I think President Obama is onto a potentially powerful message strategy in his campaign speeches. Now, he needs to support that platform  with emotional stories, and convey the three essential messages more clearly and consistently.

The platform is essentially about fairness.

In America we’ve always been greater together than on our own. We succeed when we’re all rising. This  big, inclusive, generous, bold, ambitious vision of America is what’s at stake, is what we’re fighting for.

1. Every American gets a fair shot if they’re willing to work hard to get ahead.
2. Every American needs to do their fair share.
3. Every American plays by the same set of rules.

Our brains react to five threats or rewards: status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness. Choosing fairness is both an American value and connects with the 99 percent who are outraged at the inequities of the one percenters, which both Romney and Gingrich are.

Scientists have also found that fairness can be linked to achievement.  “Fairness between strangers at the individual level is what allows social organisms to thrive, and to out-compete more selfish societies, ” according to a Fast Co. article last year about a study done by evolutionary scientist Joe Henrich at the University of British Columbia.

While I think most voters want the “certainty” brain circuits lit in this election — more jobs, stable housing prices, assurances about no new taxes, withdrawal from Middle East — those are things that no politician should promise as he or she has so little control over those outcomes.

But fairness? Fairness provides an opportunity for all boats to rise. And who doesn’t want a better country for themselves AND their family, friends, neighbors and countrymen?

If I were running the Obama campaign I would support the platform by:

• Share stories of Americans — famous and everyday — who have gotten a fair shot, succeeded, and give back.  Make the message real, emotional and aspirational through individuals’ stories.  Even the President’s own.

• Highlight people who are doing their fair share — and then some. Social entrepreneurs. Small business owners committed to their employees and their communities. Community college teachers. Hospice nurses.  Tireless community volunteers.  Generous individual donors to vital non-profits. You can whine about how unfair life is, or you can do. Celebrate the doers.

• Give concrete examples of distorted rules that need to be changed to level the playing field. Specifics make a message real.

During his first term President Obama has not emotionally connected as well as he could with Americans, and what he most believes in seems kind of vague to the average Joe and Jane. People don’t want wonk-ish  explanations. They want to be inspired.

While I am comforted to know that a leader has the intellectual chops to lead amid complexity, most people want a president who “gets them” — feels their pain, their hopes — and has the conviction to make things happen to address those pains and hopes.

Conviction is emotional, passionate, fierce and focused.

Obama potentially can deliver on this. Romney, not so much. Gingrich, potentially.

Let the election communications strategies begin in earnest!

What if every time a political leader sponsored a bill, gave a campaign speech, or pronounced a campaign pledge/message, we asked them this question:

How does this do the most good for the most people?

I’m weary of how politicians of every party cater to special interests and the issues that rile people up — or at least get them the most media sound bytes.  I’m disgusted with the blame game. I’m embarrassed that leaders and potential leaders manipulate people around issues that have little to do with governing, but a lot to do with garnering support to be (re) elected.

I want clear answers to this one question so that I can understand what I’m voting for. Or shouldn’t vote for, as the case may be.

Our country, our states, our cities and towns have limited resources, and are likely to become far more limited as we reduce the rate of government spending. So given these resources, how do we make decisions and support programs and policies that do the most good for the most people?

I’m fairly educated, but man oh man, I can hardly make sense of what I hear and read from our government leaders. Isn’t it time we demanded clarity so more of us can understand what’s what? So that more of us can actively take a role in helping our elected leaders serve us — the big collective us, not fringe and special interest groups.

Asking this question is a small action, but maybe if we all get behind it (or something like it) we can make a difference.

Please take this idea and make it yours. If you think there’s a more powerful way to phrase the question, please share that.

I intend to use this question often and with discipline — during my senator and congressman’s town hall teleconferences, adding comments to politician’s blogs and sites and on general media sites, Tweeting after watching campaign stump speeches, writing personal emails and letters to officials while they are debating on potential legislation.

What do you think?

One of those rare leaders is Providence Mayor Angel Taveras,  guiding the city and its people through some exceedingly painful yet necessary decisions in order to fill a $110 million  deficit.  And Providence isn’t just any city. It’s been historically  fraught with corruption, closed-door wheeling and dealing, and an unhealthy influence of self-serving insiders.

I often hear people excuse leaders’ inability to lead, saying things like, “Well he’s got a complicated situation to deal with.” Or, “It will take years for anyone to be able to change this place.”

