1. The Jack Zenger Interview: "Catching is far more important than pitching".

Leadership expert Jack Zenger is the CEO of Zenger-Folkman, a firm that brings empirical research, software tools and innovative development methods to leadership training. He has written eight books, and, in 1994, was inducted into the HRD Hall of Fame. He took some time out to talk to us about the various ways that leadership and communication are changing, and how we can all benefit.

How can a leader fully communicate their vision when they are so far removed from most of their employees?

JZ: Well, the best visions, ultimately, are negotiated with the people who are involved. Then that vision is malleable, and evolves over time. Most successful organisations do engage and involve people at lower levels to help shape that vision, to ensure they don’t have someone just standing up and saying ‘I have a dream’ and ‘This is where we’re gonna go’ and ‘Do it my way!’ The best communication is 2-way. Indeed, one of the reasons for 360 degree feedback is ensuring that people are hearing the message coming up from underneath.

But I think in the communication realm, the number one statistically significantly correlated behaviour to what we describe as ‘communication’ is being a good listener. Catching is far more important than pitching in the communication world. The best communicators are seen as being good listeners, and, of course, then doing something with what they hear is key.

How can a leader begin an ongoing dialogue, and at the same time give reassurance to stakeholders that they know what they’re doing?

JZ: Well, one idea is pulling people together - colleagues and peers - and having someone meet with them, having a communication session that deals with what happens between the cracks, between the departments. “What are the issues that are facing the organisation?”

Then, raising it up a notch – rather than talking about one department’s issues, talking about how the system functions and how the organisation is working. That seems to be a really good technique for making sure that 2-way communication is happening. But unfortunately it’s very easy for leaders to get into broadcast mode, and that’s why it’s really important that you create vehicles by which communication bubbles up frown down below. Skip-level meetings, among other techniques, should be used to make sure that you really are hearing the messages coming from underneath.

What energises you as you look at 2010 and beyond?

JZ: I believe that the social networking devices can become wonderful tools in collecting information in a really efficient way, and it takes out the barriers from an organisational level. I think, for example, when the president of IBM convenes a meeting and asks for feedback from everybody on a project they’re working on, regardless of level, regardless of location, and just says ‘I want to hear your ideas about how to push forward on this project’, that’s a great example of using some of the technology available. The new social networking things really are going to help do that. As we look to the future, I think we’re just now beginning to see the full possibilities of this new channel.

2. Teenage Twitter

During the summer, a brief report on how teenagers access and respond to various media received a surprising amount of coverage. The report was written, during work experience at Morgan Stanley, by 15-year-old Matthew Robson and the coverage it received points to a sizeable gulf between industry expertise and reality.

Having obtained a work experience placement through a chance meeting with one of Morgan Stanley’s senior analysts, Matthew was asked to compile a report on the attitudes of his contemporaries towards radio, newspapers, tv, social networking websites etc. Matthew’s summation of Twitter is a good example of his straight-talking analysis, “Teenagers do not use Twitter. Most have signed up to the service, but then just leave it as they realize that they are not going to update it (mostly because texting Twitter uses up credit, and they would rather text friends with that credit). In addition, they realise that no one is viewing their profile, so their ‘tweets’ are pointless.”

With many comms and PR professionals acting as Twitter-cheerleaders, we can start to see why this report caused such a fuss. Much of the hype surrounding Twitter would have us believe it is exactly what young people want; that only those who are out-of-touch wouldn’t enjoy tweeting. But Matthew’s report contradicts this. His comments open the door to the possibility that when comms and PR professionals decided what teenagers do and don’t like, perhaps none of them bothered to ask teenagers if it was true.

3. TAKE YOUR CAPS OFF !!!!!

On a standard computer keyboard, between the Shift and the Tab, lies a button that, if used, can cause real offence to friends and colleagues: the Caps Lock.

An employee at a health care company in New Zealand was recently fired for, among other reasons, writing emails in block capitals. These emails were deemed to be deliberately confrontational, and other staff complained of feeling threaten and uncomfortable. But why?

In internet communication, the accepted rule is that block capitals indicate you’re ‘shouting’, whether in anger or enthusiasm. It means that you wish to say something louder than you normally would. Block capitals, as created by hitting the Caps Lock, makes text slightly more difficult to read as our eyes are not as accustomed to this form.

