The Communicative Leader
On The Communicative Leader, we're making your work life what you want it to be. Do you need years of training or special equipment? Not at all my friends. Simple, yet thoughtful changes in your communication can make great strides in displaying your leadership ability. And why the heck should you care about leadership communication? Well, communication is the yardstick others use to determine whether or not they see you as a leader. Ahhh don't be scared, I got you. We will walk through common organizational obstacles and chat about small, but meaningful communication-rooted changes you can integrate immediately. No more waiting for the workplace to become what you hope it will. Nope. You, my friends, will be empowered and equipped to make those changes. Let's have some fun! Can't get enough?
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The Communicative Leader
The Magic of Leadership Communication: How to Captivate, Influence, and Inspire your Team – A Conversation with Jimi Gibson
Jimi Gibson's journey from pulling rabbits out of hats to leading marketing teams reveals a profound connection between magic performance and leadership communication. In this captivating conversation, the VP of Brand Communication at Thrive Agency unpacks his "Magic Script" framework - a three-part system that transforms ordinary communication into extraordinary leadership moments.
At the heart of Gibson's approach is understanding the neuroscience that makes communication stick. First comes connection (triggering oxytocin), then curiosity (activating dopamine), and finally conversion (releasing serotonin). This framework works whether you're announcing a company initiative, running a client meeting, or delivering a keynote speech.
Gibson reveals how every leadership message falls into one of the "13 fundamental effects" borrowed from magic - from making something appear (production) to making problems disappear (vanishing). He shares eye-opening examples of how shifting your language can dramatically change how information is received. Rather than announcing "We have a process change," skilled leaders might ask "What if one small change could increase our lead flow by 20%?" - immediately reframing the conversation around possibility rather than burden.
The most powerful insight might be Gibson's clarity rule: "If you can't explain your message in one sentence to a 10-year-old, it's too complicated." In a world where employees are bombarded by messages across multiple screens and channels, leaders who communicate with precision and purpose stand out dramatically.
Whether you're leading a team of two or two hundred, this conversation will transform how you structure, deliver and evaluate your communication. Learn to create moments that stick long after the meeting ends. As Gibson explains, "Every leader doesn't just announce what's happening - they script a moment that matters."
Hey leader! Thanks for listening. For more leadership communication tips, check out https://www.thecommunicativeleader.com/
Welcome to another episode of the Communicative Leader. I'm your host, Dr. Leah OH, and today we're thrilled to have Jimi Gibson with us to explore the magic of leadership communication and how it can inspire, influence and captivate teams. Jimmy, a lifelong magician turned into a marketing strategist, currently serves as a VP of brand communication at Thrive Agency, and this is one of the largest digital marketing agencies. With over two decades of ,Jimi's leveraged his unique background in magic to develop a framework called the Magic Script. My friends, this combines psychological principles with the art of performance to create really unforgettable communication experiences. In today's episode, we'll discuss how Jimmy's journey from magician to marketing expert has shaped his approach to leadership communication. He's going to share actionable strategies from the magic script, including helping us to see how curiosity, empathy and clarity can transform the way we engage and inspire those around us. If you're looking to enhance your communication skills and create a resonant impact within your organization, this episode is packed with practical wisdom and inspiration. So, without further ado, let's dive into the magic of leadership communication with Jimmy Gibson.
Dr. Leah OH:Hello and welcome to the Communicative Leader hosted by me, Dr Omilion-Hodges . My friends call me Dr OH. I'm a professor of communication and a leadership communication expert On the Communicative Leader. We're working to make your work life what you want it to be. Jimmy, we're thrilled to have you on the Communicative Leader and, before we dive into this really fun conversation, I'd love it if you could share a little bit of your journey. So how do you transition from your work as a magician to, eventually, where you are now the VP of Brand Communication at Thrive Agency?
Jimi Gibson:Yeah, well,,thank you Dr. OH ,. I'm excited to be here and love chatting about this and love how you bring it back to leadership. It is sort of a twisty-turny path. It makes sense to me but it might not make sense to everyone else. I got a magic kit for my sixth birthday David Jackson, if he's out there. Thank you, david.
Jimi Gibson:And I just was fascinated with the puzzle aspect, the hey, I know a secret that you don't know. And then people were asking me well, show me a trick. And then I had to start to develop that performance approach. And every trick is basically, you have something ordinary and you transform it to the extraordinary. It could be hey, pick a card. And then now I've figured out what your card is to.
Jimi Gibson:Hey, there's an elephant on stage, and now the elephant disappears. But in the middle there there's a little secret, and that's the cool part is it typically involves some psychological principle that because of the way we're programmed, it just goes right past us. And that was the fun thing to understand why someone could be fooled. And you know, I guess through high school people were getting jobs at the grocery store or waiting tables and I thought, well, I could probably make some money doing this, and so I ended up putting myself out there and made a nice amount of money doing a variety of shows, festivals, birthday parties, that type of thing and all of a sudden there was a different structure to what I was doing, right, and so we talk about show business and what is the balance between show and business?
Jimi Gibson:Well, I had to learn business principles. That's a lot different than learning tricks, right. And so I say that there's always show in business, because there are things that we need to do related to marketing and branding, messaging the consumer experience. But then there's all this behind the scenes stuff, the backstage stuff that nobody really sees, which is the strategy, the leadership, the systems.
Jimi Gibson:I'm kind of fast forwarding to where I am now, but back then, when I was doing shows in high school, I had to make sure that I presented myself well, I had to put forth a product that somebody would pay me for. I had to figure out what my pricing model was, all that kind of stuff. And so it just kind of kept going figure out what my pricing model was, you know all that kind of stuff, and so it just kind of kept going. Um, through that I started to work for an ad agency and was doing promotional shows for one of their clients to the tune of about 50 shows a year, and so I was making pretty good money in high school and um college and I got very interested in the field of advertising.
