PERMISSION TO REPUBLISH: This article may be republished in
newsletters and on web sites provided attribution is provided to
the author, and it appears with the included copyright, resource
box and live web site link. Email notice of intent to publish is
appreciated but not required: mail to: brent@actionleadership.com
Word count: 889
Summary: Nearly 350 years ago, the founder of the Quakers
uttered seven words to Pennsylvania's founder William Penn that
can live on today in your leadership challenges. Here's why
those words are important and how they can be put into daily
practice through a process the author has been teaching for more
than 20 years.
The Quakers, William Penn's Sword, And The Leadership Talk by
Brent Filson
William Penn (1644-1718),founder of what would become the state
of Pennsylvania, was on the receiving end of a succinct
Leadership Talk that still reverberates down the centuries and
into your everyday leadership challenges.
In his youth, Penn became an ardent Quaker. When he asked George
Fox (1624-1691), the founder of the non-violent religious sect,
if he should continue to wear a sword, a standard part of the
dress of Penn's aristocratic class, Fox replied, "Wear it as
long as thou canst."
Fox's reply not only illustrates a principle of Quakerism but
also a principle underpinning a leadership process I have been
teaching to thousands of leaders worldwide during the past 21
years: the Leadership Talk.
Get the Leadership Talk right, and it can boost your job
performance and career in many ways. But you can't get the
Leadership Talk right unless you understand this principle.
What is a Leadership Talk? You can understand it by first
understanding "the hierarchy of verbal persuasion." The lowest
levels of the hierarchy are speeches and presentations. They are
methods for communicating information. The highest level, the
most effective way for a leader to communicate, is through the
Leadership Talk. The Leadership Talk not only communicates
information; it does something much more: it helps the leader
establish deep, human, emotional connections with the people
they're talking to, enabling them to be much more effective.
As to the principle: it goes right to the heart of Fox's reply
to Penn. Fox ardently believed that every human has an "inner
light and spirit." The Quakers were guided by that light which
they believed came directly from God. They refused to bow to
authority and endorsed pacifism. Implicit in Fox's reply was
that it was Penn's choice, not any mandate from Fox or anyone
else, that governed the situation.
The Leadership Talk recognizes that leaders do nothing more
important than get results; and the best results happen not when
leaders are ordering people to go from point A to point B, say,
but when they are having them want to go from A to B. Instill
"want to" in others is what the Leadership Talk does. That "want
to" cannot be mandated; it is the free choice of the people. In
other words, great results happen in the realm of free choice of
the people you lead.
The Leadership Talk creates an environment conducive to people
exercising free choice. In order to create this environment, you
must first ask three questions about the people you'll speak to.
(1) Do you know the needs of the people? (2) Can you bring deep
belief to what you're saying to them? (3) Can you have the
people take action?
If you say "no" to any one of these questions, you can't give a
Leadership Talk.
Asking and answering these questions many times daily throughout
your career with people of all ranks and functions will help you
create a fortunate environment of free choice leading to great
results.
Let's see how these questions played out with Fox and Penn.
DO YOU KNOW THE NEEDS OF YOUR AUDIENCE? Fox's reply went to the
heart of Penn's needs. Penn was the scion of an aristocratic
family who in his youth had powerful religious experiences.
Penn's needs were clear: He wanted to live by the imperatives of
those experiences, which were deeply and personally felt. Fox's
spiritual revelations, to use a Quaker saying, "spoke to his
condition."
CAN YOU BRING DEEP CONVICTION TO WHAT YOU'RE SAYING? George Fox
certainly spoke with conviction. Penn described Fox in his
journal as ".... plain and powerful in preaching, fervent in
prayer ... a discerner of other men's spirits, and very much
master of his own." He added that Fox was able to "speak a word
in due season to the conditions and capacities of most,
especially to them that were weary, and wanted soul's rest ....
valiant in asserting the truth, bold in defending it ...." The
two met when Fox was being jailed frequently for his beliefs.
Coming from a man holding such deep convictions and being
repeatedly jailed defending them, the words "Wear it while thou
canst" deeply impressed William Penn.
CAN YOU HAVE THE AUDIENCE TAKE ACTION? The next time Penn saw
Fox, he was not wearing his sword. He said, "I wore it as long
as I could." He would never wear a sword again. After he joined
the outlawed and persecuted Quakers, he was exiled from English
society, thrown out of Oxford University, and arrested several
times. Yet he never wavered from promoting and living by the
Quaker ideals. That action, NOT putting on his sword (sometimes
the best action is no action) when all of social convention
cried out that he should, was made all the more notable and
instructive because it came from his own deeply-felt urging.
Mind you, don't mistake the Leadership Talk principle of free
choice as some psychological delicacy. I'm talking results here.
Leadership is all about getting results. The principle does and
should have practical functions. The point is those functions
are best manifested in environments of deep, human, emotional
relationships. Such relationships can most effectively be
established by your being open to and trusting in the choices
people make. Guided by the principle of "Wear it as long as thou
canst", you can markedly improve your leadership effectiveness.
2006 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
|
