Executive Missive: Dare to Be Direct

“Change everything except your wife and kids.” The audaciousness of Samsung’s chairman was unmistakable. The clarity and urgency of that infamous message catapulted the company to a $288 billion global powerhouse.

To be an effective leader means knowing when to be direct.

Two decades later, Samsung’s leader Lee Khun Hee carefully crafts his words now to caution, not to congratulate his employees: “We must resist complacency.”

Why aren’t there more bold and brief leaders like that? Why do lengthy messages from the corner office consistently miss the mark? How can being more direct set them apart?

My experience with senior executives is that they often lack the courage to be concise. They’re afraid to take a position and hold to it. Rather, they choose to sway between two extreme personas:

1. I’m Blunt beyond Belief: they decide to be extremely candid, and their curt tone is cold and impersonal, turning people off immediately.


2. I’m Afraid to Offend: they decide to take a more cautious, political posture and speak in corporate platitudes that address everyone, yet say nothing.

Each of these positions is doomed to fail: Blunt leaders put people on the defensive and tune them out; while fearful executives waste precious time with meaningless words, while their followers lose confidence and get easily confused.

In each instance, they need to be more direct. Here are four ways that any senior leader can raise their game by being brief, not wordy or blunt:

1. Take time to prepare. Don’t be spontaneous when there’s a tricky topic that needs to stick. Rehearse a few, powerful words that will hit the mark.


2. Conviction leads to clarity. Believe that the weight and brevity of what you say will matter more than over explaining it.


3. Just Say It. When it’s time to communicate, deliver the message and have the discipline to stop talking.


4. Say it again, again, again. Over time, take advantage to remind and reinforce so it sinks in even more. Consistency over time builds clarity.

When you consider effective executives leading, look at what happens when famous leaders speak directly: Steve Jobs unveiling the iPhone (“Today, we’re going to reinvent the phone!”), Jack Welch on building a winning strategy (“If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.”) and John F. Kennedy launching the space program (“We choose to go to the moon”). They all share a confident clarity that direct leaders possess.

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