About a week ago I facilitated a webinar for members of Australian Women in Agriculture. It was called Leadership for Advocacy. A shout out to the 50 people who attended and gave their all to the practical activities. I love breakout rooms but I know this isn’t the case for everyone!
I love this Leadership for Advocacy topic, and it appears many of you and others do too. I have received a lot of feedback about how practical the session was and this got me to thinking, that it’s time to strip back the academics of advocacy and allow it to show up in our everyday conversations. Real people, sharing real thoughts, stories and most importantly experience led opinions. It’s time to keep it simple and take the opportunity to be proactive and share our thoughts and ideas when, where and with who we can (and always with purpose).
There’s a ping on my phone – I’ve just received a message from a webinar attendee who used a tool I shared and said “WOW it really works, I feel great and I’m going to use this again and again now”. I’m going to share a few observations about Leadership for Advocacy with you here now.
1. Having a tool to form and share your opinion is critical. Very few of us are short of words, it’s how we use them that matters. We need to share our point and offer up some data / story to go with it. One without the other is likely to leave people confused and the impact of your conversation / meeting / presentation lost.
2. Clarity is good for us. It brings purpose to what we are doing, who we engage with and what we say. As a believer that advocacy is for everyone and occurs one conversation at a time, being clear about what you stand for, what you have an opinion about why you want to share this is super important. Stay too general and it will all become a little mellow and impact will be limited.
3. Mindset is key. We did a quick exercise on the Webinar that gave people the opportunity to assess their advocacy mindset. People marked themselves on a continuum between two capabilities like Reactive ……………. Proactive etc. It took no time at all for people to get a measure on what capabilities to put focus on to build their advocacy mindset further. Ahh the joy of slowing down and taking time to be honest with ourselves. This is where all good growth and change start.
4. Offering opinions with emotion can provide a positive charge. So can tone of voice and the speed you speak at. Did you know that if you are face to face, body language accounts for about 48% of your overall communication, 38% for vocal tone and only 7% for the words you choose. And repeating words or sentences to make a point or even saying one word louder than the others can create a ‘hearing it in bold’ type experience for the listener. Mmmm that’s food for thought right there.
5. I know from experience that the clearer my purpose and the more planned I am, the clearer the messages I share are. And I also know that having a tool to align or hang my opinions / words on really matters. Being able to speak under water is no strength if you can’t make the words count! Hence, my top hints for today are to speak for impact when it matters and develop a few tools to help out along the way.
Over to You
Take some time to think about adding advocacy to your string of leadership capabilities – one conversation at a time.
Until next time!
