Kristi Hedges: An interview by Bob Morris

Kristi Hedges is a leadership coach, speaker and author. In her 20-year career working with leaders to help them communicate more effectively she’s encountered every personality type imaginable, yet remains more than a little passionate that anyone can learn presence. Her workshops and leadership coaching programs have been utilized by CEOs and teams of all sizes in companies spanning the Fortune 500, government, non-profit and privately held businesses. She runs her own coaching practice, The Hedges Company, and is a founding partner in the leadership development firm, Element North.

Kristi blogs on leadership for Forbes.com, created and penned “The Leadership Factor” column for Entrepreneur.com. She’s been featured in publications such as Washington Post, Reuters, MSNBC.com, and CNBC.com. She’s been honored as one of the “50 Women Who Mean Business in Washington, D.C.” and as an owner of a top 25 Largest Women-Owned Businesses by the Washington Business Journal.

Prior to becoming a leadership coach, Kristi co-founded and ran one of the first technology communications firms in the Washington, D.C. area for a decade before successfully selling her interest. Her career highlights also include working for a national news outlet, and as a political consultant for dozens of electoral campaigns from U.S. President to statewide offices.

Here is an excerpt from an interview of her. To read the complete interview, please click here.

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Morris: Was there a turning point (if not an epiphany) years ago that set you on the career course that you continue to follow? Please explain.

Hedges: I’m not sure there was one point, but rather many that directed me in my career. As an entrepreneur, leadership was my constant puzzle that was always studied, toyed with, improved, and yet unsolved. It became my passion, and that led me to become a leadership coach after I sold my interest in my last company.

Morris: To what extent has your formal education proven invaluable to what you have accomplished thus far?

Hedges: I have two degrees in communications, and my masters is in political communication and persuasion. They’ve both influenced my career, but as I wrote The Power of Presence, I realized that my graduate research provided a framework for many of the ideas I had about interpersonal communication and influence. In a way they were so embedded in my strategies, I had forgotten they were there.

Morris: What do you know now about the business world that you wish you knew when you completed your formal education and first went to work full-time?

Hedges: I wish I’d had a better sense of when to push and when to let things play out. I was very ambitious, impatient and worked my tail off — but I lacked perspective. I often underestimated how much time it takes to get the big picture. I knew the power of relationships, but I wish I would have developed deeper ones and asked for mentorship.

Morris: Opinions are divided (sometimes sharply divided) on the importance of charisma to effective leadership. What do you think?

Hedges: I actually hate the topic of charisma in leadership! I just don’t find it helpful. It makes those who don’t consider themselves charismatic (and frankly, few do) feel powerless to become stronger leaders. If you need to have this innate quality, why bother trying?

Jim Collins introduced the “hedgehog” style of leadership in Good to Great, as the most successful one. I agree with him. Great leaders can be charismatic, but it’s not a requirement.

Morris: However different the greatest leaders throughout history may be in most respects, what do all of them share in common in terms of their presence?

Hedges: Great leaders care deeply about the larger cause, whether it’s saving the environment or launching a company. They are passionate and know how to communicate their commitment to others. In my opinion, there is no substitute for a fire in the belly.

Morris: I don’t know about you but most (if not all) of the most valuable life lessons I have learned were from failure, not success. You have observed a countless number of people who do or don’t possess highly-developed personal presence. Here’s a two-part question. First, what are the most valuable lessons to be learned from those who do?

Hedges: People with great presence have an ability to relate to others. There’s an openness there, an authentic connection, and trustworthiness. They make others feel “more than” rather than diminished, even from a short conversation.

Morris: From those who do not possess a highly-developed personal presence?

Hedges: Many times a weak presence comes from being overly guarded or perfectionistic. If we don’t know someone or they’re intimidating, we can’t relate. To have presence, you need to blend your competency with your humanity. You can be powerful and still be a real person.

Morris: I have never been physically present in an audience to which Steve Jobs spoke but I have probably seen most (if not all) of the films of him in action. In your opinion, why was he an “insanely great” public speaker?

Hedges: Steve Jobs staged every speech down to the smallest detail. He was meticulous about how he communicated. Anyone who takes their communication that seriously is going to be good. However, Jobs’ greatness came from his authentic passion for Apple products. He knew how to use his own excitement to tap into the energy of others. He also knew that speeches should be about an experience, not words on a screen. He make the audience part of the conversation, not merely observers.

Morris: Through your association with The Hedges Company and Element North, you have helped numerous companies to improve their leadership development programs. Presumably you begin each new relationship with a situation analysis. What are you most eager to learn that you did not already know? Why?

Hedges: I always start with gathering the impression of leadership from the broader company. Leaders set the tone and cement the culture. If they are seen as uncaring or incompetent, that has to be addressed first. No leadership program will work if there’s a fundamental problem at the top. It’s always interesting to juxtapose those findings against what a company’s leadership believes their impression to be. If there’s a disconnect, that’s a red flag.

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To read the complete interview, please click here.

