Murray - The language of leaders: how top CEOs communicate to inspire, influence and achieve results

This ebook published in 2012 by

Kogan Page Limited

120 Pentonville Road

London N1 9JN

UK

www.koganpage.com

Kevin Murray, 2012, 2013

E-ISBN 9780749468132

To my wife, who inspires our family

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kevin Murray specializes in strategic communication, reputation management and leadership coaching. He has 40 years of experience in communications, first as a journalist, then in corporate communications, and now in consultancy as chairman of The Good Relations Group, which is part of Chime Communications plc.

For the past three decades, Kevin has been advising the global chairmen and chief executives (and their leadership teams) of a wide range of organizations. He has provided personal coaching for many of these leaders, helping them to be more effective communicators.

Previously Kevin was the director of communications for British Airways and, before that, director of corporate affairs for the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. He started his career as a crime reporter on The Star newspaper in Johannesburg, South Africa.

CONTENTS

S ince publication of the first edition of The Language of Leaders , I have spoken to people in locations from Cape Town to Dubai, in Germany, France and Brussels and all over the UK. In all, I have stood in front of more than 5,000 people, from business students to business leaders, telling them about the findings in the book and recounting many of the stories I was told by the leaders that I interviewed.

These audiences have been interested, challenging and generous in their feedback and their comments. Their interest in leadership and communication has been profound and I have tapped a rich vein that seems to take on more relevance with each passing day.

In these audiences, I have encountered university students, business graduat es, managers of all levels, and the leadership teams of many of the worlds most famous global businesses. I have spoken at events at The Institute of Directors in London, in an aircraft hanger, in hotels and at exclusive dining events, at business schools and in the boardrooms of world-leading companies. My schedule of speaking engagements is still full and I still enjoy every single event.

When I first decided to write the book, I focused on interviewing mainly business leaders. I have spent my life in business communications and thought that if I mixed public sector leaders with private sector leaders, I would confuse my findings. I was wrong.

In many of the audiences I have spoken to, there have been public sector leaders present. They have all shown huge interest in the model that I developed for this book, and in particular the stories that famous CEOs told to illustrate the themes in The Language of Leaders . I found myself being invited into public sector organizations to talk to their leadership teams. I even found my book being recommended to public sector leaders and blogged about by them. Now I really was confused.

They all seemed to be saying that the insights in the book were equally valid for them, and they showed an enormous appetite for learning. When Kogan Page came to me to ask my views on a refresh for this paperback edition, it was very clear that I should go and interview public sector leaders, and add their views and stories to the leaders I had already interviewed. When I then set out on these interviews, talking to the heads of organization s such as the Independent Police Complaints Commission, the Met Office, the Financial Ombudsman Service, the Health and Safety Executive and Ofsted, I was nervous. Would I now find that I needed to change the model and completely recast the book?

Far from it. These leaders validated the model in the book and gave me huge confidence in its robustness. Many of them had already read the book and had recommended it to their own leadership teams. They were eager to give me their views on the same themes that had emerged during my first round of interviews.