the ever-curious PR guy

business + story + audience

How do you make a CEO a thought leader?

The Corporate Executive Board's Communications Executive Council Forum had this inquiry online today:

"Our CEO would like to be seen as a "thought leader" in our highly regulated industry. He believes that, by doing so, our company can improve its ability to influence legislators and policymakers. Has anyone done this before? How can I help him become a "thought leader"? What are the types of activities an executive should participate in to demonstrate his thought leadership on behalf of the company? Thanks for any/all suggestions."

My answer:

The most important thing is that your CEO must have something really insightful and "game-changing" to share. A thought leader is just that, someone who leads a pack with ideas or insights that are meant to change the way something works. So, from a messaging perspective, your CEO needs to have a really interesting message/idea that is strategic to the company/organization's success as well as valuable/relevant for stakeholders and a broader audience within your industry. It also helps if your CEO is personally passionate about the idea/message.

Second comes availability. One thing is wanting to be a thought leader, and the other thing is actually putting the work and time it takes to influence thinking. Thought leaders pay their dues out speaking in front of audiences, dialoguing with smaller groups, having meetings and conversations with key audiences, and many other formats. So, there needs to be commitment from your CEO to be available and dedicate space to this effort.

Third is generosity and patience. Thought leaders spend a lot of time "experimenting" in the face of unknowns. In other words, unlike the quantifiable world of business management, engaging as a thought leader leads you to paths sometimes where you're not sure whehter you're talking to the right audience (ie, "will this audience actually have an effect on what I'm trying to change"). So, you must be willing to try (and fail) and learn what works and be patient with the journey.

Fourth, you need to have the communications management know-how and tools to phyiscally create platform opportunities for your CEO thought leader to share his/her message. That means a well-oiled machine that is seeking engagements of many different forms and integrating media, social media, follow up, speaking coaching and other communications functions to maximize your efforts.

Last but not least is measurement. What is the strategic reason for doing this? What do you want to change? What action do you want to create? Once you have the answers, gauge all activities on whether they will help achieve these goals.

Measuring charisma in communications

Ran across an interesting study published by Organization Science titled "In Charisma We Trust: The Effects of CEO Charismatic Visions on Securities Analysts."

The gist?

Charismatic behavior by a chief executive positively influences financial analysts, leading to an increase of a few points in the chief executive’s company’s stock price. Which is NOT a good thing in the “rational” world of investor relations (according to the study), where analysts recommendations to “hold” or “buy” should be based on rational data and financial and operational evidence representing a company’s “real” value.

But, in my world of public relations, we have a different mindset about this kind of effect. If charisma helps our CEO and other leaders build bridges with audiences and stakeholders, then let us look closely and learn. So, I went looking in the study for this “charismatic” behavior, hoping to find the kind of revelation that I can take to the boss and maybe, just maybe, get me a salary increase. What did I find?

The basics, really. According to the study:

“The authors studied 367 CEO transitions that occurred between 1990 and 1999. They examined the executives’ inaugural letters to shareholders, looking for charismatic language that challenged the status quo, empowered investors and company stakeholders, and couched goals in lofty moral or ideological terms rather than dull pragmatism. To evaluate the language in these documents, the authors used a text analysis system that assigns each sentence and phrase to one of a series of themes and then analyzes the words to see which ideas were stressed most often. (This is the same language evaluation technique often used by newspapers and political organizations to characterize the content of presidential speeches.) From their analysis of the inaugural letters, the authors determined that inclusive terms, such as we, us, and our, and phrases that express a belief in the collective way in which goals will be achieved are used most frequently by charismatic leaders.”

Inclusive terms. We. Us. Our. Expressed belief in the team of people behind the company or organization.

The basics.

Why we hate the oil companies -- can we all just get along?

Click here to download:
sb59_10207-preprint.pdf (1.19 MB)
(download)

Former president of Shell in the U.S. John Hofmeister will soon be releasing what looks to be an interesting book on why the public and oil companies just don't get along, and what can be done about the disconnect (major oil spill accidents notwithstanding).

The article above (from strategy+business), is a great summary of John's thoughts, which pose a great challenge to those of us involved in communications and public relations for oil and gas companies. The industry is at a crossroads where we must choose whether to stay buried inside our corporate walls and simply "message" what we think people need to hear, or to take the risk of being open and transparent and share with the public the great minds we have working for us and their desire to do the right thing. 
 
Lots of work to do, so little time...
 

PS, shameless plug for John, you can pre-order his book here.

What corporate leaders and communicators can learn from live music

I think many times corporate leaders and communicators, when it comes to communicating with audiences and stakeholders, think you can package messages and distribute them just like music records and CDs.

As Bob Moog, inventor of the synthesizer, reminds me in this video, we need to think more about interactions, the equivalent to live music.

This means being secure in ourselves and not relying fully on the corporate message script. Investing on nurturing communities and relationships. Respecting differences of opinion and understanding that audiences come driven by a variety of reference points. Sharing knowledge. And more importantly allowing value to come out of the interactions themselves.

We're bound to get bumped by the crowd, or spill a little on ourselves, but it is the experience, the interaction, that matters, not ourselves.

(download)

Sent from my iPhone