Kristi Hedges cordially invites you to check out the resources at these websites:

http://www.thehedgescompany.com

http://www.elementnorth.com/index.html

The Power of Presence: Unlock Your Potential to Influence and Engage Others

You can also follow her on Twitter @kristihedges.

Jumping the S-Curve: A book review by Bob Morris

Jumping the S-Curve: How to Beat the Growth Cycle, Get on Top, and Stay There
Paul Nunes and Tim Breene
Harvard Business Review Press (2011)

How companies can reach progressively high levels of achievement

The title of this book refers to pattern of consistently elevating (“jumping”) a company to progressively high levels of achievement. As I began to read Paul Nunes and Tim Breene’s brilliant book, I was reminded of the fact that most all-state high school athletes begin at the bottom of the depth chart of their college and university teams, and, that most All-Americans also begin at the bottom of the depth chart, when drafted by professional teams. As Nunes and Breene explain, the S-curve refers to “a common pattern in which a successful business starts small with a few eager customers, grows rapidly as the masses seek out the new offering, and eventually peaks and levels off as the [given] market matures.” Now what?

Today, faster than ever before, the tendency is to fall behind the competition, shrink, and eventually go out of business or (on occasion) be acquired. Nunes and Breene cite a work by Everett Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations (first published in 1962 and now in its Sixth Edition), in which Everett demonstrates how the process of an innovation takes on the shape of the letter S: early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. Here’s the challenge: How to achieve repeated peaks of high performance?

As Nunes and Breene define it, “High performance is the consistent and enduring surpassing of peers in revenue growth, profitability, and total returns to shareholders, across business and economic cycles, often across generations of leadership, measured by widely accepted financial metrics.” They also make assertions that challenge conventional wisdom. Here are five:

o High performance is not dependent on industry factors of the general health of an industry.
o Industry-leading scale is not a requirement for high performance.
o Consistently outperforming competitors in both growth and profitability is a competitive reality today and a hallmark of high performance.
o The benefits of pursuing high performance can accrue well before actual operating measures improve.
o Even above-average performers have a lot to gain from becoming high performers.

In this book, Nunes and Breene provide a cohesive, comprehensive, and cost-effective program by which to climb and then jump a series of S-curve timeframes. Of course, the nature and extent of the program as well as specific details are determined by a company’s needs, interests, strategic objectives, and resources. Nunes and Breene provide a wealth of counsel that will help business leaders to make their determination when modifying the program to the given circumstances.

However, now more than ever before in what has become a ferociously competitive global marketplace, change is the only constant. Business leaders would therefore be wise to keep in mind the Yiddish insight, “Man plans and then God laughs.” When concluding their book, Nunes and Breene briefly describe many of the disruptors “that could change the competitive landscape and turn industries upside down in coming years”:

1. Business analytics
2. Digital marketing
3. Cloud computing
4. Consumers in emerging markets
5. Mobility
6. Global talent scarcity
7.  Smart infrastructure solutions
8. Sustainability

These and other “disruptors” could radically change the configuration and dynamics of S-curves as well as what is necessary to “jump” from any of then and then begin the laborious process of achieving high performance prior to the next “jump” that may well be much more difficult than any of its predecessors. My hunch, only a hunch, is that it will be. Business leaders who read this book and then apply effectively what they have learned from it will gain a significant, perhaps decisive advantage over those who don’t.

 

Here’s the New York Times Hardcover Business Best Seller List for February, 2012 – Steve Jobs at #1

We have presented synopses of business books, many of them bestsellers, at our First Friday Book Synopsis event every month since April, 1998.  From this month’s list, we have already presented Steve Jobs, Great by Choice, and Switch. I have also presented Boomerang for a private client’s event.

My colleague, Karl Krayer, will present Taking People with You at the March First Friday Book Synopsis, and Thinking, Fast and Slow at the April First Friday book Synopsis.

Some of the titles from this month’s list do not quite fit our purposes for our event.  (For example, we generally do not present “personal finance” books).  But there are a couple of others of these titles on our “to consider” list for our event.

Here’s the N Y Times list for February.

1	STEVE JOBS, by Walter Isaacson.
2	TAKING PEOPLE WITH YOU, by David Novak.
3	THINKING, FAST AND SLOW, by Daniel Kahneman.
4	PSYCHOLOGY OF WEALTH, by Charles Richards.
5	BOOMERANG, by Michael Lewis.
6	GREAT BY CHOICE, by Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen.
7	GREEDY BASTARDS, by Dylan Ratigan.
8	EMOTIONAL EQUATIONS, by Chip Conley.
9	ENTRELEADERSHIP, by Dave Ramsey.
10	STRENGTHS-BASED LEADERSHIP, by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie.
11	STRATEGY FOR YOU, by Richard Horwath.
12	SWITCH, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.
13	TOTAL MONEY MAKEOVER, by Dave Ramsey.
14	LEAN STARTUP, by Eric Ries.
15	BUILDING A MAGNETIC CULTURE, by Kevin Sheridan.

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Most of our synopses from recent years, with audio + handout, are available for purchase at our companion web site, 15minutebusinessbooks.com.  My synopses of Steve Jobs, Great by Choice, and Switch are now available on our site.