culture, history people, and even language as reasonable, obtain pointers and feedback, be patient, flexible, and value, keep a sense of humor, and keep language simple and avoid jargon. Connecting and Communicating across Cultures: By understanding and appreciating cultural diversity, leaders can better know how to connect and communicate with all of the different audiences that form the professional environment and most of the professional word today. Basically, to connect and communicate, leader should adopt the following approaches to any cross-cultural encounter: Be open and respectful, Know the social customs, Learn as much about the culture, history, people, and even languages as reasonable, Obtain pointers and feedback from members of the culture, Be patient, be flexible, and value the time needed to develop relationships, Keep a sense of humor, and Keep language simple and avoid jargon. This chapter provides a beginning and should have increased the recognition of the importance and value of understanding and appreciating cultural differences. This chapter has provided an introduction and basic foundation for leadership communication across cultures.

Question

1. What is culture?

Culture is the set of values, beliefs, rules, and institutions held by a specific group of people. Main components include: aesthetics, values and attitudes, manners and customs, social structure, religion, personal communication, education, and physical and material environments.

·        Accommodating Culture: Avoiding Ethnocentricity

1.  Ethnocentricity is the belief that one’s own ethnic group or culture is superior to that of others. It causes people to view other cultures in terms of their own and overlook human and environmental differences. 3

2. Ethnocentricity can undermine business projects when a firm’s employees are insensitive to cultural nuances.

·        Understanding Culture: Developing Cultural Literacy

1. Managers working directly in international business should develop cultural literacy—detailed knowledge about a culture that enables a person to function effectively within it.

2. Cultural literacy brings a company closer to customer needs and desires

and improves competitiveness.

2. Why teach cultural literacy?

To become more aware and tolerant of different cultures and religions.

• To understand differences and similarities in people.

• Become aware of different dialects

• To know how to interact with people from other cultures.

3. How to teach cultural literacy through power point?

Define cultural literacy using age appropriate language

• Make slides related to the children and their cultures

• Allow for discussion and “think time”

• Use pictures and other “new” technologies

Chapter 7: Emotional Intelligence and Interpersonal Skills for Leaders

Chapter 7: Emotional Intelligence and Interpersonal Skills for Leaders

In this chapter, leaders need strong emotional intelligence and outstanding interpersonal skills. Emotional intelligence also called emotional quotient or EQ. Without emotional intelligence, leaders cannot communicate and connect with others effectively. Our successful interactions with others depend on communication: The basis of any relationship is communication. Without communication – be it sign language, body language, e-mail, or face-to-face conversation. Appreciating the value of emotional intelligence: The leaders reveal emotional intelligence through their communication ability and style. Increasing our own self awareness: The first step toward emotional intelligence is self-awareness. What is important to realize is that we can develop our emotional intelligence and improve our leadership communication ability and need to understand strengths and weaknesses first? Improving nonverbal skills: Nonverbal expressions are usually categorized into one of the following groups: Appearance, Paralanguage, Kinesics, Occulesics, Proxemics, Facial expressions, Olfactics, and Chronomics. The meaning of nonverbal communication involving body language differs substantially from culture to culture.

Improving listening skills: Good listening skills are essential, and the lack of them hinders many people’s careers. Most do not realize that good listening is hard work. This chapter provides 10 ways to improve listening habits:

-          Stop talking.

-          Stop thinking what you are going to say.

-          Avoid multitasking.

-          Try to empathize with the speaker.

-          Don’t interrupt.

-          Focus on the speaker closely.

-          Do not let appearance distract.

-          Listen for ideas.

-          Listen with an open mind.

-          Pay attention to nonverbal cues.

Motivating and Mentoring: Leaders need to be particularly sensitive to the feelings of others and able to establish ways to motivate and guide them that work with our personality and with theirs.