Yet Taveras is deftly guiding the city through difficult change in order to get on firm financial footing. Imagine being a first-time urban city mayor and having to make tough decisions like closing schools and laying off community teachers, firefighters and police?

Despite these always unpopular decisions, Traveras is earning respect and collaboration from his constituents. The reason? He’s focused on doing what’s right, and working WITH diverse constituents. He isn’t dictating how to get to financial stability; he is collaborating in the true sense of the word with the people in the city who best know how to make changes on a tactical level.

Six critical leadership competencies that Taveras brings as mayor:

1. Focus on a clear, shared goal: restoring the city to a sound fiscal foundation. Taveras’ message is clear about the urgent need to solve the deficit crisis.  Period.
2. Honesty: revealing the city’s dire financial situation right after his election. No spinning bad news. No taking time to socialize ideas and tend to politics. Taveras has been a straight shooter, presenting the reality, and calling for people to come together to figure out solutions.
3. Transparency, sharing: sharing the data to help everyone make better decisions.  Fire union president Paul Dougherty recently said that previous mayoral administrations would withhold financial information and often say, “Find it yourself.”  Taveras’ negotiators, however,  have “been straightforward, and they give you information when you ask for it.”
4. Admitting missteps: acknowledging mistakes and learning from them. “They’re right,” said Taveras of crticism from the teachers union on how the city revealed teacher layoffs. “We certainly could have done a better job with our teachers and I learned from it.”
5. Not having the answers: great leaders set goals and ask people with a stake in the outcome to create the best way to achieve those goals.  This approach speeds change. The solution isn’t dictated from above, it’s created by the people closest to the issues who know the issues, and will  be responsible for executing them. Taveras doesn’t claim to have the answers, and believes that Providence’s leaders have the ability to create the “how” now that the why is so vitally clear.
6. Belief and fortitude: Taveras has a steadfast belief that the city will solve its problems, and he’s steadfast in his belief and his values. “He’s showing me intestinal fortitude that I didn’t think he had,” says Joseph Rodio, a lawyer for the police union. “Most politicians, in their first 60 days in office, become somebody different. He hasn’t.”

Quite simply, Mayor Taveras seems to have the courage to govern for the people and with the people.  That’s the type of leader — not politician — we should be supporting if we really want to make our cities, states and country a better place to live.

Management consultants Diana Whitney and Amanda Trosten-Bloom believe that there are six conditions for the liberation of power in organizations — and as we’re seeing today, for liberating power in countries.  The “six freedoms” are:

1. The freedom to be heard.
2. The freedom to dream in community.
3. The freedom to choose to contribute.
4. The freedom to act with support.
5. The Freedom to be positive.
6. The freedom to be known in a relationship.

Social communications are activating and empowering people  in  countries, in companies, in government, in activist organizations.  Whether you agree or disagree with Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks, it’s another example of how  social technologies are  liberating power when there is a desire for these six freedoms.

Great leaders always ask an essential question: What of the dreams of the people?

Extraordinary leaders involve people in making those dreams real. They create corporate or civic cultures that encourage and support these six freedoms.

My hopes and dreams are for the people of Egypt today — that they  can quickly and peacefully begin the collaborative journey to the type of country they dream of.

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To learn more about Diana and Amanda, check out their excellent book, “The Power of Appreciative Inquiry: A Practical Guide to Positive Change.”

After a long election season with candidates bashing one another in unhelpful ads, and after a few too many meetings where organizational politics seem to block progress, I’m thinking maybe it’s time to model our civic and business conversations around Ben Franklin’s Friday night Junto club. The Junto was a  small group of local businessmen who got together to discuss current business, scientific and political topics.

The “rules” of the club are as relevant today as they were in the 1730′s.

To join the club, you had to stand up and pledge to these four questions:

1. Have you any particular disrespect to any present members? Answer: I have not.
2. Do you sincerely declare that you love mankind in general, of what profession or religion soever? Answer. I do.
3. Do you think any person ought to be harmed in his body, name, or goods, for mere speculative opinions, or his external way of worship? Answer. No.
4. Do you love truth for truth’s sake, and will you endeavor impartially to find and receive it yourself, and communicate it to others? Answer. Yes.

Imagine if political candidates had to pledge to these? And how about if we pledged this before the start of some business meetings — especially those where we have to make difficult choices? Talk about setting a new context.