Jimi Gibson:Um, when I graduated, I started to work at an advertising agency. They were actually called ad agencies, so not dissimilar to what you saw in Mad Men, but now digital marketing agencies. But I always kept that magic bug alive. I actually would go into the agency at 6 am, work, work until 12 and then go to a theme park and do six shows at a theme park, and I was always able to either incorporate the principles of magic into what I was doing, because it's really about engaging, capturing attention, engaging an audience, leaving with, leaving them something that's unforgettable. And so, as a marketer, I realized I could pretty much take those skills and transfer them either a hundred percent or mostly, um, because it doesn't matter if I'm producing a large scale illusion show or building a brand or building a team. There's a performance lens or a showmanship lens or a psychology lens that all of this has to come through. So that's sort of a quick flyby, but that's how I connected in my mind.
Dr. Leah OH:Yeah, I love all of that. I'm excited to hear you kind of expand on it Because, you're right, there are a lot of times, without actually making the true connection to the performance of magic tricks, when communication goes well, I often say like, oh, this is magic, because it feels like that. So, as we continue this conversation, my next question is kind of right about that, that intersection, so that experience that you have as a magician, and how does that now kind of influence your leadership communication? And you've kind of taught or talked about some of these already. But what are some of those insights that you're bringing that you realize that you know every day in your marketing space like, yeah, that's, that's the same, it's just in a different packaging.
Jimi Gibson:Right, yeah, and there are a lot of marketing campaigns that use magic as a theme, for exactly why you mentioned that. We're familiar with it. Everybody wants something to work, like magic. You know, if you think about traditional magic, the most cliche, I guess, is pulling a rabbit out of a hat, which I actually ended up doing at a theme park show because I was like everybody talks about it.
Jimi Gibson:I've never seen anybody do it, so I'm going to do it. The problem with that was I thought I was buying a dwarf rabbit and it ended up being this ginormous rabbit.
Dr. Leah OH:Oh, that's incredible.
Jimi Gibson:That's a whole nother story. But if you boil down every magic trick into categories of effects, and so the effect is, what is the result or what is the actual magic that's happening, you can classify them into 13 fundamental effects. So let me give you some examples. Production this is making something appear out of nowhere, right. So in business, it could be a product launch, a new service offering a big reveal. So think Apple unveiling the first iPhone. Right. Then we have vanish, making something disappear. So in business, this is solving a problem so well that the pain is gone. So think of Uber eliminating the need to call a cab. Right.
Jimi Gibson:We have transformation changing one thing into another. In business, this is like a rebrand, a new identity, a major evolution. This is like a rebrand, a new identity, a major evolution. So when I was a kid, my dad wore Old Spice and it had this sort of persona of this old brand. But they reconfigured that. Now it's like fresh and funny and tongue in cheek, and so they went through that transformation. Then we have restoration so destroying something and make it whole again right.
Jimi Gibson:So this applies to reputation management, or turning around a struggling company. Or prediction A magician might predict something, put it in an envelope and then have somebody say something and then that thing is in the envelope. But we do this all the time in business, with analyzing data and trends and anticipating customers' needs, and so each of these effects and how you treat them can not only be from a marketing sense, but also in how you communicate from a leadership perspective with your team. And so if you're rolling out a new initiative, it just doesn't happen by magic, cliche, quote, quote. You have to get your team on board right and you have to be able to inspire them, bring them.
Jimi Gibson:So you know, the definition of a leader that I'm familiar with is someone who casts a vision and has people come along behind them and follow that vision right. And so any of those 13 effects can also be used in a leadership perspective, and I think we're going to talk about clarity and making sure you communicate to teams efficiently and effectively. But if we're in the marketplace, or if we're in an educational component, or if we're in a nonprofit, there's some activity that needs to be done, and I would say, more often than not they're going to fall in one of these 13 categories and the leader needs to understand what is the effect or what is the transformation, or what is the production, or vanish or whatever that is. And once you understand what that effect is, then it's very easy to structure the conversation around achieving that result.
Dr. Leah OH:Yes, I love it and I think that's a perfect segue to magic your magic script, and you talk about a lot of the work that you do. Now. It's rooted in this framework that you call the magic script and I was hoping you could kind of walk us through these core principles and how you kind of use this to guide and drive engagement, alignment and action.
Jimi Gibson:Right. So I would say it's similar to a story structure. I'm a big fan of using story. People connect with story instead of data points. Right? If you ask somebody hey, what are you doing today? Oh my gosh, I went to the grocery store. I had to get a loaf of bread. And you know, I got in the car and all of a sudden there was a police car at the end of the road. I had to turn around and go this other route, and then I get to the store and they don't have the bread that I want.
Jimi Gibson:So I'm like okay now I got to read the labels, which one is going to be the right one for me? And, oh my gosh, the person in front of me you've got 12 items. This is the eight to 10 item line. Why do you have 12 items? And then I finally get home, right, so we're naturally going to fall into the story structure.
