Category: Points of Interest
Amid the current financial crisis, leadership teams and C-suite executives in organizations of all shapes and sizes are having discussions about ways to reduce uncertainty and boost employee morale. While leaders realize that communication is critical to transparency and credibility, executive teams are exploring additional ways to increase employee engagement during these turbulent economic times.
In doing so, researchers are finding that well-connected employees, those who have extensive social networks that bridge gaps between departments (or silos), are more likely to do better at work. As a result, social networking tools are becoming an integral component to enhancing employee engagement and elevating employee performance.
Consequently, maintaining consistent leadership communication paired with opportunities for employees to build social relationships with others at work will not only build employees’ level of trust, but will also give them a sense of community within the organization.
Prior to getting started, keep in mind that some social networking tools might fit better in your company than others. To that point, before implementing a social networking tool in your organization, consider the following critical next steps:
- Create a social networking advisory council of well-connected employees who can audit the organization and evaluate employee needs and wants.
- Identify social networking tools that work best inside your organization and fit into your company culture.
- Recognize potential obstacles in the implementation of these tools in your organization.
- Set realistic expectations around tasks and timelines for implementation.
For more information about social networking at the office, click here. Or, to read more about communication advice for leaders during the financial crisis, click here.
This is the first installment of a four-part series.
At CRA, we use Aristotle’s three methods of persuasion—Ethos, Pathos, and Logos (found in his Rhetoric)—as the foundation for creating quality messages. We gloss these terms as Believe, Do, and Know. In other words, a good message makes the audience believe we are credible. It establishes a personal connection, which helps to encourage that the message is acted upon. Finally, a good message helps the audience to know something new and important by presenting reasonable and intelligent arguments.
I thought it would be useful to return to the source to help fill out these concepts a bit more. One interesting point to begin with is that there are only three ways for a person to be persuasive according to Aristotle. These can be characterized broadly in terms of: 1) the character of the speaker; 2) the emotional state of the hearer; and 3) the argument itself.
Three posts, corresponding to Ethos, Pathos, and Logos respectively, will follow this introductory post over the next three weeks. Each will include practical coaching points designed to help translate Aristotle’s observations into the practical world of business.
Recently, a client asked me, “So, what’s the scuttlebutt (word origin here) about us?” The question made me think about gossip and its role in organizations. Why do we gossip? Because it just plain feels good to have and share information.
Social scientists believe that gossip serves the same purpose for humans that reciprocal grooming does among primates—anthropologists call it “social grooming.” Research shows that both types of grooming stimulate endorphin production, which relieves stress and boosts the immune system.
I was surprised to learn just how much time we devote to water cooler, back-fence talk—we spend two thirds (!) of our conversations gossiping. With that in mind, we advise clients to divvy their communication attentions between formal and informal channels.
What really communicates? While formal communications—memos, financial reports, staff meetings, newsletters, town halls—are not going anywhere, neither are informal exchanges in the workplace. Quite the opposite. Widespread adoption of social media (a recent post by Meredith speaks to the value in virtual networks) means new types of informal channels are on the rise, and so is the ease with which we send messages informally. Not only does information travel faster through informal channels than through formal means, but it is malleable along the way.
In other words, messages sent through informal channels are undocumented, and open to change and interpretation as they rush through the grapevine (word origin here). Informal messages are unbound by the org chart and thus, move in every direction: up, down, and diagonally, between workers and managers, and even inside and outside the company.
The best organizations manage the grapevine as simply another channel for information, and equip managers with the tools they need to share information—proactively—with their teams. Not only are managers trusted sources of information, but they directly link leadership and the front line.
Though strategically handling the grapevine can be a challenge, it’s one that leaders should embrace. Those who grasp the power of the grapevine will be better prepared to utilize it to achieve organizational goals.
Many newly promoted managers complain of having two jobs—juggling the roles of performer and team leader. However, employees should manage others throughout their careers—and “managing up” is as important as down. Though it’s challenging, and particularly so in large or travel-heavy organizations, learning to manage one’s superiors is an essential part of any upward-bound career path.
Inspired by a recent Wall Street Journal article (registration may be required), I’ve come up with a few points to keep in mind as you manage inaccessible or difficult-to-reach superiors:
- Create access. Your boss’s hectic travel schedule shouldn’t separate you for long periods of time, so to avoid separation—and subsequent anxiety—be creative in your communication methods. Get to know his or her schedule; try to find out when your boss will be in the office or anywhere “in town” if most of his or her time is spent on airplanes. And don’t forget, an executive assistant holds the key to your boss’s schedule, and can help you to schedule phone or face time with a hard-to-reach boss.
- Adapt and persist. Figure out your leader’s preferred style and method of communication, and adapt your messages to these preferences. Be sure to update your leader’s preferences regularly—no less than annually, and more often for attention-deficient leaders.
