Garcia H.F. The Power of Communication: Skills to Build Trust, Inspire Loyalty, and Lead Effectively, Rough Cuts

FT Press, 2012. — 336 p. — ISBN: 013288884X.Communication is the absolutely indispensable leadership discipline. But too often leaders and professional communicators get mired in tactics and fail to influence public attitudes in the ways that would help them most. The Power of Communication is the solution. World-renowned leadership communication expert Helio Fred Garcia builds on the U.S. Marine Corps’ legendary publication Warfighting, showing how to apply the Corps’ proven leadership and strategy doctrine in all forms of public communication–and achieve truly extraordinary results.
Garcia demonstrates how to orient on audiences, recognize their most critical concerns, and successfully communicate on three levels: strategic, operational, and tactical. You’ll learn how to take the initiative and control the agenda…respond to events with speed and focus…use the power of maneuver…prepare and plan…and put it all together, becoming a habitually strategic communicator.
Communication has power, but, as with any powerful tool, it needs to be used effectively or it can cause significant self-inflicted harm. You’ll learn specific, indispensable lessons of leaders communicating effectively, including Apple’s Steve Jobs and the McDonald’s board, as well as from catastrophic mistakes of business and political leaders who got it wrong, from BP’s Tony Hayward to the HP board to FEMA.
If you need to win hearts and minds, you need The Power of Communication–and you need it now.
Words matter: taking language seriously as a leadership discipline.
Adapt language to changing circumstances and to the reactions they generate.
Words aren’t enough.
Learn how what a leader says sets expectations, but what a leader does determines whether trust rises or falls.
Take your audience seriously.
Connect with your audiences as living, breathing entities.
Speed, focus, and capturing the first mover advantage.
Define your situation, motives, and actions–before someone else does.
Saying it isn’t enough.
Master the bearing, physicality, and stagecraft of successful public leadership.
Audiences, attention, and retention.
Learn how hearts and minds work–and get them to work together for you.Foreword.
Introduction: Leadership, Discipline, and Effective Communication.Leadership and Communication: Connecting with Audiences.
Words Matter.
Taking Audiences Seriously.
Words Aren’t Enough.
Speed, Focus, and the First Mover Advantage.
Initiative, Maneuver, and Disproportionality.
Strategy and Communication: Planning and Execution.
Goals, Strategies, and Tactics: Preparing and Planning.
Building Skills: Getting Good at Communicating Well.
Performance: The Physicality of Audience Engagement.
Content: Word Choice, Framing, and Meaning.
Audiences: Attention, Retention, and How Hearts and Minds Work.
Putting It All Together: Becoming a Habitually Strategic Communicator.
Appendix: Warfighting Principles for Leadership Communication.
Endnotes.