Leadership

Leadership is the process of joining people where they presently are, emotionally, and of moving them to a place of specific accomplishment, both emotionally and actively. In this process the leader makes his or her goal the goal of the team.
regards,
Dwika-ExecuTrain


Hello Dwika,

Do you yell at your car's GPS as you drive around attempting to follow directions and reach your destination? Do you enjoy the voice selected for your GPS? Do you find the words, "Turn right at the next opportunity" or "Turn right here" to be comforting or annoying?

It turns out that most people yell at their car's GPS on a regular basis. It also turns out that some people are so annoyed that they will not turn on the voice at all. Some are soothed and comforted by the voice. Others, once lost, turn the voice off and find their own way, "Thank you very much!"

So what is happening?
Imagine this assignment. You are an automotive engineer. Your manager has given you the following assignment:

"Determine, design, and program the best voice to be used for our company's line of automobile GPS direction systems."

That is your assignment. What do you do?

There are several questions that become obvious right at the outset. For example:

1. Should the voice be male or female?
2. Should the voice be a "computer" voice or sound more "human"?
3. Should the voice sound "happy", "neutral", "sad", or "angry"?
4. How fast should the voice speak?
5. Should the voice have inflections or be more monotone?
6. Should the voice have an accent or not? (Is there such a voice as one without any accent?)

The answers to these questions are not obvious. In fact, let me give you the results of some research specifically in this area. (The assignment presented above was a real assignment; one that most automotive companies and/or GPS providers have to wrestle with.)

Regarding a male voice or a female voice.
Many people prefer that the automobile GPS have a female voice. Except for the general German population. The people of Germany, it seems, have a strong aversion to taking direction from a woman (this is true... I am not making this up). Research has shown that this aversion is so strong that the majority of German cars sold in Germany have a male voice for their GPS systems. Female voices are preferred, however, in many other cultures. (You can find more information on this topic in the book "The Man Who Lied to His Laptop" published in 2010, by Clifford Nass, a communications professor at Stanford University).

What about accents?
Some accents are actually preferred over others. A British or Australian accent is often preferred over other accents or over no accent at all.

And is a human voice better than a computer voice?
Yes. Generally, people prefer a human voice over a "machine" voice.

But what I really want to talk about is the third question because the third question has direct implications for engineering management and engineering-team success.

Here is what I mean.

One of the questions for automotive engineers was this; "Should the GPS voice always be happy?

The intuitive answer was "sure. Who wants to listen to a GPS voice that sounds grumpy".

Well not so fast.
Once again, truth is stranger than fiction. Researchers decided to test different voices on drivers in a very realistic simulation. Drivers were given an unfamiliar route to drive with the help of their GPS voice. Drivers were given GPS systems with different voices from happy to sad to annoyed to angry to neutral.

Subjects were tested before driving the simulation to determine their "mood" (i.e., happy, sad, annoyed, angry, or neutral). Then the drivers were given a route and told to drive until they reached their destination. (Actually they were to drive until they reached their destination successfully or had some kind of accident. One or the other.)

The results were not at all what might be expected.
The angry drivers when paired with the happy voice invariably had an accident before reaching their destination. But when paired with the angry voice, they "angrily" succeeded in reaching their destination. The angry drivers felt much more comfortable with and willing to listen to the angry voice than the happy voice.

The sad drivers got into accidents with all the voices expect the sad voice. When paired with the sad voice, the sad drivers reached their destinations.

The same was true for the happy drivers. When paired with the sad or angry voice, the happy drivers could not take it and either turned off the GPS voice or got into an accident. The happy drivers were successful only with the happy voices.

So what is the take-away from this research?
It is that we are most comfortable with voices that mirror our own, that convey to us a mood that is congruent or similar to our own mood.

Those of you who have taken my communication courses have heard me say that ... "communication between people is very much like a database transfer of information". If the format and the data structures are not the same, the data transfer will fail or be garbled.

The same applies to human beings. If humans do not believe that the person talking to them is "similar" to them, then they will not "hear" what is being transmitted. One of the best, though not the only way to ensure that the person you are communicating with will hear you, is to have the same "voice" as the person you are communicating with.

In the case of the GPS voice research, drivers did best with voices that reflected the driver's "mood". In human communication the same holds true. If a person's voice sounds slow, and is reflecting a mood that is "down" you would not want to begin your communication sounding as if you are in an "up" mood. You may want to move the listener to a more "up" mood but you must first start your communication with their structure.

You have heard me say it this way:

"If you want to communicate effectively and influence elegantly, you must begin where the other person is."

Ultimately this is the essence of leadership as well. Begin where people are and then move them to where you want them to be. This, to me, is the height of respect. By joining people where they are at the moment you acknowledge them in the most fundamental and respectful way.

Leadership is the process of joining people where they presently are, emotionally, and of moving them to a place of specific accomplishment, both emotionally and actively. In this process the leader makes his or her goal the goal of the team.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

P.S. Feel free to pass this eZine on to your friends.