Jimi Gibson:So through the course of me working with performance coaches, I was fortunate enough to be included in a training program that a Broadway director who was in the original cast of Annie he's directed 12 Broadway productions we had to submit like a three minute piece of our act, and then he critiqued that act for two and a half hours. And so I started thinking about what is it about? How you connect with an audience and get to this point where you know I hate to spoil it for everybody on the call, but magic isn't real. But I'm going to create the illusion that magic is real. And so how does that happen? And so I actually started to reverse engineer, and you know Donald Miller has got a great program called story brand. That's a little bit longer. I wanted something that was quick and could be used across any thing, whether it be leadership, whether it be writing a keynote speech, giving a presentation, doing a pay-per-click ad online, and so it boils down to these three areas. I'm going to actually give you an example of like a consumer ad for a plumbing company. I'm going to tell you how a magic trick is structured. I'm going to talk about a leadership example, and so you'll see three examples there. I think, hearing those examples and if you're listening, you might want to rewind this and kind of break this apart, and then we'll get into why it works and what is the science and the structure behind it.
Jimi Gibson:So if I were doing a magic trick, I might pick up a deck of cards, and the assumption is that deck of cards is normal. We talked about the normal or the ordinary. Moving to the extraordinary, I may even borrow that deck of cards and I'll say hey, have you ever wondered if your choices are truly your own? Hey, let's put that to the test. Could you pick one of these cards? That's the first part. The second part is all right. You've got a card that you're thinking about. Put that card back in the deck. I need you to hold out your hand and put your hand up against mine, because I want to feel the vibrations of what you're thinking about. Do you think it's possible that I would be able to pick up those vibrations from your hands, just from what you're thinking about? Hmm, you chose the queen of hearts, didn't you? Now you had total freedom to pick any card that you wanted. So that's the structure. There was basically three parts to it.
Jimi Gibson:All right, let me give you another example and then we'll break these down. This is for a plumbing company. A clogged drain always waits for the worst possible moment, right before guests arrive or when you're late for work. Now, what if I could get that fixed today for you, with no surprise fees, 100% satisfaction guaranteed. Book now and we'll clear your pipes before your coffee gets cold.
Jimi Gibson:All right, one more example. You know we work hard. This is actually a structure to reduce client churn, all right. So we work hard to earn a customer's trust, and nothing is more frustrating than seeing them walk away. Every cancellation is a customer who once believed in us, but something changed. What if we could predict cancellations before they happen? What if we knew exactly when and why customers were losing faith in us and we had a plan to fix it? Starting today, we're rolling out a proactive outreach strategy that will make every customer feel heard before they even think about leaving. Every touch point counts. Now you have the power to turn potential churn into lifelong loyalty. Let's make this happen, okay.
Jimi Gibson:So those are three completely different examples. The last one was a leadership example, the middle one was obviously for a plumbing company. We work with a lot of home service companies at Thrive Agency. And then the first one obviously I'm very familiar with a magic trick. So what's going on? The first part is a point of connection, okay, and so when we talk about that point of connection, there's a brain chemistry oxytocin. These are neurotransmitters that communicate with the rest of the body. That oxytocin is that feel-good love. This person knows me, they're in my tribe, that's the feeling, and so you have to enter that conversation with some sort of rapport or connection with that person, or you're not able to move to the next step.
Jimi Gibson:So in the magic trick, I've got this deck of cards. I'm just having a conversation. If it's their deck of cards, there's some camaraderie there. Everybody's seen a deck of cards, so it's very familiar. Um, in the plumbing example, I'm putting myself in their shoes, right? So I'm saying this is terrible. You know, the plumbing situations always happen at the worst times. And so the person on the receiving end goes oh yeah, of course. Yeah, that makes sense. Um, I'm frustrated too, so what are we going to do about it? And then in the other example, um, if a company has goals and losing clients is going against those goals, then everybody is frustrated, and so I'm identifying with the team that we're all frustrated about this right Now. The curiosity actually triggers dopamine. We may have heard about dopamine addiction with social media.
Jimi Gibson:It's not really the addiction how are we going to resolve?
Jimi Gibson:this and so activating that curiosity. And the magic example is put your hand up next to mine. Do you think it's possible for me to, you know, read your thoughts through your hand. Well, obviously you're going to go. Okay, I don't know, this is kind of wacky, maybe, so, maybe not. Where's this going to end up? Right In the plumbing example, what if I could come out there and fix it right away with a hundred percent guarantee? You're like on well, I've never heard of that before, how's that possible? And then, in the other example, with churn, you're raising curiosity to say you know, what if we could predict cancellations before they happen? Okay, well, that kind of sounds like mind reading. Again, going back to those 13 effects, and you've got the team trying to figure out how are we going to do this? We've been trying to figure this out, and so the last part is a release of serotonin, which is the relaxed, everything is good, the story's over, that type of thing, and that's the conversion or the end of it.
Jimi Gibson:And so in the magic trick, I've revealed the card In the plumbing situation. I've asked them to book right, book a appointment, book me. And in the last one we're saying this is a new program that we're rolling out. We're going to measure every touch point, come on board with me. And so that is the basic structure. And again, it can be for a business presentation, it can be for an ad, it can be for a magic trick. And as I started to reverse engineer what happens in a magic trick, I went, oh my gosh, this is exactly what can be used in engaging a team, structuring a marketing conversation, those types of things. So is that helpful?
Dr. Leah OH:That is so insightful, jimmy. Yes, and thank you for the examples too. When you were going through them I'm like yep, magic, magic, magic. And even knowing the different elements, I still my brain was like nope magic. Different elements I still my brain was like nope magic. But it is helpful to see all of the science that allows us to move successfully from one stage to the next and leave people feeling satisfied.
Jimi Gibson:Yeah, yeah, and I wouldn't say it's shady or underhanded. You're just working within the bounds of how everybody lives and thinks and their desire to have their problem solved or their desire to be part of something or their desire to be fooled at a magic show. So it gives you a leg up and it allows you to be successful in whatever it is you want to do.
