Communication skills are “dramatically more important” today than they were twenty years ago. That’s according former Cisco CEO, John Chambers, whose track record is nothing short of astonishing. In his twenty years as CEO, Chambers grew the networking company from 400 employees to 70,000 and from $70 million in sales to $47 billion a year.
If you’ve ever seen a John Chambers presentation in person, you’ve witnessed something special. Chambers built a reputation for electrifying audiences around the world with a captivating speaking style. Although he delivers presentations about complex topics, he speaks simply and makes the audience feel as though he’s having a one-on-one conversation with each and every person. He walks among the audience and can speak for up to an hour with no notes.
As I learned in a candid and revealing conversation with Chambers at his Silicon Valley home, he wasn’t always a confident speaker. “I am not a natural public speaker,” he acknowledged. “Between the challenges of dyslexia and a deep fear of public speaking, it did not come easy to me. It was really hard to get over.”
In this extended video interview about his book, Connecting the Dots, Chambers discusses a range of topics including communication skills, overcoming adversity and how he built strong relationships with world leaders on opposing political sides.
Dyslexia made it hard for Chambers to follow written notes or read a teleprompter. But the learning disorder turned out be an asset when Chambers realized he could see the outline of the entire presentation in his mind’s eye and deliver the content in a far more conversational style that made him stand out among his peers. Today, Chambers says,
Communication is one of the most important skills that a leader and, frankly, most employees now need to excel on the job.
According to Chambers, one or two decades ago a leader could get by without being an exceptional communicator and still be considered great. Today it’s a different world. “You’ve got to deal with social media, you’ve got to deal with a dramatically different speed of events, you’ve got to be able to talk to your shareholders, your employees, your customers, and your partners. If you don’t have communication skills, you’re not going to be an effective leader.”
Measuring and elevating communication skills. Since Chambers believes the ability to communicate with diverse audiences is a critical skill, he always held his leaders to a very high standard. Cisco executives—including Chambers— were rated on their customer presentations using a scale of one to five. After every customer meeting, the speakers were scored in two areas: delivery and content. The speakers had to be clear, effective and engaging while their content had to be useful, relevant and timely.
Chambers says he still focuses on communication skills with the startups he guides and invests in through his new firm, JC2 Ventures. But he always leads by example. To this day, Chambers asks for feedback. “To continue as a great communicator, you want to get feedback after every session,” he writes in Connecting the Dots. “I make it a goal to constantly improve my communications, even from one meeting to the next on the same day. I ask whoever from my team is with me for a meeting or an interview to tell me what I could have done better.”
How Cisco beat its competitors. Chambers told me that the reason Cisco survived five major economic downturns or market transitions during his tenure as CEO was primarily due to a concept he calls “embracing purpose, not products.” The Cisco that Chambers joined in the early 1990s sold routers and switches, the hardware that moved data across the Internet. But here’s the key. “We didn’t become obsessed with selling routers and switches. Instead, Cisco set out to change the world,” says Chambers.
Chambers saw Cisco’s potential as something bigger. He coined the phrase, “Cisco will change the way the world works, lives, learns and plays.” The marketing team didn’t like it at the time because it wasn’t focused on products. And that was the point, says Chambers. To most people, the router was a big metal box, but for Chambers it was the gateway to the future. Chambers believes that effectively articulating the broader vision was one of the reasons Cisco was able to move faster than its peers (most of them no longer exist).
The mission set Cisco apart and made the company laser-focused on a vision that was clear, differentiated and sustainable. It gave Chambers and his teams the flexibility to enter markets such as Voice over IP, video, data centers, the cloud, the Internet of Things, security and country digitization. “When you focus on a mission that’s authentic, impactful, differentiated and aspirational, people understand why they’re with you,” writes Chambers. “Customers know what they’re buying. Employees know why they work there. Investors understand where you’re going.”
Cisco, of course, is a major brand. But Chambers points out that his lessons on leadership and communication apply to everyone from individual entrepreneurs and managers to the world’s most valuable companies. According to Chambers, “Every company is becoming a digital company. Every person on the planet has the potential to compete against a multinational—and win.”