CEO Speak!

Hi All!

Where ever I have gone for training or teaching, I have always emphasised the need for good communication skills. In fact, I am a strong believer and spend a lot of time & energy sharing my thoughts on this.

However, I always get the feeling that NOT all of the people who hear me, actually believe what I say. Being polite and compassionate people, they also do not actually refute me. But the body language gives them away. :-)

So, when I find some big names in the industry repeating my message, I am super thrilled.

Here I was today, surfing for news and general reading, when I came across this article.
It was so apt, that I decided to do something that I normally avoid, which is to get secondhand content. You will see why when you read ahead.

This is an interview with the CEO of Delta Airlines, Richard Anderson. It is one of the few airlines to keep afloat in these times. Actually, they turned around from a bankruptcy a few years ago. See the Wall Street Journal's fact sheet on Delta here


Here is an excerpt from the interview:

Q. And is there any change in the kind of qualities you’re looking for compared with 5, 10 years ago?
A. I think this communication point is getting more and more important. People really have to be able to handle the written and spoken word. And when I say written word, I don’t mean PowerPoints. I don’t think PowerPoints help people think as clearly as they should because you don’t have to put a complete thought in place. You can just put a phrase with a bullet in front of it. And it doesn’t have a subject, a verb and an object, so you aren’t expressing complete thoughts.
And a lot of what we do in communication, when you write e-mail, you need to express yourself very clearly so people understand whether we’re going to L.A. today or we’re going to Boston today.



Q. What would you like to see business schools teach more?
A. When you’re managing as much change as corporations globally must deal with today, the ability to communicate and communicate effectively is so important that it ought to be a core capability in a business school curriculum.


..... and much much more about the kind of people he looks for.

Good to know!

Happy reading!

See you next week.

Let us hear from you all! Keep those comments coming.

Gayatri