Copy of Stop Giving Speeches: Use VLD Actually to Enroll Your People (TPL Insights #303)

By Rob Andrews, discussing the importance of leadership communication.

If you’ve ever nailed a town hall, felt great walking off the “stage,” and then watched absolutely nothing change in the business… congratulations, you’ve experienced the difference between agreement and enrollment.

People smiled. They nodded. Some even said, “Great message.”

And then Monday showed up, and everyone went right back to what they were doing.

That gap is exactly what Alan Barker is talking about in How to Improve Your Communication Skills. He argues that communication doesn’t fail because we’re bad at transmitting messages. It fails because we don’t create shared understanding. People don’t hear what we said; they hear what fits their existing mental models, biases, and patterns.

At Allen Austin, where we operate as an executive search firm, a leadership advisory firm, and a culture-shaping firm, we see this every day. Organizations don’t struggle because they lack talented people; they struggle because leaders haven’t yet built communication systems that create real alignment. When you add Barker’s thinking to the Vanguard Leadership Dynamics (VLD) framework, you get something incredibly powerful: a way to design messages that move people from the stands into the game.

The 3 Filters: Why They’re Not Hearing You (Even When They Nod)

Every message you deliver has to clear three subconscious filters in your audience’s mind, or it’s dead on arrival:

They believe you believe it.

They believe you know where you’re going.

They believe there’s something in it for them.

These three filters sit at the heart of VLD.

Filter 1 – “You believe what you’re saying.”

Leaders in any executive search firm or leadership advisory firm know credibility is the cornerstone of influence. Kouzes and Posner put it plainly: people decide whether to trust you before they trust your message.

Filter 2 – “You know where you’re going.”

People will tolerate uncertainty; they will not tolerate ambiguity. Barker reminds us that the human brain relies on pattern-matching. If leaders don’t paint a clear picture of the future, people will fill the space with fear.

Filter 3 – “There’s something in it for me.”

Heath and Heath’s research in Switch reinforces the same truth we see in culture work: people engage deeply only when the personal benefit is real and visible.

When organizations hire us as a culture-shaping firm, this is typically the root problem. It’s not messaging. It’s not communication channels. It’s not technology. It’s the silent failure of the 3 Filters.

The 8 Elements: How to Build Messages That Actually Move People

Once you clear the 3 Filters, VLD offers eight elements that help leaders architect messages that stick, scale, and shift behavior:

Background Connection

Vision

Strategy

Implications

Action Request

Urgency

Rewards

Hardball Issues

Barker would nod vigorously at this. He teaches that meaningful communication is designed, not improvised. These eight elements give leaders a formula to build clarity into moments where ambiguity typically reigns.

You can see how each element aligns with Barker:

Background Connection + Vision → context, pattern-matching, shared meaning

Strategy + Implications → structured thinking, honest conversations

Action Request + Urgency → clarity of intent, time-bound focus

Rewards + Hardball Issues → emotional engagement + truth-telling

This is also where culture is shaped. Schein famously said that leaders embed and transmit culture through what they consistently pay attention to. When leaders use the 8 Elements, they communicate with intentionality—and people feel the difference.

Enrollment > Agreement: Where Barker and VLD Meet Perfectly

VLD draws a clean line between two very different outcomes:

Agreement

“I hear you. Makes sense. Good talk.”

Enrollment

“I see it. I believe it. I know how it affects me. I’m in.”

Enrollment is where execution lives. Agreement is where good ideas go to die.

The Pivot Framework—Acknowledge → Commit → Engage—helps leaders transform skeptical or confused audiences into partners in the story. Barker’s tools amplify this by emphasizing:

real listening

thoughtful, open-ended questions

summarizing before responding

treating the other person as an equal thinker

Amy Edmondson’s research on psychological safety backs this up: teams who feel heard perform better. As a leadership advisory firm, we see this pattern in boardrooms, startup huddles, and engineering firms alike.

Communication isn’t a talent. It’s a leadership discipline. And the combination of VLD + Barker gives leaders the structure to practice it with mastery.

How to Use VLD + Barker This Week

Here’s a simple, practical way to put this into play inside your team, your division, or your entire organization.

Pick one high-stakes conversation.

A strategy update. A culture reset. A performance expectation shift. Anything that actually matters.

Run it through the 3 Filters.

Ask yourself:

Do I believe this?

Is the direction clear?

Do they see what’s in it for them?

Build the message with the 8 Elements.

Literally fill them out. Don’t shortcut the hardball issues.

Deliver it like a Barker conversation.

Slow down. Ask great questions. Summarize. Listen for what’s said—and what’s not said.

If you stick with this sequence, you’ll see something remarkable: conversations start shifting from defensiveness to curiosity, from compliance to ownership.

It’s the difference between being a leader people hear and a leader people follow.

The Payoff: Communication as a Leadership Multiplier

The combination of Barker’s communication craft and VLD’s communication architecture gives leaders something rare: a repeatable system for creating alignment, clarity, and genuine commitment.

Inside a fast-growing executive search firm, a high-stakes leadership advisory firm, or a transformative culture-shaping firm, this is the secret advantage. Leadership isn’t just about making great decisions. It’s about communicating those decisions in a way that creates unity, confidence, and momentum.

Most speeches inform.

Great leadership conversations enroll.

And VLD makes enrollment a discipline rather than a happy accident.

This week, don’t give another speech.

Create a moment of enrollment.

Your people, and your culture, are waiting for it.

Warmest,

Rob Andrews

Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

Celebrating 28 years of Executive Search, Leadership Advisory, and Interim Executive Excellence

Direct: 713.489.9724/ Mobile: 713.301.6130

4801 Woodway Dr., Suite 130W, Houston, TX, 77056

www.roberta348.sg-host.com Link to Allen Austin Overview

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References

Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383.

Goffee, R., & Jones, G. (2006). Why should anyone be led by you? Harvard Business Review Press.

Heath, C., & Heath, D. (2010). Switch: How to change things when change is hard. Broadway Books.

Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2017). The leadership challenge (6th ed.). Jossey-Bass.

Barker, A. (2025). How to Improve Your Communication Skills. Kogan Page.