- Self-promote. Your supervisor should know your achievements, and you’re responsible to provide those updates. To help you keep track of them among your responsibilities (and all those accomplishments!), schedule updates like appointments. Maybe you’ll send the managing partner an email every Friday at 5, or maybe you’ll leave your director a voice message on Sunday evenings so he or she hears from you as the workweek begins. However you choose to update your boss, be sure to describe your achievements and planned actions, and make your requests for feedback or input at those times.
- Top-of-mind equals top of list. When you’ve let others know about your significant achievement, you increase your visibility… and without much extra effort, you provide reasons why you should remain in your position during layoffs and economic downturns. Leaders will begin to prefer your help when problems arise or work needs completion. Better yet, if you are never far from your leader’s thoughts, you become extremely promotable.
- Face time is essential. Though email is often the easiest way to get a message to your boss, face time creates engagement. This is particularly true when your superior manages a large number of people, or has few opportunities for informal meetings with staff. Be sure your boss can connect your name with your face… and the achievements your name carries.
From: “How to Work Around Your Boss’s Habit of Not Being Available” by Joann Lublin. WSJ.com (9/5/06).
Whether the goal is elevating employee performance, SOX compliance, strategic alignment, spurring innovation, or something else, leaders earn their keep by creating the conditions of accountability in their organization.
What conditions lead to accountability? Our research has shown time and again that most people in organizations will be accountable—that is, they will do what’s needed and expected—to the extent to which…
- Expectations are clear to employees.
- Employees perceive that those expectations are credible and reasonable.
- Employees anticipate that positive consequences will follow performance.
- Employees anticipate that negative consequences will follow poor performance.
Strategy & Leadership has just published an article that elaborates our Accountability Model, highlights from our research the factors that most frequently promote and inhibit accountability, and provides a case study of how we helped one organization assess and address its accountability problems.
You can download the complete article, “How to combat a culture of excuses and promote accountability,” here.
Read the rest of this entry »
The current issue of Fortune profiles 10 Top Leaders And Their Secrets. It’s an interesting read, made even more so by the repeated references to the importance of leadership communication.
These leaders echoe the counsel we give our clients everyday. Things like … Spend 85 percent of your time on the road talking to people (not emailing them). Coach 100 to 200 employees in a given month (it’s worth the time). Listen more (we mean really listen). And, my personal favorite, be relentlessly on message (until you can’t stomach saying it one more time).
“Benchmarking” is being used widely across businesses today. And if companies aren’t using it, they want to be, or perhaps, feel they ought to be. But do you have appropriate standards in place to implement benchmarking? Let’s say you conduct a “benchmarking survey” to compare the “numbers” in your company to the “numbers” of other companies. You find your company has more favorable numbers in all areas but one. Sounds good, right? So you report these findings back to management. Sighs of relief that “everything is just fine” may give leadership that warm, fuzzy feeling, while in reality these findings mean little more than you’re the best of a mediocre group. If mediocrity is in fact what you are striving for, congratulations, you’ve achieved it. Is this what you’re trying to accomplish?
If your answer is no, and your benchmarking agenda entails discovering and incorporating best practices, you may want to dig a little deeper. Benchmarking should not be a comparison check. Benchmarking should be used as an improvement process. You should be searching for best practices, what the standards are, and who sets them. But you should also be interested in how those people meet the standards and why those practices are “best.”
Remember to think before you leap. Here’s a link that may help to guide you along your benchmarking way.
Ten Benchmarking Mistakes to Avoid
Is there really such thing as a dumb question? Sure, according to Fortune magazine, when used wisely“dumb questions” have potential to get to the heart of the matter.
…a powerful insight into business success, one that applies to every industry on every continent in every era: Dumb questions lead to smart decisions.
A great source of cheap, hi-resolution, royalty-free presentation graphics: iStockphoto.com. Great images for just a buck or two a piece. Replace your clipart with these kinds of images and do yourself (and your audience) a favor …
According to The Guardian, our friend David Allen and his Getting Things Done philosophy have achieved cult status. In particular…
Web and IT professionals have taken Allen’s core ideas and refined them into ever more effective tips called “life hacks”. Adherents swap these across a broad network of blogs, wikis and websites such as 43Folders.com - all amid a considerable amount of one-upmanship over who has the biggest and best system.
“As lovers of systems and frameworks, geeks take to GTD easily,” says Merlin Mann, a writer from San Francisco who runs 43Folders.com. “They hate boredom so they are often jumping around, multitasking and trying to keep a dozen balls in the air.”
“Life hacks are really a superset of GTD - basically any kind of trick you can devise that makes it hard to screw up,” says Mann.
Among the examples of life hacks the article describes is this gem: “Want to keeping meetings short and on topic? Write an agenda and make sure everyone drinks a litre of water at the beginning.”
Read the whole thing.
