I heard an entertaining piece on the radio this morning by Frank Deford that I think is worth sharing. You can read or listen to it here. What you’ll hear is simple and timely, but hard to grasp for many at the top of their game in business and sports.
Whether you’re a hedge fund manager or a wide receiver, take note. Perhaps the rising tide of public expectations for leaders’ behavior on Wall Street should also apply to our favorite good athletes/bad sports on the field. In times like this, when the average American is working harder than ever before to make ends meet, perhaps people like Terrell Owens and Manny Ramirez should manage their ego and play harder too. And if they don’t, their leaders and the public should be less forgiving.
Here’s hoping that my hometown of Buffalo does a better job than my current city of Philadelphia at Managing T.O. We’ll see … either way, at least the Phillies got it right last year (see article for details).
The last six months have resulted in more employees in transition than ever before. As people find themselves working for a new employer or in a different role within their organization, managers must figure out how to on-board new team members as quickly as possible and effective superior-subordinate communication plays a large role.
You can increase how quickly new team members adjust to your management style by considering the following when setting expectations:
Inform employees of your expectations by sharing them in a way that is clear, concise, and easy to understand. Doing this puts your employees in a place where they can succeed and not in the position of becoming a mind reader. Communicating expectations takes time up front, but it saves everyone time in the end.
Evaluate the credibility of your expectations by inquiring about your employee’s bandwidth. Ask if they are working on any other projects right now and how much time those projects are consuming. If they do not have the availability you need you will have to reset your expectations for their involvement.
Clarify that the message sent is the message received. Have a conversation with your employee about the next steps they plan to take in the projects you have assigned. Their response will help you to gauge how well they understand your expectations and allows you to address misunderstandings, if any, before anyone heads in the wrong direction.
At CRA, we ask leaders: “What do you want your employees to know, believe, do, and feel?” We stress that the ultimate goal is the “do” part – getting employees to act how you want them to act. In the communication literature, there are two theoretical approaches – the theory of reasoned action (TRA) and the theory of planned behavior (TPB) – that predict voluntary behavior. In the first installment of this two-part series I will discuss Ajzen and Fishbein’s TRA and how it can predict employee behavior.
The best predictor of behavior is intention. The TRA suggests that an individual’s intention to perform or not perform is a result of two factors: attitudes toward the behavior and normative pressure. So how can you influence intention and get employees to live your strategy? You have to control:
Attitudes toward the behavior: An employee’s attitude toward a behavior is based on his / her beliefs concerning the outcomes that follow action. In order to motivate employees to action, they must believe that living the organization’s strategy will be beneficial to them. You must ensure that:
- Positive consequences follow performance and negative consequences follow nonperformance.
- Employees believe that positive consequences are valuable and negative consequences are undesirable.
Normative pressure: Intention and subsequent action are also influenced by employees’ perceptions of whether key stakeholders support the behavior. Leaders, peers, and mentors can influence whether an individual’s actions align with the organizational goals. You must ensure that:
- Leaders support the strategy, and their own decisions and actions reinforce the expectations they place on employees.
- Employees participate in groups with other employees.
Stay tuned for the follow-up post in which I describe the theory of planned behavior, which builds off of the TRA.
Given the current state of our economy, it shouldn’t be surprising to any of us that it’s difficult to get people to pay attention to anything else. But, when you’re making changes to keep the organization afloat, you need your employees to hear and believe what you’re saying.
So, how do you get some instant credibility; how can you demonstrate that you really mean what you say? Whether you want to highlight the importance of a new initiative, a shift in direction, or compliance issues—as a researcher, I’ve found one of the strongest “convincing decisions” that leaders can make to demonstrate they really care about something on their leadership agenda is to measure…then act.
As organizations increasingly rely on metrics and dashboards to guide employee efforts, a highly effective way to get people’s attention is to ask for their feedback about whether (and how well) your efforts are moving the organization in the right direction—and then to be very transparent about what you heard from them and how you plan to act on it. And, this approach offers some nice side benefits: (1) You make better decisions when you know the landscape in which you’re operating and (2) you’re more likely to get employee buy-in for your plans when you’ve listened to their input first.
