The
Secret Language
of
Leadership:
How Leaders Inspire Action through Narrative
A book by Steve Denning
To be published in October 2007 by Jossey Bass
Is it really possible to say anything new on leadership that has been already said many times before? A number of distinguished leadership experts believe so:
Advance praise for The Secret Language of Leadership
"Steve Denning is the Warren Buffett of business communication. He sees things others don't and is able to explain them so the rest of us can understand.”
Chip Heath, co-author of Made to Stick
Professor of Organizational Behavior,
Graduate School of Business, Stanford University
"I highly recommend you get it today and read it tonight. Tomorrow will be an entirely different kind of day if you do.
Jim Kouzes
Co-author of the best-selling, The Leadership Challenge
and A Leader’s Legacy
How do leaders connect and engage with their audiences? In this sequel to The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling (2005), business narrative expert Steve Denning, explains why traditional approaches to leadership communication don’t work and reveals the hidden patterns that effective leaders use to spark change. The book shows how anyone can inspire enduring enthusiasm for a cause, even in skeptical, cynical or even hostile audiences. The book is a comprehensive guide to the nitty-gritty of transformational leadership.
The book's lucid explanations, vivid examples and practical tips are essential reading for CEOs, managers, change agents, marketers, salespersons, brand managers, politicians, teachers, parents—anyone who is setting out to the change the world.
More advance praise for The Secret Language of Leadership
“The Secret Language of Leadership has been instrumental in helping me overcome the challenges of rapid growth and intense competition. It’s all about the story.”
Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix Inc.
"I don’t think I have ever read a more compelling preface. And best of all, the advice Denning gives to the reader about speaking and writing is exemplified in the way he has written this impressive book."
James MacGregor Burns
Distinguished Senior Scholar,
James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership, University of Maryland
Author of Leadership
“Engaging and erudite, this book draws on very wide reading and research to help any leader or manager master the arts of narrative in a way that is both pragmatic and original.”
Larry Prusak
Co-author, What’s the Big Idea? and Working Knowledge
“Out of the morass of strategies leaders are given to transform organizations, Denning plucks a powerful one—storytelling—and shows how and why it works.”
Dorothy Leonard
William J. Abernathy Professor of Business, Emerita, Harvard Business School
Author of Deep Smarts: How to Cultivate and Transfer Enduring Business Wisdom.
“The Secret Language of Leadership is not only the best analysis I have seen of how and why leaders succeed or fail, it's highly readable, as well as downright practical. It should be mandatory reading for anyone interested in engaging a company with big ideas who understands that leaders live and die by the quality of what they say.”
Richard Stone, StoryAnalytics Master, i.d.e.a.s.
"A primary role of leaders is to create and maintain meaning for their organizations. Denning clearly demonstrates that meaning-making comes from stories well told."
Thomas Davenport,
President's Distinguished Professor of I.T. and Management,
Babson College
Author of The Attention Economy
"Steve Denning is one of the leading thinkers on the power of narrative in business settings. His latest book is a smart, useful guide than can help leaders of every kind add value to their organizations and add meaning to their own journeys."
Daniel H. Pink, author of A WHOLE NEW MIND
“The Secret Language of Leadership shows why narrative intelligence is central to transformational leadership and how to harness its power.”
Carol Pearson, Director, James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership, University of Maryland
Co-author of The Hero and The Outlaw
“There is something very special about The Secret Language of Leadership. A lot of authors write about storytelling and other methods of leadership communication. What sets Steve Denning apart is his authenticity. He is one of the rare few who write about it from intensely personal experience. This book offers a genuinely refreshing perspective and an uncommon insight into the narrative life of leadership."
Jim Kouzes
Co-author of the best-selling, The Leadership Challenge
and A Leader’s Legacy
What's different about The Secret Language of Leadership?
For a very long time, we’ve been living with the idea that leadership and change are driven by the efforts of a few exceptional people. This book puts forward a different idea. It says that change and leadership don’t require exceptional people at all. Leadership and change are driven by ordinary people who act and speak in a different way. Once people grasp what's involved in acting and speaking in that way and take the trouble to master it, then they find that anyone can drive change, if they want to.