Franklin also came up with some fascinating questions to guide the Friday night discussions. Here are some of my favorites. Additional ones can be found here.

• Do you know of any fellow citizen, who has lately done a worthy action, deserving praise and imitation? or who has committed an error proper for us to be warned against and avoid?
• Do you know of any deserving young beginner lately set up, whom it lies in the power of the Junto any way to encourage?
• What new story have you lately heard agreeable for telling in conversation?
• Have you met with any thing in the author you last read, remarkable, or suitable to be communicated to the Junto? particularly in history, morality, poetry, physics, travels, mechanic arts, or other parts of knowledge?
• Do you think of any thing at present, in which the Junto may be serviceable to mankind? to their country, to their friends, or to themselves?

We talk a lot lately about conversations and authenticity. Maybe we need more good questions like these to guide us, along with a pledge to be open and respectful to other people — and other ideas. Why? Because we “love mankind.”

Clinton told reporters that she is determined to make a connection to people “in a way that is not traditional, not confined by the ministerial greeting and the staged handshake photo…I see our job right now, given where we are in the world and what we’ve inherited, as repairing relations, not only with people.”

Fantastic.

Better yet, the previously overly cautious, overly messaged Clinton, has seen the light about the value of straight talk.

Mark Landler of The New York Times reported on Saturday: “Mrs. Clinton raised eyebrows among journalists and analysts with a frank assessment of how a succession struggle in North Korea could undermine talks over its nuclear program. She said she was baffled by the reaction.”

“Maybe this is unusual because you are suppose to be so careful that we spend hours avoiding stating the obvious,” Mrs. Clinton said. “I think it’s worth, perhaps, being more straightforward, trying to engage countries on the basis of the reality that exists.”

This straightforward, human approach to communications is what all people are craving — in foreign relations, in government, at school, in business. In fact, one of the effects of social media has been to amplify this desire.

Gary Hamel recently posted “25 Stretch Goals for Management” on the Harvard Business Publishing blog –  summarizing a two day summit of business leaders tackling the topic of how to reinvent management.  My favorite goal, which underscores Clinton’s recent style, is #24:

“Humanize the language and practice of business. Tomorrow’s management systems must give as much credence to such timeless ideals as beauty, justice and community as they do to the traditional goals of efficiency, advantage and profit.”

Mrs. Clinton has come so far in changing her leadership communications style over the past two years to be more real, more human, more direct.  Now let’s help our business leaders do the same so they can be more inspiring leaders vs. merely effective managers.

I’m a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight…..

• If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you’re ‘exotic, different.’
• Grow up in Alaska eating moose burgers, a quintessential American story.

• If your name is Barack you’re a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
• Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you’re a maverick.

• Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.
• Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you’re well grounded.

• If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor,  spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate’s Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a  state of  13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran’s Affairs committees, you don’t have any real leadership experience.
• If your total resume is: local weather girl,  4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you’re qualified to become the country’s second highest ranking executive.

• If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you’re not a real Christian.
• If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you’re a Christian.

• If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
• If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state’s school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant , you’re very responsible.

• If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family’s values don’t represent America’s.
• If you’re husband is nicknamed ‘First Dude’,  with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn’t register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

OK, much clearer now.

The intent of Clinton’s speech was not to garner support for Obama. Instead, Hillary talked about Hillary. The speech largely recanted her experiences on the campaign trail. It was Hillary’s swan song to Hillary and her almost-successful campaign.

While her style was articulate and strong, it failed to affect behavioral changes because it was too controlled and too clinical. Her gestures of support for Obama were clearly stated, but not deeply felt. Reason without genuine emotion rarely succeeds in changing people’s minds, never mind their actions.

Michelle Obama’s speech on Monday night, on the other hand, was effective. She was articulate, passionate, accessible, and aspirational. Unlike Clinton’s detachedness, Michelle Obama combined reason and genuineness. No wonder there are so many Tweets and posts flying around that say: “Michelle Obama: 2012.”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTFsB09KhqI&eurl=http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/michelle[/youtube]

• Randy Kluver, communications professor, Texas A&M University
• Bill Rice, president, Web Marketing Association
• J. Barbush, associate creating director at at ad agency RPA
• And yours truly, Lois Kelly

Unfortunately the magazine, published by the Public Relations Society of America, isn’t available online, but if you click here and scroll down to Articles you can get a PDF.