Ivan Misner PhD: Inside the Strategy of Radical Transparency During Organizational Crises

We are all competing in an attention economy. From pings and dings to blinks and rings, companies and content constantly compete for our limited time and attention. How do great leaders turn down the noise and tune in to the messages that matter most? What does it take to be heard above the noise? And how do we create communication that cultivates community and connectedness in a distributed, distracted world? To address these questions, we started an interview series called “Can You Hear Me Now?: Top Five Strategies Leaders Use to Diminish Distractions & Win in the Attention Economy.” As a part of this interview series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Ivan Misner PhD.

As Founder & Chief Visionary Officer of BNI, the world’s largest business networking organization, Ivan Misner PhD is a global leader in workplace communication, inter-office dynamics, and networking. His latest book “The 3rd Paradigm: A Radical Shift to Greater Success” outlines the need for improved communication among the workforce, leaders leading by example, and using the co-creation model of success. He holds a PhD in Organizational Behavior from the University of Southern California and among his many awards, has been named “Humanitarian of the Year” by the Red Cross.

Thank you for making time to visit with us. Before we dig in, our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. What is one of your most memorable career moments, and what made it memorable?

An online platform for my company had recently been released and it crashed and burned like the Hindenburg.

Immediately after, I was at a company conference and getting ready to face some of my key leaders. I stood nervously in front of the room and said:

“I want to apologize for what was released a few months ago. It was not what I promised it would be, and I take full responsibility for that. What I’d like for all of you to do is tell me everything you don’t like about the platform. Everything. Don’t leave anything out. I want to hear it all.”

This was my “Listen Till They Drop” strategy. Let them vent continuously for several hours. Do not interrupt them and, no matter what, do not argue with them about any suggestions or complaints they share. They needed to unleash their anger, and I needed to stay quiet and listen — not exactly my natural strength.

After three hours and more than 500 issues, a long silence finally fell over the room. The crowd was exhausted. They had nothing else to share. My “Listen Till They Drop” strategy had allowed them to release their pent-up anger. Maybe now everyone could focus on a solution.

I looked at them and shared my sincerest belief about this project: “Everything’s Going to Be OK. EGBOK. We’ll get through this. We will get through this because all of us are better than one of us. If we all work together to address these issues, we will create, together, a platform that will be a game changer for the company. Now, who wants to volunteer for the project board?”

I watched with immense relief as people began volunteering. By the end of the meeting, they had created a list of issues to investigate and put a plan in place. More importantly, there was a general sense of relief and accomplishment in the room. There was a sincere belief that the group could find a solution to the many problems the organization faced with this new venture. The tidal wave of anger had transitioned to the stillness of confidence. This was a productive meeting.

What could have been the worst day of my career might just prove to be the best one. The plan was in place. Soon the real work of co-creation would begin. I realized that the process would be messy, difficult, and frustrating — but I also knew it could work.

What is the most unexpected twist in your career story, and what did you discover from your detour?

Being diagnosed with cancer at the height of my career was the most unexpected detour for me personally and professionally.

After the initial shock and resulting conversations with my close family, I started to think about how I was going to handle this within my company. As the Founder and senior executive of an international referral marketing organization (BNI), I have a fair amount of public recognition and I am the public figure for the company. Thinking about how my diagnosis would affect my company, so many questions ran through my mind:

• Should I try to keep the diagnosis secret?
• Do I only tell key people?
• Would I still be able to run the company during treatment?
• Or do I need to hire someone to take on my role?
• Seeing this as a potential weakness, would our competition try and take advantage of us during this time?
• And at the end of the say, will my illness hurt the bottom line of the organization?

To me, the answer to the first question would help determine the direction I would take with the others.