Dr. Leah OH:Yeah. So let's dive into the magic script a little bit more deeply now. So you know with all of the individuals that all these deadlines sometimes mixed messages. So you know what you know. With your magic script can you kind of pull out maybe some unique challenges that you kind of see often, but then maybe also some opportunities that we could lean into.
Jimi Gibson:Sure, I think I can sum up the challenge in one word and the opportunity in one word Awesome. But I'll give a little more context. So we've got something to talk about. I would say the biggest challenge right now is noise. People are bombarded with messages every day and most of them are forgettable, and I would say that's internal communication as well as marketing communication. You know, I don't know. We talk about screens, right, and so we have the computer screen that we work on, we have a screen that we make calls on or look at or keep up with family or social media. There might be a tablet or another screen, we might be watching a fourth screen at night, and so all of this information is just flooding us, and multiple, multiple channels. I would say the biggest opportunity is clarity.
Jimi Gibson:Leaders who communicate with precision and purpose are going to be more successful, right? So you need to really think like a magician to cut through that noise, and you can't just talk. You have to create moments that move people. So let me give you some examples. In magic, if an audience doesn't understand what the point of the effect is, when it comes to that last stage, they're going to go like I don't even know what was going on, right? So if I vanish an elephant, but people in the back don't realize what was going on at the beginning, that moment falls flat right. The same as in leadership. So if people don't, if a team doesn't understand what's happening, they can't follow through. So think about some great illusions from the past. I just mentioned the vanishing elephant. It's obvious Something big disappears, right. The floating lady clears a day, someone defies gravity. These are simple plots that are dressed in showmanship communication, and it follows that three-phase structure like we talked about Connection sets up the expectation, curiosity engages the imagination and then conversion delivers a moment that sticks.
Jimi Gibson:And so the leadership trap is unclear messaging. So in an organization, many leaders make their messaging too complex, too vague or too forgettable, right. So they try to explain too much at once, assuming that just because they know what's going on and they have communicated it, that people are going to understand it. So let me give you some bad leadership messaging. We're implementing a new operations workflow to streamline efficiencies across verticals and optimize cross-departmental resource allocation. What? Nobody knows what that means.
Jimi Gibson:So let's rewind it to the magic script. Starting Monday, we're switching to a system that will cut your weekly reporting time in half. Here's how it works. Now, that's clear, it's repeatable and, just like a great magic trick, it creates that moment of understanding. So I would give some suggestions on how leaders can implement this. What you would want to do is make it clear enough that you could repeat it, so if your team can't explain it to somebody else, then they don't get it right. So we're all familiar with that telephone game that we played as kids. Everybody sits in a row and by the time the message gets to the other end, it's like something completely different than what it?
Jimi Gibson:started. I think that is probably a fun game for the very reason why it's excruciatingly painful in organizations and why we continue to talk about that. So you know, a fun exercise may be to have people repeat it back. Use connection, curiosity, conversion, engage, intrigue, direct the action and again think like a magician, make the complex things feel simple and compelling. And so a great leader doesn't actually just announce what's happening, they script a moment that sticks, and yeah so I would say.
Jimi Gibson:clarity is missing in business and, and you know, you also have to understand personality profiles. I know a lot of businesses have various personality profiles. How you communicate may not be how somebody wants to receive communication, so it's often good to understand what is the makeup of your team. How much information does somebody need? What they preferred in written form? Do they want to watch a video? You know, providing information in multiple forms that is appropriate for their learning style or their ability to absorb that information is also important.
Dr. Leah OH:So yeah, that's so helpful. And I keep thinking about what you said earlier. You know, in this metaphor of the leader being like, but wait, I made an elephant disappear, and the people, the employees, just say, well, I didn't see that, I didn't see the elephant, so it doesn't. Huh, you know. And then we can see why there's so much confusion and frustration in organizations, because you're like, you're saying we're not having that connection and a variety of other steps. But I just think that's such a perfect metaphor for what happens day in and day out. So let's lean. Oh, I'm sorry, jimmy, go ahead, are you?
Jimi Gibson:going to say something else. I was just taking a breath, okay.
Dr. Leah OH:Let's lean into curiosity, and this is you've mentioned this a few times and I'm just wondering if you could give us a little bit more about curiosity and how you use it to engage teams or people.
Jimi Gibson:Yeah. So there's an interesting thing that happens when you're on stage and in the first part of learning a performance, you're just trying to get through that performance, right, and you're not thinking about anything other than the mechanics of that. And then at some point you become pretty well versed in whatever the mechanics are and then your brain is allowed to shift over to performance style and you connect with the audience first step in the magic script, right. With the audience First step in the magic script, right. And so, as a leader, you should know your team, you should be fully capable of performing whatever it is, because you've gotten to the point where you are and the secret to bringing an audience to that point where they lean in. And so, again, I'm picturing myself on stage and I'm structuring the way in which I deliver the trick so that there's enough curiosity. Where somebody is not leaning back, crossing their arms, checking their phone, they're actually leaning in and we call that being on the edge of your seat, right. And so that's a performance term that actually came from people anticipating something very exciting that was happening in front of them, right. And so if we can take that same thought process into the boardroom, into the break room, you know, into the meeting room, wherever that is, instead of saying something like we have a new process change, right? So what is that going to do in somebody's brain? They're going to go. This is a lot more work. I already have enough work on my plate. How am I going to get a new process change in order, right?
Jimi Gibson:And so you have to think through what are all these mental conversations people are having. You have to know what your audience is going to be feeling, and then we restructure that and we say what if I told you that one small change could increase our lead flow by 20%? Well, that doesn't sound like a process change. That sounds like wow, if our lead flow increases 20%, then we get more money. Perhaps I could get a raise. The company is going to be successful. We didn't get bonuses last year, maybe we'll get bonuses, like. Then the whole mental conversation shifts. Right, it's the same thing, um, you know. So I would say curiosity to engage teams has to be thoughtful and has to be focused on the person receiving that information. It activates the imagination, right, and once people are imagining the possibility, they're invested in the outcome.
Dr. Leah OH:I love that, and I think too, you're also bringing in storytelling, but in a different way, where your audience then is part of crafting that story, which is really powerful.
Jimi Gibson:Oh yeah.
Dr. Leah OH:So we've looked at curiosity. Another element that you've kind of talked about and I know that you firmly believe in is empathy. So I was hoping you could talk to us about how you know your personal focus on empathy and how you've seen it impact. You know your experience in the workplace, especially in terms of trust building and kind of team dynamics.
Jimi Gibson:Sure, well, I know I keep going back to magic examples because that's my lens, so we'll start there and then we'll branch out.
Dr. Leah OH:Yeah, let's do it.
Jimi Gibson:Okay. To me. My definition of empathy is basically the old phrase if you could walk a mile in my shoes, right. And so I learned this lesson the hard way. I had my own show. That was just me.
Jimi Gibson:And then I was hired to do a theme park show with a cast of 20 and all these giant illusions. We made a Corvette appear. We made the entire cast vanish. That type of thing I'm not musically inclined. There were all sorts of music cues that I had to figure out how to do these cues in my head. There were lighting cues and I thought I was doing a great job, but one night. So I did the show five days a week and then there was an understudy who subbed in for me just in case I got sick or whatever. And so I went and sat in the audience and everything looked completely different, Like there was a lighting cue that I was supposed to move my hand down. What I didn't realize was, when I moved my hand down, there was a piece of scenery that was flying onto the stage. The music was choreographed to what was going on across the stage, and the way the audience reacted was completely different than what I saw from my vantage point of the stage.
Jimi Gibson:Right. And so I think sometimes, as leaders, we are biased in how we see things from our perspective, and you're not going to truly understand until you sit in the audience's seat and realize exactly what's going on. And so there was a show I don't know if you're still on the air called Undercover Boss, and so the big reveal moment at the end was the fact that the leaders didn't often know or see what their teams were going through. Right, and so if you want to be a great communicator and a great leader, you need to get in your audience's seat, walk in their shoes, and then you're going to be able to connect.
Jimi Gibson:And so I came from a creative background.
Jimi Gibson:I was a creative director before I got into operations and management, and I never wanted to ask somebody on my team to do something that I had not already done myself, and if I hadn't already done that myself, I needed somebody to walk me through the steps involved in that.
Jimi Gibson:Because if we were doing quotes or if we were doing, you know, a large project and there was project management involved, I may be making assumptions about how long something should take, and then I'm going to get angry when those things don't happen on the schedule or the timeframe that I'm expecting them to happen. But there's probably some nuance to what is involved in that that I'm completely blind to. And so everybody I don't think I've met anybody that I have sat and asked could you walk me through your process that wasn't excited to be proud of what they do and the craftsmanship that they bring to their work and the fact that somebody actually cared about it, and then that was brought into a conversation about how we proceed in the business. So I would say that's my view of the situation in the business.
Dr. Leah OH:So I would say that's my view of the situation. Yeah, and that's so. When you were talking earlier one of our earlier questions about meeting your audience, even thinking about the communication that they prefer, I had a manager one time like almost yelling at a colleague saying accept my tough love as love as it's meant to be, and it was just. It was so hard not to laugh because you knew in the situation you couldn't laugh that you're like I feel like I'm on a bad sitcom right now.
Jimi Gibson:Yeah, I think we've all seen things like that.
Dr. Leah OH:Yeah, yes, and certainly that also ties in with all of this wisdom you're sharing with us about empathy and thinking about being in that receiving end of that.
Jimi Gibson:Yeah, we go back to the seven habits of highly effective people. Seek first to understand before being understood. Right and so that takes some scars to be able to admit that you don't know everything Right. Scars to be able to admit that you don't know everything right, and so you got to be humble and you got to be a servant leader and you got to invest in your team that way.
Dr. Leah OH:Yeah, yeah, that's a commitment and a whole lot of practice, oh yeah. Well, let's look at clarity now, and I know this is another element, and we talked about this as being, you know, one of the leader's strongest tools. So we know that this is a foundational element in the magic script and I was hoping you could give us a little bit more about this. You know this particular ingredient. I mean, it's pretty clear why we need it, and maybe you could tell us what happens when that clarity is missing.
Jimi Gibson:Yeah, that was funny. You said it's pretty clear why we need it right. So I would say lack of clarity is the reason most initiatives fail. If your team doesn't understand what to do, they're going to guess and more often than not they're probably going to get it wrong. So I always say if you can't explain your message in one sentence to a 10-year-old, it's too complicated, and if something is too complicated, people are not going to act on it. So again, it applies at every level of leadership. If a CEO is rolling out a new company vision, maybe a manager is explaining why the quarterly goals have changed or increased. A frontline employee is handling a customer issue. Clarity removes hesitation. So when things are clear, you don't want any friction.
Jimi Gibson:And so the lack of clarity causes friction, because people don't know how to proceed and they haven't been perhaps given the autonomy to proceed. So you want to remove hesitation. It eliminates second guessing, it makes action easy. And so, again, we'll go back to the magic script. Every great illusion follows a clean, simple plot, something the audience can grasp. Sawing a woman in half. She's split, then restored. There's a trick called the cups and balls. The ball vanishes. It reappears under another cup. The trick works because the audience knows what's supposed to happen. They can follow the effect from start to finish the same.
