What Effective Leaders Need To Know About Interacting with Others   By Darrell L. Browning   Smart companies take effective communication seriously.   Diane Dudley, an organizational development expert with BrowningLaFrankie, recently shared her thoughts about the Mission, Motivation, Method and Mindset effective leaders should have when interacting with others:   Your Mission. No, it’s not impossible. In every interaction, completely satisfy your internal customers (employees) by meeting the needs relating to the individual–not just the needs of the organization. Too many leaders think company, company, company and leave out the people, people, people. Your Motivation. By meeting the personal needs of employees first, other concerns– such as improving quality of care in health care companies–can improve without even focusing on anything critical. In Dudley’s health care model, employee-centered care leads to person-directed care. The result? Better service for customers. Happier employees. Your Method. Interacting with employees can come at a moment’s notice–and disappear just as quickly. Dudley advises consciously looking for such moments (she calls them “divine moments”) and taking advantage of them wherever and whenever the possibility for interaction occurs. Your Mindset. A fighter pilot in Vietnam was shot down and captured. He survived the ordeal and shared his experiences in following years on the speaker circuit. Following one presentation, a man approached him and told the pilot he knew him before he was shot down. The pilot didn’t recognize him. The man was the sailor who had packed his parachute on his fateful flight. The pilot had failed to recognize that sailor then–but he corrected that immediately. Without that sailor doing his job, the pilot would not have survived. Who packs the parachutes in your company? Have you recognized them lately?   For more information see http://www. browninglafrankie. com. © BrowningLaFrankie 2009