Leadership Is Language: The Hidden Power of What You Say and What You Don't

by L. David Marquet

The officers of Santa Fe and I made a deal that day. I agreed to never give another order. Instead, I would provide intent, the goal of what it was we were trying to achieve. They agreed never to wait to be told what to do. Instead, they would provide their intentions to me, how they were going to achieve my intent. This shift was reflected in a simple change of language, replacing “request permission to” with “I intend to.”

I’d always believed that I couldn’t remain quiet because people wouldn’t speak up. Finally, I realized that people weren’t speaking up because I couldn’t remain quiet.

This may seem tremendously obvious, but the more you talk, the less you are listening. If you want to hear more from your team, you need to talk less.

as leaders, our responsibility is to design the organization so that individuals can be the best versions of themselves.

Thinking benefits from embracing variability. Doing benefits from reducing variability.

we need to actively avoid the anchoring effect. This requires running meetings much differently than most groups do: vote first, then discuss.

chronic stress still takes a long-term toll on humans, but in the short run, for managers concerned only with task accomplishment, it’s an effective tool.

For complex, collective, cognitive challenges, stress can and does have a strong negative impact on performance.

In highly stressed environments, we often see individuals become much more self-serving than in relaxed environments.

the best way not to make an error is to do nothing, and organizations where people have been stressed into protect mindsets exhibit a bias toward inaction.

Control the clock is when we exit redwork and shift to bluework. The Industrial Age has programmed us to obey the clock, which tends to keep us in redwork, feeling the stress of time pressure.

We don’t need anyone in the group to change their thinking. As long as the group supports whatever decision comes out of the meeting with their behavior, leaders are happy if individuals think differently from them. Otherwise, they’re just in an echo chamber of their own ideas. There is power and resilience in a diversity of ideas.

We judge ourselves by our intentions, but we judge others by their behavior.

TO MOVE FROM COERCION TO COLLABORATION Vote first, then discuss. Be curious, not compelling. Invite dissent rather than drive consensus. Give information, not instructions.

Ask probabilistic questions instead of binary ones.

Invite Dissent Rather Than Drive Consensus

The lesson here is to make it safe and easy for people to dissent. This might require deliberately introducing dissent.

Leaders, your job during any meeting is to scan the room and pay close attention to those who remain quiet. These people will often hold differing opinions that they don’t feel comfortable voicing.

There will almost always be people who see things differently and don’t like a particular decision. That’s fine, and actually a good thing. There is no need to convince these people they are “wrong” if a decision does not go their way. All we need is that the team members support the decision with their actions and behaviors.

Give Information, Not Instructions

Waiting for late people results in more late people, which results in more waiting. We call it “rewarding bad behavior.”

Better than thinking about the decision as something to do is knowing that the decision is something to test.

TO MOVE FROM COERCE TO COLLABORATE Vote first, then discuss. Be curious, not compelling. Invite dissent rather than drive consensus. Give information, not instructions.

With collaboration, we ask questions starting with “what” and “how.” We invite dissent.

The leader’s obligation is to listen to the dissenters, not to stall decisions until each is convinced of the new direction. Always stopping action because of dissent gives too much power to dissenters. It will invite blockers, inhibit bold decision-making, and delay action.

If we collaborate effectively, the result is commitment. If we coerce, the result is compliance.

Commitment is more powerful, because it is an intrinsic motivator. Commitment invites full participation, engagement, and discretionary effort. Compliance invites doing just enough to get by, get through, or get it done.

Commitment attaches action to that decision. Commitment turns bluework into redwork.

The key is that there must be choice before there is commitment. If a person has no choice but to say yes, then what we have is compliance.

Space: the final frontier.2 These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.

So, the question to ask at the end of a bluework meeting would be not only “What are we going to do?” but also “What are we going to learn?”

Commit Actions, No...

You should let them hold on to their ideas. As long as they commit to supporting the decision through actions, the goals of the organization are met.

Once we commit to a small step, humans have a tendency to continue to commit in that direction.

Instead, they cherry-pick information that supports their previous decision.

Escalation of commitment means that once we select a course of action, we stubbornly stick to it, even in the face of evidence that the course of action is failing.

Without completion, we do not feel a sense of progress for what we’ve accomplished or learned.

At the beginning of a project, you want shorter redwork periods and more frequent bluework periods to bias toward learning and improving. As the project matures you want to extend the periods between bluework and allow more time in redwork production.

Feeling valued motivates people to contribute, so we set up a positive future. Celebrate validates both bluework and redwork; it’s a vital component of a healthy workplace.

If we don’t see and recognize the behavior, those good behaviors will also tend toward extinction.

turns out that immediate, positive, and certain rewards are the most powerful for establishing and maintaining a behavior.

To celebrate with, not for: appreciate, don’t evaluate; observe, don’t judge; and prize, don’t praise.

as a general rule, acknowledge the behavior that is controllable

rather than praising someone for an intrinsic characteristic or ability like being a “deep thinker” or “natural leader.”

To improve performance, celebrate what people can control—their efforts—and not the things they can’t—outcomes.

TO MOVE FROM CONTINUE TO COMPLETE Chunk work for frequent completes early, few completes late. Celebrate with, not for. Focus on behavior, not characteristics. Focus on journey, not destination.

The correct image of the improvement process (the learning process) is a stairway, not a ramp.

When the bosses realize they aren’t seeing the full picture, they interfere further, demanding updates and reports, driving employees to be even more opaque than before.

The gap between “good enough” and “awesome” on a creative thinking project is huge,

the number one organizational factor driving innovation is “freedom in deciding what to do or how to accomplish the task, a sense of control over one’s own working ideas.”