The Seven C’s: A Checklist for Leaders from Glenn Lyday

A Principal Consultant at the Table Group Glenn Lyday shares his insight on what great leaders strive for pertaining to the seven C’s of communication.

Glenn Lyday is a Principal Consultant at The Table Group and Founder of Glenn Lyday Consulting. With over 20 years of business experience, he uses his expertise to build successful organizations and form high performing teams. Glenn’s high-impact sessions promote immediate outcomes for leaders within organizations.

“Leadership right now matters more than ever.” – Glenn Lyday

Leadership is imperative in every organization, especially at a time like this. When there’s effective communication among leaders and teams, it drives informed resolutions and increases employee productivity.

In late April, we had the pleasure to hear Glenn speak to the OC4 community to share his 7 C’s of Leadership:

Clarity

It is important to provide statements that directly point to what you’re focusing on, prioritizing, and doing. The necessary actions and objectives should be communicated to your team in order to guide them.

Cohesion

Building cohesion, more particularly with your executive team, prevents conflicts such as self-interest to play it safe. Everyone should be a team player and be allowed to speak freely, engage in debate about crucial issues, and come to a consensus on big decisions. Intentionally focus on accountability and results concerning the group in a unison fashion.

Connection

As most of us are working remotely because of Coronavirus (COVID-19), being consistent with daily or weekly check-ins over Google Hangouts or Zoom during this time is more important now than ever before. Remind others on the call of our shared human experiences by asking personal questions (there are limits of course). Emphasize revenue protection, service, and supply chains, and caring for your people and connecting them from where they are right now.

Communicate

Many teams are doing morning or evening check-ins that are about 10-15 minutes each. For example, there is a CEO that is holding a 45 minute long all-hands virtual meeting each week. Communication needs to be simple as some leaders tend to communicate too much.

Courage

Leaders need to have the courage to showcase optimism amidst the gravity of this crisis. This is a trying time for everyone’s personal and professional lives, yet bold decisions and the execution of tasks is necessary to overcome obstacles.

Confidence

If you want your team to act in a cohesive manner, you’ll need to perform well under pressure without allowing your vulnerability and fears interfere with your decision-making process. You’ll be capable of bringing value and enable others to do this as well.

Creativity

It can be inspiring to observe how this crisis is bringing out the best in people. Creativity in a work environment means to demonstrate the good habits you want others to embody. For innovation to flourish, leaders understand that their job is to create the conditions to make this a possibility.

The content for this blog post was taken from Glenn’s event with OC4 on April 30, 2020. Watch the video below to see the full event recording: