By Muritala Awodun PhD
Winning the audience over through story telling is one method I learnt about seven years ago at Harvard Business School Leading with Impact Executive Education Programme, and it has remained a major turning point in my teaching, writing and presentations.
It is really nothing new as there have been loads of articles and research into this area, but the practicality of it was what changed my thoughts and presentations. Richard Boeckel had written in 1920, and I completely agree, that “the first requisite to being an elected President in this new age of publicity is to have a story of the kind that will appeal to the people, the second is to have the kind of a press organization that will get the story to them.”
This is as relevant to politics and governance as it is to teaching, learning and public presentations.
One of the lessons I learnt quickly in governance and public service within the short period of my involvement is that people are calling for open leadership. Whether as a committee chairman, director, head of department, dean or executive chairman, all of which capacities I have served in my twenty years of public service, in Lagos and Kwara States, the led are tired of hide and seek leadership, and easily accepts and relates with an open and accessible leadership.
So, we can safely say that people are tired of the government playing hide and seek with them. From candidates jostling for appointments into positions in various government establishments to those running for political offices or appointments, they all need to know that communication is always a two-way thing.
Just as the governments or leaders need to hear from the citizens or the led, the citizens or the led also need to hear from their governments or leaders. I have so much seen this at work, at small committee levels or medium head of department/dean of school levels and at a larger executive chairman level, so I can say without any iota of doubt that successful administration or management is significantly accomplished with adoption of open governance.
In this first Lesson of our Making Kwara Great Series, I will present five lessons I learnt in my twenty-year experience that could enhance communication between the leader and the led, irrespective of the size of the organization, whether a two/three people unit or a state/nation:
1. Turning your agenda, reforms, policies and press statements into stories. This should be a priority for any leadership/government hoping to sustain meaningful interactions with the led/ electorates. Most often, it is the best story that wins over the people.
Hence, the role of storytelling is important –telling it and re-telling it to every member of your team/citizen in the language they best understand is a significant part of the communication wheel that has been tested and can be trusted. Turning it into a story will not only catch the people’s attention, but will give them easy understanding of your position and make it very easy for them to follow you.
People follow what interests them, so use what interests the people to form the basis of your story to catch their attention, using the medium that they are familiar and comfortable with. So, turn it into a story.
2. Modern communication technologies have made it easier for citizens to speak directly to their leaders and vice versa. Elected representatives and appointed officials should establish an easy system for people to call or email them directly, tweet at them, or leave comments on their Facebook pages.
It’s not enough to open these channels, they should also have a foolproof response mechanism in place to encourage open feedback. Using the modern digital technologies to communicate and connect to your people is a magical way of bonding that has been proven to be the most efficient mechanism for reaching at your community of followers, be they workers or citizens that should not be neglected.
Letting those that look up to you to be able to reach you and sure that they will get a response from you as a form of attention, goes a long way to sustain you and your leadership. So, communicate and connect using familiar medium.
3. Government, Ministries, Departments and Agencies produce essential data on almost everything, from unemployment trends and security threats to progress of local road repairs. Translating those stacks of reports to easily digestible communication materials is a necessity. Citizens need to understand and measure the outcomes of governance decisions through the supporting data that is verifiable and easy to assimilate.
This is not only related to government, but in all positions of leadership. Making data accessible to the led about the situation of things relating to your leadership and challenges in a very transparent manner puts you in a better light, and erases areas of doubt that may arise. So, make data accessible to the people about anything and everything.
4. As with most complex situations governments have to manage, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to communicating during turnarounds. A government caught amidst a crisis must simultaneously convey a sense of balance to the populace in explaining what went wrong and confidence that they know how to correct it. Crisis management is a major area that makes most leadership fail.
There will be crisis, whether you like it or not, but how you manage it with the confidence and know how required is what makes the difference. Any leadership that runs away or dodges crisis will deepen the crisis, and perhaps make it worse. So, face your crisis and manage it.
5. It’s not just the constant flow of information that matters but ensuring communication activities achieve the intended outcomes. Here, government representatives must work closely with Communication Specialists to design structured, yet flexible Monitoring and Evaluation processes for reviewing the impact of the communication on the target audience.
In all of the above, the effective monitoring of your set goals and objectives which have been communicated in form of agenda setting should not be left unmonitored, otherwise the essence of the entire process would have been defeated. So, monitor and evaluate to ensure that you are not losing sight of the intended purpose of the leadership/governance, and that the expectations of the led/citizens are being met as promised.
My Dear State Builder, our State is a conglomeration of the various homes, organizations (public or private) and institutions (social, cultural, political or religious) that binds us together, and in each of these units we play roles as leaders or followers.
Therefore, making our state great is a function of how well we are able to transform these various organizations and make them great. The ball is in our courts.
Muritala Awodun, PhD Professor of Business Administration Centre for Enterprise and Human Capital Development, Crown-Hill Unpages