Jimi Gibson:We should do the same for leadership communication. I'll give you a couple of examples. We talked about overcomplication. Can't talk, kills the message. So again, confusing leadership messaging. Cultivate culture of cross-functional efficiency. Now, if you sat there and stared at that, you might be able to figure it out. But people have heard buzzword bingo and everybody wants to load it up to make themselves seem smart and all that kind of stuff. But what's actually happening is the audience is going oh my gosh, this is baloney. Why do we have to listen to this? This is baloney. Why do we have to listen to this? And you're also not thinking about how that message is landing. So here's that same message in a much clearer approach.
Jimi Gibson:Each department will have one point person for cross team request. That way we eliminate the back and forth and we get approvals faster. It's clear, it's actionable. People can repeat it. If somebody left the meeting, what was the point of that meeting? Oh well, joe's going to be the single point of contact and everything flows through him, right? Yep, that's it. Everybody goes. Yes, it's repeatable.
Jimi Gibson:So there's three rules that you can test. If your message is clear, you can say it out loud. If you stumble over your words, it's too complicated. So you heard me stumble over the first part, right, and so I couldn't even. I couldn't even say it myself. Use next step language, so always answer. So what do I do now? Right, and so in this case, what do I do now? If I have a cross department communication, it goes through Joe, right, and then test it. Ask a team member to explain it back to you in their own words. If they can't, it wasn't clear enough. Now, when a message is clear, people trust it. Right, they feel safe. Taking the action it removes, removes that pause or that hesitation. So again, I've got to get in touch with this other department. What do I do? Do I email them. Do I pick up the phone, do I use our Slack channel, like what is it right? And so that causes delays, and so it's just basically a bridge between a vision of how something needs to be and then the execution of it.
Dr. Leah OH:I like that. I'm very visual. I like that idea of that bridge between those two.
Jimi Gibson:Yeah, Because right.
Dr. Leah OH:So often, yeah, we don't get there.
Jimi Gibson:Yes, the bridge is out.
Dr. Leah OH:Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so helpful and so let's shift gears a little bit. So, all of this incredible work that you're doing and thinking about messaging and connecting incredible work that you're doing and thinking about messaging and connecting and I think a way that you apply that over and over is in all these teams that you've led, and I know that some of them have been really large, with over 120 people, so that is not an easy feat and, considering these experiences, I was hoping you could share some of your key insights or kind of takeaways about how to communicate effectively across all of these different levels, and especially if you have really vast teams like the ones you have experience with.
Jimi Gibson:Sure, we're going to have some repeat folks that come in, and so clarity is going to be part of that.
Jimi Gibson:I think, leading big teams, I would say say less and mean more. We actually went through a restructuring of the whole organization a few years ago that I was championing. We have about 200 employees and we and we serve about 900 clients, and so we saw some issues with our teams not feeling like they could collaborate in the way that they wanted. When a project came through, they might be working with different team members on each project, were feeling like there was no more personal connection with the people that were working on their projects. The teams were more disconnected, not only to the client but other team members and part of the company, and so we actually made the decision to move to a matrix organizational structure and we divided the company into four smaller teams. So basically we created four boutique agencies within the larger agency. Now, the best time to do that is when you start a company, not 19 years after you've been in business, right, and so you can imagine the and you know nobody likes change but a wet baby.
Jimi Gibson:So everybody is like what are you crazy? And so we decided that we would have a test team to work out all the problems, and we would not even give them a fourth of the clients, but a smaller, and we wanted to handhold everything through the process. And then we knew things were going to break and we admitted that. Um, from an executive standpoint, we're like, look, this is something new, we need everybody's help. And so we actually thought about the layers involved. And so we have department functional leaders, we have team leads. Within that, we have the frontline employees, we have various people related to it and systems. We have, obviously, upper management, and so, instead of putting everybody through the pain of a 50 slide PowerPoint deck, we're just going to say collaboration is going to get easier, right. And then we show them exactly what that means and give people a chance to ask questions and offer feedback. So I remember gosh, it was about two weeks Me and some other folks went to every department and we did basically a town hall meeting and we talked about how long we'd been thinking about this internally, what this meant for profitability, what this meant for them on a daily basis.
Jimi Gibson:And, again, using empathy, we put ourselves in the seat and we said look, when you get to work, you don't know who you're working with every day. What if you could have a collaboration? And you know, we're mostly a remote company and so we don't get to sit around and, um, you know, partner up in an office, we're feeling very disconnected from their work. And so we painted that picture of everybody spread out being silos and sitting on their own island to a more group focus mentality, how they were going to be able to collaborate together, the camaraderie that would happen.
Jimi Gibson:We took that test group and then we had them do a presentation that told the rest of the company. This is what I've experienced. I don't know why we didn't do this sooner. Here's what you're going to get. Yes, it's going to be difficult. Trust the process you know we've made X, y, z and these changes through the process and really ask the people who were part of that test group to be the evangelist and the folks that were spreading the good word about how this was going to work.
Jimi Gibson:We actually had a timeframe that we beat by a month because everybody was so excited to get to the point of the future payoff of what this meant for the company, to the point of the future payoff of what this meant for the company.
