Canadian HR Reporter

STRATEGIC CAPABILITY NETWORK'S PANEL of thought leaders brings decades of experience from the senior ranks of Canada's business community. eir commentary puts HR management issues into context and looks at the practical implications of proposals and policies. CANADIAN HR REPORTER October 17, 2016 EXECUTIVE SERIES 11 www.scnetwork.ca Join our professional community of Canadian HR & Organizational Leaders: • Connecting @ monthly events • Collaborating with peers • Challenging conventional thinking The Power of Human Capital CULTIVATING LEADERSHIP FOR 35 YEARS Great Leaders GROW www.scnetwork.ca Power and importance of fi rst impressions Four SCNetwork members engage in a back-and-forth on Mark Bowden's presentation Ian Hendry: e way in which Mark Bowden presented himself to our audience, I think he convinced us of the power and importance of fi rst impressions. Whether it be potential candidates, new employees join- ing the organization, networking to make new professional contacts, meeting with suppliers and so on, we likely don't take enough stock in how people perceive us in that fi rst critical introduction. Obviously, it's impactful from a personal brand perspective, but as I think about the organizational brand, I feel we do so little to magnify the importance of fi rst impressions. Jan van der Hoop: I agree about the "overlooked fi rst im- pressions" thing, Ian, but I believe the implications go far deeper. If we can accept that it is a leader's job to connect with people, en- gage and align them, it can't be done from behind a desk. Connection is not achieved by memo or email. Fundamentally, people will not be engaged if a leader is not engaging. And yet today, most "leaders" are working managers with full project and task lists of their own. How can they possibly step back and make the time it takes to connect and engage? The other little gem Mark dropped is a reminder that stress and fear quite literally make peo- ple dumb. ey choke the brain's ability to process. How much is that costing us in lost productiv- ity and sick time? Christine Discola: e mag- nitude of implications on lead- ership and, frankly, all human interactions is astounding, and yet very few of us are aware of this implication. e damage a leader can cause by believing he has done a great job presenting ideas, conveying vision, winning buy-in — only to hear back from others that in fact what they heard was very diff erent based on their negative assump- tions, is immensely costly. So the challenge for leaders is not to assume they have "com- municated" just because they de- livered words. e challenge is to ensure their message, passion and trust are duly conveyed through how they have connected with their teams. Jan: But there's a sine qua non here. Mark touched (too briefl y, I think) on the question of per- ceived intention. And the tricky bit is that it's all in the eye of the beholder. It doesn't matter how clean a leader's message is, how passion- ate and trustworthy she believes she is, everything she says or does is fi ltered, interpreted and remembered diff erently by each individual. Eff ectively, people are making stuff up about us, all day long, and what they decide is based more on them and their fi lters than it is about us. So, how do leaders gain clarity themselves on what their inten- tion truly is? And then how do they convey, demonstrate or re- inforce that intention so cleanly and consistently to others that it can overwrite old beliefs and "clean the fi lters"? Christine: Good questions to contemplate and not easy. I think the fi rst challenge is the easier one — if we assume authentic- ity. If leaders are authentic, have a clear vision and have courage, then likely strong intention can be identifi ed. The challenge of conveying through the physical what we want received in the emotional seems to be the more diffi cult of the two questions. We heard from Mark that lead- ers ought to consciously decide to control their body language; to actually do away with common habits and be purposeful in how they project their message. But we know that some habits are hard to break. It takes self- awareness and a strong desire to convey optimism, but it also needs to be learned. It is striking that we focus so much on developing leadership competencies and standards that defi ne and refl ect our company cultures, yet rarely in those com- petencies and standards do we see how to deliver these. Jan: Your comment "If leaders are authentic…" twigged me. To me, that speaks more about who they are than what they know or have done in the past. Anyone who's really listening (or who simply stops overrid- ing his limbic brain's signals) can sense inauthenticity a mile away. Authenticity has nothing to do with how many checkmarks I get on the company's competency checklist. Are we measuring the wrong things when it comes to compe- tency models? Paul Pittman: ese are per- suasive delivery skills for reduc- ing resistance in new prospects or audiences but I wonder about their application for ongoing team leadership. They are not authentic and without practice will appear so and, therefore, are not sustain- able — reverting to type as most will in time, I suspect, may be more damaging than a weak fi rst impression. You get one chance to make a fi rst impression and dozens more to ruin it. Leadership is not a fi rst impression — selling ideas and products, maybe. Business leaders must be mind- ful of these techniques and can always improve but should we ex- pect them to modify their natural selves? Mark was entertaining and made his own unique fi rst im- pression. e references to our time on the tundra and in the cave were engaging but I won- der if our individual control mechanisms have also evolved in tandem. My impression is that business is excessively alert to missed op- portunities and jumping to mis- leading initial impressions posi- tive and negative — have you done a due diligence lately? I would further suggest that international practitioners, when meeting a new contact, expect some accommodation of the host's cultural body language customs simply because there is no excuse not to be respectful these days. Could this muddle the impact? Verbal language and technique in leadership settings, in my expe- rience, have as much if not more eff ect than body language, partic- ularly when leading multinational teams. Mark alluded to deeper in- sights into behavioural-based handling of different types of situations and relationships and I personally would really enjoy having him do a deep dive into some of those. My guess is that that is where these techniques are most powerful. Ian raises the interesting per- spective of using such techniques to create organizational fi rst im- pressions — (such as) the old IBM, McKinsey, General Electric — and employment and business branding (which are critical as we face the millennial apocalypse). It could make for an interesting sec- ond discussion. Christine: Paul, I agree with your observation regarding ongo- ing application to leadership ver- sus initial fi rst impressions. Body language may trump the words in certain situations (presentations or a sales pitch), but it surely is not sustainable to build a leader's credibility over time. If we are to be purposeful in our body language, as Mark sug- gests, then could some leaders be accused of manipulating impres- sions by "going through the mo- tions" at the expense of eroding their authenticity? Jan: I think we all agree — these techniques cannot be used to con- vey authenticity and purity of in- tention when they do not exist. It reeks of manipulation and people will sense it. It's kind of like putting clean clothes on an unwashed body; it doesn't take people long to notice an unpleasant smell below the surface. ese techniques do have the potential, though, to amplify in- tentions. I do believe that, all too often, unintentional and uncon- scious body language habits can cloud a perfectly virtuous message and cause confusion. at's where this material can PANELLISTS: • Ian Hendry, president of the Strategic Capability Network and vice-president of HR and administration at Interac in Toronto • Jan van der Hoop, president of Fit First Technologies in Toronto • Christine Discola, director and country HR offi cer at Citigroup in Toronto • Paul Pittman, founder and president of the Human Well in Toronto Ian Hendry Paul Pittman Jan van der Hoop Christine Discola Body language may trump the words in certain situations (a presentation or sales pitch) but it surely is not sustainable to build a leader's credibility over time. TIME > pg. 12

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