Question

1. What is the House’s Path-Goal Theory?

A contingency model of leadership proposing that effective leaders can motivate subordinates to achieve goals by:

1.     Clearly identifying the outcomes that subordinates are trying to obtain from their jobs.

2.     Rewarding subordinates with these outcomes for high-performance and attainment of work goals

3.     Clarifying the paths leading to the attainment of work goals

2. What is transformational leadership?

Leadership that:

1.     Makes subordinates aware of the importance of  their jobs are for the organization and how necessary it is for them to perform those jobs as best they can so that the organization can attain its goals

2.     Makes subordinates aware of their own needs for personal growth, development, and accomplishment

3.     Motivates workers to work for the good of the organization, not just for their own personal gain or benefit

3. Explain how contingency models of leadership enhance our understanding of effective leadership and management in organizations?

1.     Leadership

·        The process by which a person exerts influence over others and inspires, motivates and directs their activities to achieve group or organizational goals.

2.     Personal Leadership Style

·        The specific ways in which a manager chooses to influence others shapes the way that manager approaches the other principal tasks of management.

·        The challenge is for managers
at all levels to develop an
effective personal management
style.

3.     Distinction between managers and leaders

·        Managers establish and implement procedures to ensure smooth functioning

·        Leaders look to the future and chart the course for the organization

Chapter6: Graphics and PowerPoint with a Leadership Edge

Chapter6: Graphics and PowerPoint with a Leadership Edge

This chapter focus on when and how to use graphic in effectively. The author gives us some helpful tool guide to let us know how to make good presentation. When to use graphic there are following purpose we should know it. To reinforce the message, to provide a road map to the structure of a presentation, to illustrate relationships or concepts visually, to support an assertion, to emphasize important ideas, to maintain and enhance interest. The next thing is for data charts one thing is very important, you need to clarify your message and then you can determine the type and content of the graph. Creating meaningful effective text layouts. In here give us some guideline, do not use too many words on the slide, do not have only one bullet or sub-bullet as a category, keep the text simple but present meaningful content. Leaders focus specially on the content and design principles that should follow whenever creating data or text chart for leadership presentation: Conveying messages clearly, Selecting the most effective colors and fonts. Making the most of PowerPoint  as a design and presentation tool:  The primary focus is on effective slide design in PowerPoint with the goal of making slides look better so they communicate the content more effectively and provide the presenter leadership edge. There are some guidelines would help us to understand more clearly, selecting and designing layouts and templates, interesting graphs, using animation , and delivering effectively PowerPoint.

Question

1. Top Ten Tips for Effectively Using Graphics and PowerPoint 

1. Decide on your message, determine what information or data best supports it, and then decide how best to show that data graphically.

2. Use graphics for the right reasons, such as to reinforce your message, to provide a roadmap of your presentation, to support assertions.

3. Select the right kind of graph to illustrate your message.

4. Use integrity in selecting and designing all graphics, making sure any graphs do not distort the data.

5. Keep your graphic simple. The graphic should make your message easier to understand, not more difficult; however, make sure it is meaningful and actually says something.

6. Use a title that captures the “so what” of your slide so that your audience sees immediately the message the graph is communicating.

7. Create your own PowerPoint template or modify the standard ones Microsoft provides so that the presentation reflects your personality or that of your company.

8. Make the font size and any graphic images large enough for the audience to see even from the back of the room. 

9. Be careful with your color selections; go for contrast but be conservative. 

10. Avoid overusing or misusing animation. 

2. How to creating meaningful and effective text layouts?

–       Do not put too many words on the slides

–       Do not have any one bullet as a category

–       Use hanging indents more than one line

–       Avoid widow words, Keep text simple but meaningful

–       Make sure all bulleted items are parallel in structure.

3. What are the guidelines to use animation effectively?

–       Use animation only to control the delivery of the message or help the audience with the message.

–       Do not overuse animation or add it just because it is possible.

–       When animation is used to bring in text or auto shapes, the text and shapes should appear or come in from the most logical direction and shortest distance.

–       Avoid using several different animation techniques in one presentation.

–       Make sure to test the animation by running the presentation in slide view from beginning to end.