Dr. Leah OH:Yeah, that is really incredible One finishing ahead of schedule in a large scale change is virtually unheard of and I like too. Another thing I wrote down was that very explicit like there are going to be some bumps and bruises. We expect this. Things will probably get dropped, but we're doing it in as small as controlled fashion as we can and we're here to triage. So I think so often we gloss over, we think that we're going to help our people by glossing over those challenges and likely obstacles, and it's the exact opposite we're just unequipping them ahead of time, right.
Jimi Gibson:And so you go from a point of fear that, like if something goes wrong, there's going to be egg on my face to go. Yeah, there's going to be a lot of egg on everybody's faces, but here are the priority. We don't want to lose any team members. We don't want to lose any clients. Here are the points of feedback that we're expecting you to be part of. The team wants to know did you just think this up yesterday or do you actually have a plan? How does this plan affect me? How do I give feedback if I want to give feedback, and so that diffuses the resistance and then brings momentum into the equation.
Dr. Leah OH:Yeah, and I love too. I also want to raise up having those who went through that test group first to create the presentation at that point and share the experiences. So, especially in organizations, we get used to hearing from the same few leaders over and over and you know it's kind of like mom and dad. There's a point where you need to hear from someone else for it to stick and to make sense and you know, and I think that's just such a great way to bring in other opinion leaders, empower your people.
Dr. Leah OH:And then you're also saying, hey, here's some other lines of communication, some connections that you might not have had before. You have a face with the name. It's a lot easier to reach out then, Absolutely. And companies and organizations?
Jimi Gibson:Absolutely, and you know companies and organizations. They hire smart people. Let them be smart, yep. Let them help you. I love that.
Dr. Leah OH:Exactly, and so let's lean more into vision now, and this is something in your previous example. Certainly we see that in play, and I know that you've spent time in the creative side, in the operation side and some of your work you've been aligning directors and other leaders to the shared vision. So could you help us see, you know, maybe walk us through a time you've done that or, if it's that previous one, kind of help us to understand why that shared vision is essential for a leadership team.
Jimi Gibson:Yeah, and I think it goes back to the magic script again, right, and so there has to be that connection point, the curiosity point, and then this conversion or action associated with it.
Jimi Gibson:And when you're trying to bring somebody on board, and again, a lot of organizations have an executive team or a leadership team and they meet about something and they've been working on this for months, right, and then they're going to introduce it to the rest of the organization.
Jimi Gibson:They don't have all the it's revenue based whether there's a competitor who's come into the market, whether, um, you know your intended customer or audience that you work with, if it's a nonprofit, if something has changed in the environment, has there been a new regulation that has come into play that is affecting the way in which we're able to do what we used to do? We're not going to be able to do it in that way, and so there's a whole lot of background stuff, and so bringing people into that conversation appropriately and not having closed door conversations is also important, because you also want to check that what you are proposing actually will work. It's a good idea. You're going to get buy-in, and so including people at all levels of the organization and being strategic about how you share the information and you say, hey, we're thinking about this initiative, we think there may be a problem with this. Can you shoot holes in that for me?
Dr. Leah OH:Oh, wow.
Jimi Gibson:Okay, I've never been asked to do that before you did Yep.
Jimi Gibson:Tell me more about that. And so, all of a sudden, you have these pockets of people around the organization who are like I just got invited to talk about this, or somebody want my opinion about that. So that is the part of connection. You also need to know your team and the situation intimately, and then you have to throw that curiosity into the mix. And so when you're having these conversations, even with the executive team or the leadership team, and then you're bringing these other folks in, throw that curiosity in the component hey, you know, we've always done this particular procedure this way. Wouldn't it be amazing if we could just cut that out? Vanish, right? So that's one of the 13 effects. Well, I don't know, we've always done it that way, I know. But what if we didn't do it that way? Wow, I have to think about that. Well, it sure would speed up this other process that is getting bogged down because of that. And so now you've activated their imagination, yeah, and then we bring it to the conversion. Well, actually we're thinking about rolling out this process and we're going to put this test team in place.
Jimi Gibson:So I consider that like a dress rehearsal for a show. So any show that you go to. They have what they call a press night or they call an IDS. So that's an invitation dress rehearsal, and so an invitation dress rehearsal does a couple of things. It's usually a week before the actual opening and you invite family and friends and you do the show as if it was the public audience. And what the director is listening for is did people laugh at the right point, did they clap at the right point? And so you're also doing that in an organization and you're saying, mm-hmm, well, that didn't land the way we wanted. Have you ever heard that before? Of course you have, and so we have to structure how we present. I know a gentleman who was a partner at Apple, a vendor that was partnering with Apple on something, and he was actually invited to one of their launch days, one of their launch days, and when you hear about the behind the scenes that goes into a launch day, it's incredible.
Jimi Gibson:It is choreographed. You have to submit what you're going to say. There are people that coach you on stage as to how you're going to do that. I gave a TEDx talk and there was a similar approach, because TEDx is a brand and they want to make sure that every speech relates to that brand.
Jimi Gibson:Well, I would say you mentioned change management before. There is a process and a a good way to do change management and a bad way to do change management, and so it's not going to hurt for you to perhaps hire a consultant if it's a huge initiative, to um, pull the team or understand the impact, and so the other thing that we talk a lot about at Thrive is unintended consequences. So if we do this, we haven't thought through prediction, mind reading, what the future may hold if we make this change, and again I brought up the fact that we all see the world through our own lens. You probably have some people in a department who are very good at looking into the future, and you should probably include them in that conversation, and so this is kind of a rambly version of answering your question and certainly you should never make decisions by committee, because it usually gets watered down and there has to be somebody that's championing the project and you know they're the ones in charge of evaluating all of the input that is being given.
