Touch. Tod Maffin
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between his father and the public. Evan’s efforts did something for space travel that hasn’t existed in nearly fifty years, since the lunar landings: He helped create a strong bond between the public and the space program.
There’s a wonderful metaphor in how he describes public fascination with what he had his father sharing from the ISS.
“Space has historically been beyond the reach of the average citizen,” Evan told us. “Now there’s the expectation that space is coming within the reach of the average citizen.”
We agree. Social media isn’t just shortening the distance between ourselves and the potential of a vacation in space because Chris Hadfield showed us how to brush our teeth in zero gravity. It’s allowing anyone considering a career at a financial institution or looking to hone her leadership skills to come within reach of people like Peter Aceto.
In fact, it was through social media that we made contact with Evan shortly after his father started tweeting from the ISS.
We admit that it may seem unfair to compare a business operation on planet Earth to an orbiting mecca of technological innovation. What we’re really talking about is building a human connection with your audience using whichever on-ramp you can identify. Often, that’s about allowing others to see where they fit within the experience. The space example means that when Evan and Chris fielded requests for photos, they were often from people who wanted to see their own hometowns.
“That sounds like an ego thing,” Evan dismissed. “Really, what people are saying is ‘show me where I am in all of this. How do I look in comparison to this whole world? Where am I in this world of experience? How do I fit in?’ That’s what we tried to show. We tried to be as inclusive as possible. We tried to look through as many eyes as we could to help people see themselves.”
Often leaders overlook that all-important part of human communication: the unique quality they, and the world in which they operate, offer to their interested audience.
Notice we said interested audience. Intended audience and interested audience are not always the same. It’s important to watch for both in your interactions, be they in person or online.
You might find that your leadership style and skills, particularly once humanity kicks in, will have a broader reach and may even earn the respect of some of your harshest critics. While that may not be your intent, even critics have been known to go to bat for their adversaries if they believe it’s merited.
Becoming a Chief Humanizing Officer
There are many great examples from the formative days of social media that illustrate the importance of the human touch in organizational culture. Perhaps because they were so groundbreaking, they often find themselves repeated in books within this genre.
Take the example of tech enthusiast Robert Scoble. He was a frequent contributor to some online support groups for Microsoft software dating way back to the early 2000s. During that time, he also blogged about Microsoft and its products — sometimes his posts were positive, sometimes critical. His contributions proved so valuable, Microsoft hired him to, essentially, continue blogging and producing short video pieces as he had been doing.
Outside of honouring regulatory restrictions on the reporting of financial and leadership information, Scoble’s posts didn’t require the approval of a legal committee or review board. They went live on Microsoft’s website without any corporate review. Even when they were critical of Microsoft.
In that way, he had earned the unofficial title of Chief Humanizing Officer.
Scoble put a human face on Microsoft because he was empowered by the company’s leadership to speak as a real person.
Pope Francis seems to have embraced the role of Chief Humanizing Officer within the Catholic Church. While we can’t speak to how he runs things inside the Vatican, or how some people might view the pontiff’s approach to the church, we’re particularly taken by how the pope seems to have embraced many of the concepts we’re presenting in this book.
The pontiff made international headlines when he broke Palm Sunday tradition in 2014. He abandoned his prepared homily to speak from the heart (though the media preferred to use the term “off the cuff”) for fifteen minutes. Then, as the Popemobile navigated St. Peter’s Square, Pope Francis jumped off (sometimes while the vehicle was still moving) to mingle with the people. The pope posed in selfies with followers. He even accepted tea from someone in the crowd.
Associated Press reporter Frances D’Emillio wrote, “The pope wants to put people on the margins of life at the centre of the church’s attention.”[6] He’s doing exactly that. And he’s doing it by being a Chief Humanizing Officer.
Modern leaders are often celebrated not because of the status bestowed upon or assigned to them, but because they make it possible for us to see ourselves in them.
Three Phrases to Refine
Leaders are responsible for setting the overall direction for an organization. While tools like business plans and KPIs certainly help, the most powerful tool a leader has at his or her disposal is their own personality. It’s how they present their values, model behaviour, and build (or destroy) relationships.
Leaders present their personality largely through their voice, tone, and messages. Which makes it incredibly baffling that, despite a growing number of high profile case studies, many leaders lack the ability to speak with basic candour and clarity.
We see this gap in voice primarily with two of the most important phrases in human communication — acknowledgements and apologies.
Thank You
Mark took bar mitzvah classes. (That’s right. Jewish boys don’t just magically become men when they’re thirteen. They take classes first.)
He remembers one very important lesson he learned from the cantor[7] of his synagogue, David Aptowitzer. He was tasked with preparing Mark to lead the Saturday morning service which would propel him into adulthood.
Part of the process was writing a speech that explained the Torah reading for the service and related it to Mark’s thoughts on becoming a young Jewish man. Most importantly, it was imperative he thanked his family, friends, and community for helping him reach this day.
Mark was proud of the draft of his speech, certain Cantor Aptowitzer would fawn over his brilliance and have his four classmates assemble to hear him recite his masterpiece.
That’s not what happened.
You’ve probably never seen so many red marks on a piece of paper before. Cantor Aptowitzer grumbled about inaccuracies in the telling of the story and expressed his disappointment that the analysis was weak at best. Then he stopped at one particular spot as though he had hit a brick wall. He looked Mark straight in the eyes and pointed at some text.
“I’d like to thank …”
He asked if Mark would, in fact, be thanking the list of people that followed or if he was only considering it. It was a Yoda moment: “Do or do not. There is no try.” The teacher was unambiguous. There would be no “wanting” to thank people under his watch.
So it came to be that Mark dropped “wanting.”
And, as it is written: there was evening and there was morning. One lesson.
At issue is how we take liberties with the English language. “I want to thank …” has become “leaderspeak” for actually thanking an individual or a group of people. It’s become part of the vernacular because we’ve heard it so often. Hearing is believing, perhaps. We don’t recognize the not-so-subtle twist that calls into question the sincerity of the thank-you.
Once you embrace this idea, you’ll be amazed how often you hear executives, politicians, and other public figures use this noncommittal language in their thank-you messages. On some occasions it is clearly an innocent mistake. On others, you’d swear the communication folk chose