But can using one particular keyboard button cause so much offence to sack someone? Well, many new models of keyboards are produced without a Caps Lock, and there are many online groups dedicated to eroding the Caps Lock function, and helping users to disable it. Many people reconfigure their keyboard to use the Caps Lock as another Shift button. These users know that accidentally tapping the Caps Lock during typing can radically change the meaning of their message.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8234637.stm

4. It must be true – I read it on Wikipedia

When the French composer Maurice Jarre passed away earlier this year, hordes of journalists scrambled to compile obituaries. As is standard practice for journalists increasingly stretched for time, many of them headed to Wikipedia to get their biographical detail. Unfortunately, Maurice’s Wikipedia entry had recently been amended by a Dublin student named Shane Fitzgerald.

Upon hearing of Maurice Jarre’s death, knowing journalists would turn to Wikipedia for information, Shane invented a quote that he attributed to Maurice. The quote, with Jarre comparing his life to a piece of music, was subsequently included in a number of articles in high-profile media outlets. If any journalist had taken a moment to double-check the quotation, they would have found no other source and concluded it was the invention of a Wikipedia contributor.

The increasing time constraints faced by journalists dictate that they simply don’t have the time to check their facts and sources. The misquote came to light when, after a month had gone by, Shane emailed several of the news outlets pointing out the inaccuracy. Many of the news websites quickly corrected their obituary, removing Shane’s invented quote. This raises the question, how many other Wikipedia inventions have been reported as fact and never retracted?

http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/made-up_wikipedia_quote_makes_obituaries/

5. BBC asks "Why Hate Ryanair?", but doesn’t have the answer

In October, the BBC’s investigative documentary programme, Panorama, broadcast an episode entitled, ‘Why Hate Ryanair?’ The programme received 3.8 million viewers, with many tv critics and bloggers agreeing that, far from explaining why they should hate Ryanair, it actually improved their opinion of the airline.

So how did Ryanair ensure that an investigative documentary was transformed into, as many bloggers put it, “a 30 minute ad” for the airline?

It involved a series of measures, such as displaying all correspondence between the BBC and Ryanair on the airline’s website, portrayed Ryanair as honest and up-front, pushing the BBC into transparency. This, in turn, led to the BBC broadcasting their brief ‘doorstep’ interview with Michael O’Leary, although it was effectively a direct-to-camera advert for Ryanair by their CEO, in order to avoid allegations of bias had it been edited out.

In addition, many of the more controversial aspects of Ryanair’s low-cost business model – an array of additional charges, premium rate helpline, poor location of destinations – are already in the public domain. An investigative journalist will inevitably struggle to engage if all of the information is already ‘out there’..

The Ryanair website, while announcing 1.1 million free seats – 100,000 for every Panorama innacuracy, declared that the programme uncovered "nothing, nada, rien, diddly squat." The final inaccuracy of the programme was, Ryanair said, the claim ‘that “O’Leary is a bully” – this is clearly false when the whole world knows that O’Leary is a kind and gentle, caring and thoughtful, sensitive and saintly human being widely beloved by all Ryanair’s 6,500 people and its 66m passengers”.

One blogger's assessment of the show was that it was ‘commissioned before the research was complete, leading to the somewhat embarrassing situation of a programme exposing little more than its own lack of substantial content’.

With one news website declaring that the programme was an out-and-out “PR victory for the airline”, while the Daily Telegraph announced it was “it was another O'Leary triumph”, the BBC was facing another in a long line of criticisms. This time, viewers wanted to know why it would produce a documentary before confirming there was any new information to present.

Crisis comms director Neil Bayley summed up the programme succinctly. ‘After that, I am more worried about the future of Panorama than Ryanair,' said Bayley.

6. Strawberry Council

Last year, Katherine Kerswell, the Chief Executive of Northamptonshire County Council, appeared in a series of video blogs, laying out her hopes for the future of the council and for public services within Northamptonshire. In one of the decidedly prosaic videos, Katherine, out of nowhere, asks the viewers to “Taste the strawberry - that strawberry flavour will be the flavour that is our county council”. She does not once explain why a council would taste of any fruit, much less a strawberry. This understandably left Katherine open to ridicule within Northamptonshire local media.

Recently, the clip drew the attention of Stephen Fry who included it in a radio programme on the use and abuse of English. Amid fierce competition, this is perhaps the strangest linguistic foible employed by a politician in recent years.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hni0vnWUzj8