Jimi Gibson:But I guess my success as a leader has come from asking a bunch of questions, immersing myself in the project or process and then being able to discern what to use and what not to use. And if we don't use something, make sure you follow up with that person and say you know what? Your input was great, but what we didn't know at that particular time was this other thing that we didn't understand. But you actually helped us open up a different conversation. So thank you for your input. Yeah, so I would say that's, you know, it's. It's pretty much what business is about. We all have to change on a daily, weekly, quarterly, yearly basis and managing that as is tough quarterly, yearly basis and managing that is tough, yeah.
Dr. Leah OH:And I really appreciate that idea of even going back to those who it's probably more important of their suggestions you didn't use, because we offer those once or twice. If we don't hear anything, then all of a sudden we're thinking twice about that. We're probably going to hang on to them and that debrief you know, even just that quick email saying thanks so much, I wanted to let you know, can really mean a lot and encourage them to continue to contribute.
Dr. Leah OH:Absolutely people of all levels and as an organizational scholar, I know that so often all of these decisions are made at the top and they funnel down. But it's interesting because the higher someone gets in their leadership typically, the further they are away from that daily work of interacting with those stakeholders or clients, customers. So I'm wondering, in your experience, how do we empower these frontline employees to take ownership of their roles so they feel like empowered to problem solve or offer different suggestions or solutions?
Jimi Gibson:Yeah, so just from a tactical aspect, we involve the team in creating the standard operating procedures or SOPs, and so they get a say in how the work gets done, and we're always trying to beat the performance of an operating procedure. Obviously we're in marketing, so it has to do with ad performance or revenue or ranking for keywords, those types of things. The other thing that I think a lot of businesses overlook is people want to know that they matter right, and so we've implemented thank a thriver Thursday, and so every Thursday you're supposed to thank. Now again, it's voluntary, but it's caught on as a culture thing where a team member gets public recognition for their contribution, and so once you see contributions at all levels, then you have a better picture as to what somebody is actually doing across the organization to contribute to the whole and who doesn't like to be thanked. I know that I've usually, every time I give one out, somebody says you made my day.
Jimi Gibson:And so they're just being recognized. The other thing that we do is we're involved in some charities. We give a micro loan through Kiva for every new account that comes on board and we ask our team to participate in who gets chosen for that micro loan. And so now, these things are not related to productivity, they're not related to your question about autonomy to make decisions, but they are related to being valued and feeling connected to the organization. We also discourage overtime, which is kind of unheard of in the digital marketing space, but we believe if you have a happy home life and you take time off to be with friends and family that you're going to come back to work more engaged, more inspired.
Jimi Gibson:The other thing that we do is we have regular meetings where we have an open forum for feedback. We also have trackable results where everybody sees what the expectation is for everybody else on the team and their public, and so people are aware of what the goals are and it's not easy to hide, and so we want that to really allow us to attract and retain talent. That's okay with that. So I think those types of things and then we also foster a management style of, instead of telling people what to do, asking what would you do in this situation? What is your recommendation?
Jimi Gibson:Instead of dictating what should be done, because we've given them guardrails, right. We're not just saying do anything you want. We have an SOP, we have client goals that we have documented, and so within those guardrails and within those bounds, how are you going to navigate what you've been asked to do? And so that is part of, and then we have a quarterly review process that invites that type of feedback from the performer and then allows us to compliment the team member on what they're doing and how they're doing. And you know we don't want people to sit silent and just say tell me what to do.
Jimi Gibson:The minute you say tell me what to do, you've lost your value, right?
Dr. Leah OH:Yeah, yeah. I love that because it's really interwoven into the fabric of the culture at Thrive Agency rather than just, oh, let's do this one thing. They're getting a little antsy. How do we appease this, which is unfortunately what many, many organizations do? So last two questions for you, Jimmy. They're interdependent, not interdependent, they're connected, and this is the way that we end all of our episodes of the communicative leader. Um, but the first one is kind of advice challenge or a tip for our titled leaders out there, and then the second, one same thing. It can be an advice challenge or tip for employees across all ranks and all industries.
Jimi Gibson:Sure Great questions. So for titled leaders, your title doesn't make you a leader, your ability to influence does. And so I would say, ask yourself these three questions Would my team still follow me if I had no title? Do they trust my judgment or just fear my position? And do I inspire them or just instruct them? And so if your influence disappears when your title does, you haven't built leadership, you've built compliance.
Dr. Leah OH:Yep, that is spoken beautifully. I love it. I'm like frantically writing notes.
Jimi Gibson:And then for employees. A lot of employees think that culture is something the company is supposed to create or bring to them. But a great culture isn't given. It's built by the people in it. So if you want a more collaborative team, start collaborating. If you want recognition, start recognizing others. If you want a positive workplace, bring positive energy. So every employee, at every level, contributes to the company culture. So don't wait for it to appear.
Dr. Leah OH:Be the culture that you want to see. Yeah, I love it and I really love anything that gives people agency. So many times we feel like there is so much we can't control, but you're recognizing that Again. If we want recognition, it can be as easy as calling out and complimenting those around us.
Jimi Gibson:Sure.
Dr. Leah OH:Excellent. Well, jimmy, thank you for sharing your time, your expertise. This has been an absolute blast. I've really really enjoyed learning from you and learning more about you as well. So thank you for joining us on the Communicative Leader.
Jimi Gibson:Great Well. Thank you, Dr Rowe, it was a pleasure. Great way to spend an afternoon.
Dr. Leah OH:All right, my friends. That wraps up our conversation today. Until next time, communicate with intention and lead with purpose. I'm looking forward to chatting with you again soon on the communicative leader.
