Bloomport U

For anyone who has ever been called a “Type A” person, felt like a drill sergeant, been a project manager, or taken the Strengths Finders assessment and come up with “Command” as one of their Top 5, this post by John Baldoni titled “How to Communicate Like Ben Bernanke” is for you.  Admittedly, a communications assessment on the Fed Chief did not sound like riveting lunchtime reading to me, but I usually like posts by John so I pressed on.  This one turned out to be applicable, actionable, and insightful. 

In short, if you are “in charge”, one way to show you are “in control” is not to dominate the conversation.  Bernanke’s approach is less about pushing his point view and more about facilitating the conversation, his trademarks characteristic is to invite others to comment, hear their points of view, and then to comment towards consensus.  By doing this, he is inviting others to put forth their best ideas without imposing his view first.  John goes on to give three additional suggestions; 1. Open up and keep the conversation flowing 2. Be prepared to give a little bit to build good will and keep moving to consensus and 3. Follow up; it’s never really resolved on the first try, so keep the momentum until it’s resolved.

I remember early in my career taking a communications course in P&G where we (as a small group) were videotaped coming to consensus on an assigned issue.  During the session critique I noticed that there was one person who would always hold his comments after the discussion underway, the sides were entrenched, and we moving into vigorous debate.  This guy remained silent (thus neutral) until the debate heated up, then he calmly broke into the conversation by articulating each position, affirmed the position, and then moved on to suggesting 2 or 3 middle ground points.  He immediately became the mediator that moved the discussion from a debate into a negotiation.  Voila: a future Bernanke.