Leadership Skills – Information
Leadership Skills – The Levels of Information
Those with strong leadership skills know that there are three levels of information that your audience could hear.
- Level 1 – Content (What)
- Level 2 – Process (How)
- Level 3 – Context (Why)
You need to pitch the level of information to the right level of audience. This video will give you the insight on how to use this information, and what happens if you get it wrong. When you get this right, you will have quicker meetings that produce better results, shorter conversations that lead to outcomes and team members that can contribute even more.
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Leadership Skills Development Transcript
G’day! Darren from executivespeaking.com.au.
I’ve got a technique here that I want to share with you that will help you position yourself as a leader, as someone who should be listened to, and someone of influence. It’s great for developing leadership skills. Stick around.
Today I want to share with you a technique on how you can share your ideas so people want to get on board with what it is you have to say and put you at the right level for where it is that you are – are you a leader or are you one of the people implementing the tasks that the leaders have.
There’s three types of information you need to be aware of. The first is content, the second is process, and the third is context. Now, what are these about?
Content is about what it is you’re going to do. For argument’s sake, in the business world, it might be we’re going to open a new warehouse in western Sydney. We’re going to capture that market. The second type of information, process – how are we going to do it? Well, if we’re going to open a warehouse in western Sydney, we need to find a site, we need to get feasible rental agreements, we need to look at purchasing, we need to have our supplies etc put into place so they know where we are.
The what – the content – and the how – the process, how are you going to do it.
The third type of information is the context. What is it all about? In this instance, it might be about being more efficient, it might be about saving costs, it might be about capturing a market or preparing for a strategy. That’s what it’s about.
Now, when you get these three types of information confused, it lowers what people think of you and your idea. When you should be talking context and you’re bogged down in content and processes, those that will need to be sold context don’t hear it, and they start thinking, “Well, this guy knows how to do it on the ground but he shouldn’t be up here speaking at this level.” When you get it wrong, you can find yourself feeling a bit odd and a bit out, and here’s a great example of how that happened.
Tony Abbott: The other reform that has proven very, very difficult for us is to try to inject more price signals into our health system. We would like to see a $7 co-payment for people who are going to see the doctor… But it is proving to be massively difficult to get this particular reform through the Parliament. I don’t have any magic answers to the problems that we face… But the more gatherings like this can affirm the importance of good policy… Then I think the easier it is for all of us to deliver good policy to the people of our countries.
Tony Abbott had the world’s most powerful leaders in the room with him, and what he was there to do, and what everyone was there to do was to talk about context. But what he did was dragged it down into content and process, and that’s why he was rightly lambasted by just about everyone in the Australian media.
Understand that it’s content, process, and context.
This is just one of the many techniques that I share in the Language of Leadership module, part of the iLead program.
What I’d love for you to do is, first of all, like this video and share it on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc, and also pop a comment down below so we can continue this conversation and help you position yourself as a leader that others want to follow.
Cheerio!
Speak to you next time.
Cheers.