For too long, we’ve been thinking that leadership was some kind of innate gift, a mysterious kind of genetically inherited charisma. But once we’ve deciphered the language of leadership and understood its essential enabling conditions, transformational leadership is no longer a mystery. Once the hidden patterns of the language of leadership are made explicit, leadership becomes accessible to anyone. As Malcolm Gladwell has noted, the difference between generating resistance and enthusiasm is narrower than we imagine.
What's nice is this: when ordinary people have learened the language of leadership, they find they can have extraordinary impact.
Anyone who is trying to change the world, whether you're a CEO, a manager, a change agent trying to change your boss, a marketer, a salesperson, a brand manager, a politician, a teacher, a parent—anyone who looks out on the world and wants to do something to make it a better place. In fact, the only person for whom the book isn’t relevant is someone is totally complacent and happy with everything in the world, exactly as it is now.
The conventional wisdom: Pick up almost any leadership book these days and what do you find? Leadership is presented almost solely as an issue of inner conviction. Find the leader deep within yourself. Become the person others will want to follow. Discover your strengths. Become emotionally intelligent. Merely through increased self-awareness, self-regulation, and positive modeling, authentic leaders develop authenticity in followers. When you visualize, then you materialize. Be true to yourself and change happens.
Would it were so.
The reality: The reality is that sustained, enthusiastic change doesn’t occur by osmosis or extrasensory perception. If leaders’ inner commitment to change is to have any effect, they have to communicate it to the people they aspire to lead. True, the leaders’ actions will eventually speak louder than words, but in the short run, it’s what leaders say—or don’t say—that has the impact. The right words can have a galvanizing effect, generating enthusiasm, energy, momentum, and more, while the wrong words can undermine the best intentions and kill initiative on the spot, stone dead.
What are the main elements of the language of leadership? The central triad of every effective leadership communication involves a shift from the traditional approach of,
“describe problem >> analyze problem >> give solution”
to the new triad:
“get attention >> elicit desire >> reinforce with reasons”
The book shows:
- 18 ways to get your audience’s attention;
- 20 ways to elicit desire, and
- 8 ways to reinforce with reason;
It also explains which of these work best and why. The book tells you what other books on leadership never got round to revealing: what you have to say, and how to say it, so as to inspire enduring enthusiasm for your cause.
Narrative intelligence: The book introduces the concept of narrative intelligence. Narrative intelligence is an ability to understand and act and react agilely in the quicksilver world of interacting narratives.
The enabling conditions of the language of leadership: The language of leadership will make the maximum impact if certain enabling conditions are in place. Without these enablers, the words that leaders use—the spoken language of leadership—risk sounding glib and superficial. The book identifies six enabling
- An inspiring leadership goal: Why isn’t winning likely to be a goal that inspires enthusiasm? What’s involved in crafting a goal that can inspire enthusiasm?
- Committing to the goal: The fox knows many things, while the hedgehog knows one thing. Transformational leaders are hedgehogs: of all the many things that could be accomplished in the world, they focus on a goal and pursue that with relentless intensity. The intensity of their belief in the goal is reflected in the stories they communicate.
- The audience's story: What’s involved in understanding your audience: Why are managers handicapped in having a real conversation with their subordinates? How do you go about determining what will—or will not—resonate with your audience.
- Narrative intelligence: Why is this key to the central task of leadership? What are its dimensions? How can you measure it? What’s the difference between direct and indirect narrative and why does it matter? What are the relative strengths of abstract versus narrative modes of presentation? Of direct versus indirect modes of presentation?
- Leadership presence: the body language of leadership: What are the essential basics of leadership presence, that turn ordinary presentations into the extraordinary? What’s the role of leadership online? Can written leadership communications inspire? What’s the appropriate role of PowerPoint in inspirational leadership?
- The role of truthfulness in leadership: Why is truthfulness an essential element in leadership? When does it make sense to shade the truth? Is it feasible in business to be fully truthful?
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