So, I started with the question of keeping it secret. Let me first say that this is a very personal decision. Everyone’s experience is different, and I can completely respect it if someone chooses to tell virtually no one. I, however, did not choose that direction. BNI is a business networking, “word-of-mouth” organization. The idea of keeping that kind of secret in an organization like ours seemed impossible to me. So rather than try to keep it private, I chose to “go public”. I thought this strategy would help me guide the messaging. Note that I didn’t say “control the message” because I can tell you from first-hand experience — you cannot control it. However, I do believe you can guide and influence the message greatly by coming out in front of it.

Having decided to go public, I did it with a communication plan in place. After I decided what I was going to do for my treatment and why, I created a communication hierarchy of who I was going to tell and when. Below is the communication hierarchy I used for the dissemination of information. All of these were done within a three-day period:

1. Extended family
2. Close personal friends
3. Key management of the company
4. Employees at the Headquarters office
5. Franchisees world-wide
6. Global employees and independent contractors
7. Our clients
8. The public through my blog and social media

Since I opted for transparency in regard to my diagnosis and treatment, I chose to not hire someone to take on my responsibilities. Instead, I asked for help from those people who worked for me directly and indirectly. I asked if my close team would step up and fill in for me as needed and if my extended team (such as franchisees) would allow me more flexibility with project due dates and serious matters that would normally require my personal attention such as contract issues. They did so without hesitation.

As for the competition, that was easy. I have always believed that we shouldn’t worry about what our competition is doing (know what they are doing but don’t obsess over it) and instead, focus on improving our business every day. If we continued to do that with the team that was in place, we would not have to obsess over the competition and we didn’t.

That left the question of our bottom line. Before I answer that, let me discuss my mindset a little further. I chose transparency as the approach to my diagnosis. Transparency to the point that I posted multiple blogs on my site talking very specifically about what treatment approach I was pursuing and how I was doing every few months. I knew that if I didn’t update people, they would fill in the blanks themselves and it may or may not be accurate. I wanted to put the message out there myself — whether it was good or whether it was bad. I set sail for that approach not knowing how it would end.

I’m pleased to say that I am fully and completely in remission today. What’s also important is that my organization was able to follow my journey first-hand. They did not have to guess or wonder what I was doing. I put it all out there publicly and rumors did not flourish.

So, how did the company do during this period? Well, since my diagnosis the company has more than doubled in size. I think that happened because I had good people in place who were willing to step up when the boss was down. If I had to do it all over again — I’d do it exactly the same way.

According to a recent Harvard Business School study, the most essential communication skill for leaders is the ability to adapt their communication style. How do you adapt your communication style?

The first step to adapting your communication style is to have good “contextual intelligence.” Good leaders are good facilitators. They understand the context of the situation. A leader understands the limits of their knowledge and adapts that knowledge to an environment different from the one in which it was developed.

Do not lead with a cookie-cutter approach. You can’t treat all situations or people exactly the same.

It is important for leaders to develop contextual intelligence to deal with challenges. This is the ability to adapt to the current situation. We can never conceive of all the potential problems in any given situation. This means that one’s ability to adapt is truly an important key to being a great leader. Do your best to understand the landscape and adapt.

However, you cannot plan for every unexpected situation. Sometimes, “what cannot go wrong will go wrong” which means you need to have a plan in place to address surprises that might hit you along the way.

Clarity is critical as well. What lessons have you learned about how to communicate with clarity in our distracted world of work?

Communication is an important part of my book, The 3rd Paradigm. In order for it to be effective the leader must have seven rules:

1. Everyone speaks — we all have a unique perspective

2. Everyone respects

3. Everyone is patient

4. Everyone is honest

5. Everyone is transparent

6. Everyone builds trust

7. Everyone commits 100%

Whenever I was dealing with a crisis, I practiced what I call “communication saturation.” I would saturate the organization with all the information possible to show transparency and to make sure everyone was being informed.

Secondly, and this one is difficult — bring the “barking dogs” into the conversation. These are people who have opinions that you may or may not want to hear and they will be barking outside the room if you don’t let them into the room. It takes a strong leader to handle the barking dogs but that’s what it takes to have good communication.

We often discover what works by experiencing what doesn’t. Tell us about a time when your communication didn’t lead to the desired results and what you learned from the experience.

