To many CEOs, communication is a science of numbers: You get your messages
out by repeating them to as
many people as possible, as
often as possible.
To Maxwell L. Anderson,
however, communication is lot
like art. The director and CEO
of the Indianapolis Museum of
Art says that any organizational
communication is full of symbolism and open to a wide
array of interpretations. Your
appearance, your inflection, the words you choose, all of those
affect how your employees will
interpret what you have to say.
As the leader of your company, Anderson says that you
must be aware that your every
move will be scrutinized and
mined for potential hidden
meanings. To make sure your
employees don’t lose the
meaning of what you are trying
to communicate, you need to
get down on the ground level
of your company and frequently
engage your employees in person.
Smart Business spoke with
Anderson about the art of communication and why each
brushstroke matters.
Make in-person communication a
priority. You just make time for
connecting in person, even if, at
times, the calendar is filled with
obligations that aren’t as creative.
I find myself very stimulated
from the brown-bag lunches I
have with my employees, where
I get a chance to just sit down
and have a dialogue with them
over lunch.
It’s a chance to get great ideas
out of a very informal setting, as
opposed to a structured meeting. It’s particularly in those unguarded moments where people
are sharing ideas in a casual
context that they’re prepared to
take a greater chance with an
idea they might have otherwise
felt self-conscious about raising
in a formal meeting.
There is a kind of inevitable
formality to a meeting structure
with an agenda, a chair, a set of
topics in advance. Everyone is
conscious that their time is
valuable, so it rarely allows for
spontaneity, and no one wants
to intrude on what has already
been the prescribed purpose of
a meeting.
Being in the presence of other
people is where the power of
imagination is unleashed. E-mail,
by contrast, is a deadening, if
necessary, evil. It ends up
being a game of pingpong,
passing obligations along to
other people by virtue of copying them on the e-mail chain.
We all long for the day when
smart e-mail emerges, which it
undoubtedly has to, and there
is a kind of fluidity between in-person and video-based communication.
The written word is great for
punctuation of moments in
business, but moving from e-mail to video is certainly where
we all should head, with text as
part of the message but not the
main vehicle.
Remember that communication is
more than just words. That symbolism is very important. It’s
very easy for a CEO to trip up in
front of his workers by appearing to be aloof, disengaged or
distracted, and telegraph, by
consequence, any personal issue
that might be facing employees
or the overarching goals of the
institution. Simply because the
calendar gets chewed up with
obligations, it doesn’t eliminate
the need for a CEO to be concerned with the human ecology
of the workplace.
Everybody comes to their
tasks with a different level of
enthusiasm, preparation and
ambition. Like a good conductor, a CEO should be able to
bring the best out in everyone
and recognize that everyone has different strengths, capacities and interests.
Hire other good communicators.
You need to observe others
within a professional context;
see how they interrelate with
colleagues, how much innovation they bring to the equation
without much preparation and
how fluid they are in a work
environment such as ours,
which is so much about breaking new ground, as opposed to
producing a product that has
been tested and shown to
already be in demand.
We make choices every day
here that relate to serving hundreds of thousands of visitors,
any one of which can be magnified to epic proportions in
the media, such as a label for a work of art that might be
offensive to someone or an
interaction in which a front-line staff member may appear
to be unconcerned with a
complaint or any other kind of
experiential moment of truth.
So you have to be on alert as
to how minor decisions can
have a major impact on people’s lives.
With that in mind, I certainly
like to surround myself with
people who have a sense of
what is possible, the art of the
possible, a positive spirit, an
attitude where they put their
particular concerns to the side
in favor of what is best for the
institution. Everyone hopes for
that within an organization,
but you have to manifest that
yourself as a leader.
That requires making time
for hearing out grievances, different points of view, disappointments and acknowledging that not everything that
happens in your organization
will be as everyone wishes.
As human beings, we’re not
quite silverback gorillas, but
we have some primeval appreciation for leadership as an
attribute. In an exhausted,
overcommitted world, I think
everyone looks with favor at
someone who can point everyone in a direction they can get
behind and move toward. …
But in the end, to get the best
out of people, there has to be
something compelling and
exciting about the experience
of working wherever it is they
work.
HOW TO REACH: Indianapolis Museum of Art, (317) 923-1331 or www.imamuseum.org