Managing Your Strategic Communication!

A major part of my practice deals with coaching clients on how to communicate better to get what they want. This includes verbal communication, use of the right body languagephysical vocabulary, and knowing when to say what you have to say and then guiding them on suggesting the right medium for the impact they desire (email, white paper, phone call, or a lunch meeting). In this blog I would like to present two examples of how doing this better and more strategically can significantly change the outcomes you can create for yourself:

This client was doing well within a well-positioned business unit that was a part of her much bigger company, which was not doing well. Yet, despite the BUs success and my clients ongoing efforts to help its growth with a solid product roadmap she was not getting the recognition she deserved. She wanted a promotion and a raise to go with it, both of which were well deserved, but she was not able to make her case for it to happen. The company line was, We are not doing that well!

So, we decided to start looking around and prepared a marketing plan for a campaign. Soon, she was interviewing, which resulted with a company engaged in a different business making her an offer. This offer provided her the right title and the salary she was seeking. However, she was not sure about the companys business and its long-term prospects in that space. Yet another problem was a long commute required in the new job. She was so upset by the way her current employer had treated her that she was willing to ignore those concerns and accept that offer.

With the offer now in hand she was first tempted to abruptly resign out of spite and exit her job, which was otherwise providing her all the benefits of a good place to work, with just a few minutes commute. She was convinced that seeking a counter offer from current employer would be futile. Besides, she was determined to use spite as her main weapon to show her employer of the errant ways in which she was treated and to show her anger. I urged her to consider an alternate approach, which I normally do not recommend: parlaying the new job offer to get a better deal at your current employer.

After our meeting she decided to take a different approach. I reminded her of the uncertainty of the new job because of her apprehensions about the markets in which the new employer was a major player. I also reminded her of the wasted time in commuting to her new job, which would impact her work-life balance in a major way. Once she was able to see the downside of signing up for the new job more clearly, she agreed to a different strategy with which to approach her boss.

So, instead of firing of an angry email message of resignation to her boss as she had originally planned, she agreed to ask him to have an urgent lunch with her to get his guidance on an important matter. Curious, he quickly agreed to have that lunch, during which we scripted the following conversation with her boss: Jim, I urgently need your guidance to help me make a decision that impacts my career and my future. Yesterday, I was offered a job by a company nearby with a director title and a salary that presents a major change in my compensation. I am tempted to take this offer, but I am conflicted because by taking this job Id be pursuing an unknown. Yet, at this stage of my career I think that this is a risk worth taking. What would you suggest that I do? After Jim got over the surprise, he composed himself and told my client to give him a day to get back to her.

The next day her boss came back with an offer that not only matched the parameters of her new job (title and all), but also with some additional sweeteners to trump what she had already been offered. After waiting for a day (for effect) she decided to take her boss counter offer and stay at her current job.

In another instance, a client was working for a company that had recently suffered major market setbacks because its main products functional performance. My client had some ideas on how to make the product better if he were given a clear mandate to pursue his strategy. But, for this to work he needed a higher title so that those in his work group would respect his initiative and even support it. So, he drafted the following email to a senior executive in his chain of command and showed it to me for my opinion:

Our continued loss of market share and product leadership has resulted in spiraling team morale, sinking stock price, and uncertain outlook. Many employees have already left and more are leaving to join competitors. I am willing to take charge of this performance problem if you promote me to the Chief Architect role and assign me a team of five to support my initiative. Without this change I, too, may be looking at other options for myself. You have one week to decide this.

After reading his draft I realized the unmistakable reaction his boss would have. So, we decided to redraft the memo with the following message:

The spiraling market share of our product has raised serious concerns about our companys outlook. I have researched the issue and have come up with a plan to bring the products performance to where it belongs. Id be happy to present that plan to you. What I am asking through this memo is an authorization to execute this plan after you review it, and which will require a team of five for me to lead. I do not much care about what title Ill carry during the execution of this initiative, but I am confident that given a clear mandate and the needed resources Ill be able to bring the products performance to where we can start the recovery process. Please let me know when we can meet to discuss this further.

