Understand their purpose, point of view, language, concerns, customers, boss. Proactivity is the essence of real leadership. I recommend that every organization develop a stakeholder information system - a feedback system or database on what shareholders, customers, employees, communities, suppliers, distributors, and other parties want and expect. I also suggest that every organization develop synergistic relationships with customers and suppliers. There is a place for competition, but it's not in areas where you need to cooperate.
Total quality is a principle-centered approach that has come out of the best the world has produced.
In our training, we emphasize the human side more than the technical side because we believe that the origin and essence of total quality is empathy with customers, is empathy with their motives and buying habits. The key to total quality is to listen to your stakeholders, to seek first to understand, then to be understood. This is the last of four excerpts from his latest book, in which he tells how to achieve personal fulfillment and professional success through principle-centered leadership.