From The 3rd Paradigm, we found seven problems relating to working together as a team:

1. Personality conflicts
2. Dealing with egos
3. Poor communication
4. People who don’t pull their weight
5. Lack of agreement on who makes the final decision
6. Individuals hijacking the direction of the project
7. Nonaligned vision for the project

The more prepared the leader can be to address these issues using their contextual intelligence and adaptive capacity — the more successful they will be.

What advice would you offer to other leaders who are struggling to have their messages heard and actioned?

The communication saturation and barking dogs strategy are key to getting a message out there.

Also, it helps if you lean on the healthy core values of the relationship. The leader needs to be the core value champion. Use the core values as part of the communication strategy.

Leading a remote, distributed team requires a different communication cadence and style from leading a team in person. What are five strategies any leader can deploy to improve communication and clarity when leading a distributed workforce?

While not five strategies, I do believe that the “Four Knows” that lead to Co-Creation encompass all we need as leaders for clear and effective communication.

1. First is Focus. These are the seven things to consider:

• Mutually Desired Outcomes
• The who, what, where, when, why, and how
• It’s more than the “what”
• Who — stakeholders
• Why — what is the reason or reasons
• Most important is the “how”
• Commit to measurable outcomes

2. Second is Communication. Those key points again are:

• Everyone speaks — we all have a unique perspective
• Everyone respects
• Everyone is patient
• Everyone is honest
• Everyone is transparent
• Everyone builds trust
• Everyone commits 100%

3. Third is Process.

• Determine the co-creation structure you plan on using: Think tank, crowdsource, open source, user generated.
• Establish governance
• Have clear roles and responsibilities
• Deliver predictable results

4. Fourth is Execution.

• Clarify expectations
• Leverage contextual intelligence
• Ask questions
• Lead from behind — with guardrails
• Coach and cultivate

What are the three most effective strategies to diminish distractions when there is so much competing for attention?

The first is certainly to be sure your team knows that you aren’t just listening to them, but you are HEARING them as well. When people feel like they are being heard, they will pay attention when you need them to be focused.

Communicate clearly to your team that they need to “hold the vision, not the obstacles.” Obstacles tend to be the biggest distractions. The bigger the obstacle, the bigger the distraction. If you get your team to focus on the vision, they tend to find workarounds for the distractions.

The best way to get people to focus on the vision is a concept I talk about in The 3rd Paradigm — that is “Communication Saturation.” When the leader saturates the team with relevant information (including a focus on the overall vision), it definitely helps to pull people away from distractions.

What is one skill you would advise every leader to invest in to become a better communicator?

The ONE skill that every leader should have to be a better communicator is to know that… there is NO one skill. It is always a recipe of factors. It’s like a great meal — one ingredient does not make a great dinner. It is a recipe that includes several things. For communication it includes things like being clear and transparent as well as practicing active listening, holding the vision, and communication saturation,

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

Others would have to say whether I have achieved this concept or not, but I feel that is exactly what I have done. BNI now has over 11,100 groups meeting in 77 countries around the world every week. More importantly, in the last 12 months, the organization has generated $22.9 Billion US Dollars in business for our members (based on what they report via our online platform). If you take the UN estimates of Gross Domestic Product, there are over 100 countries in the world with a LOWER GDP than what BNI members generated for themselves in the preceding 12 months. That feels like a fairly effective movement to me.

How can our readers stay connected with you?

www.IvanMisner.com

https://www.facebook.com/IvanMisner.BNIFounder/

Thank you for these great insights! We wish you continued success.

About The Interviewer: Karen Mangia is one of the most sought-after keynote speakers in the world, sharing her thought leadership with over 10,000 organizations during the course of her career. As Vice President of Customer and Market Insights at Salesforce, she helps individuals and organizations define, design and deliver the future. Discover her proven strategies to access your own success in her fourth book Success from Anywhere and by connecting with her on LinkedIn and Twitter.