When the uber boss saw this memo he promptly responded by saying, Lets meet now! The same day my client got the title he was originally seeking with the team he requested and a clear mandate to prosecute the initiative.

So, what is the lesson here? Strategic communication can make the difference between getting what you really want, and getting yourself in trouble. What it requires is your ability to put yourself in the readers or listeners shoes and framing your message from that perspective.

Good luck!

About Author

Dilip has distinguished himself as LinkedIn’s #1 career coach from among a global pool of over 1,000 peers ever since LinkedIn started ranking them professionally (LinkedIn selected 23 categories of professionals for this ranking and published this ranking from 2006 until 2012). Having worked with over 6,000 clients from all walks of professions and having worked with nearly the entire spectrum of age groups—from high-school graduates about to enter college to those in their 70s, not knowing what to do with their retirement—Dilip has developed a unique approach to bringing meaning to their professional and personal lives. Dilip’s professional success lies in his ability to codify what he has learned in his own varied life (he has changed careers four times and is currently in his fifth) and from those of his clients, and to apply the essence of that learning to each coaching situation. After getting his B.Tech. (Honors) from IIT-Bombay and Master’s in electrical engineering(MSEE) from Stanford University, Dilip worked at various organizations, starting as an individual contributor and then progressing to head an engineering organization of a division of a high-tech company, with $2B in sales, in California’s Silicon Valley. His current interest in coaching resulted from his career experiences spanning nearly four decades, at four very diverse organizations–and industries, including a major conglomerate in India, and from what it takes to re-invent oneself time and again, especially after a lay-off and with constraints that are beyond your control. During the 45-plus years since his graduation, Dilip has reinvented himself time and again to explore new career horizons. When he left the corporate world, as head of engineering of a technology company, he started his own technology consulting business, helping high-tech and biotech companies streamline their product development processes. Dilip’s third career was working as a marketing consultant helping Fortune-500 companies dramatically improve their sales, based on a novel concept. It is during this work that Dilip realized that the greatest challenge most corporations face is available leadership resources and effectiveness; too many followers looking up to rudderless leadership. Dilip then decided to work with corporations helping them understand the leadership process and how to increase leadership effectiveness at every level. Soon afterwards, when the job-market tanked in Silicon Valley in 2001, Dilip changed his career track yet again and decided to work initially with many high-tech refugees, who wanted expert guidance in their reinvention and reemployment. Quickly, Dilip expanded his practice to help professionals from all walks of life. Now in his fifth career, Dilip works with professionals in the Silicon Valley and around the world helping with reinvention to get their dream jobs or vocations. As a career counselor and life coach, Dilip’s focus has been career transitions for professionals at all levels and engaging them in a purposeful pursuit. Working with them, he has developed many groundbreaking approaches to career transition that are now published in five books, his weekly blogs, and hundreds of articles. He has worked with those looking for a change in their careers–re-invention–and jobs at levels ranging from CEOs to hospital orderlies. He has developed numerous seminars and workshops to complement his individual coaching for helping others with making career and life transitions. Dilip’s central theme in his practice is to help clients discover their latent genius and then build a value proposition around it to articulate a strong verbal brand. Throughout this journey, Dilip has come up with many groundbreaking practices such as an Inductive Résumé and the Genius Extraction Tool. Dilip owns two patents, has two publications in the Harvard Business Review and has led a CEO roundtable for Chief Executive on Customer Loyalty. Both Amazon and B&N list numerous reviews on his five books. Dilip is also listed in Who’s Who, has appeared several times on CNN Headline News/Comcast Local Edition, as well as in the San Francisco Chronicle in its career columns. Dilip is a contributing writer to several publications. Dilip is a sought-after speaker at public and private forums on jobs, careers, leadership challenges, and how to be an effective leader.

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