Archive for the ‘Leadership communication’ Category

For most organizations employee engagement is not just about the majority of employees but also about leadership teams.  This is the greatest challenge, because if you have a disengaged leadership team you have no chance of engaging employees.  The reasons why are clear:

1. Employees look towards their leaders for direction – if they are not interested no amount of leadership communication efforts will change that
2. You need to change process to change behaviour – unless you put in place systems and processes which force the behaviours of leaders to change, any attempt at change management will fail
3. What gets measured gets done – clearly if the systems are focussed on something other than the focus of your engagement strategy there is no incentive for the leadership team to change

What makes transformational leaders different?

We should all remember that change is hard, and it is scary for individuals, no matter what level of leadership.  The other point is that just because someone has made it to a leadership role that does not mean that they have the skills to engage their teams.  People generally learn from role models and whilst technically people might be brilliant at their role and achieve outstanding results they may not bring out the best in their teams.

Here a few ideas of how process can change behaviour and therefore achieve employee engagement at all levels:

1. Focus on the leadership team and put in place a process for them to engage their teams. In one organisation the leadership team was unsupported of a new software system that was going to be introduced, and all communication with staff was left to the IT area.  By making one simple change and requiring the business leaders to find out how the system will work and impact on their area they have the confidence to speak about it.  Then put in place a simple format and support them in designing a brief presentation on the system to their teams.  Like a sports team, one win and momentum and enthusiasm increases but you need to make sure that they feel “safe” about taking this step and don’t set them up to fail.
2. Build on this momentum by identifying business decisions that need to be made and hold the leadership team accountable.  Bottom line is that once they feel that they have ownership they will be more comfortable and confident talking about changes.  By letting all team members know what is happening, the focus the leadership team has on the changes and the decisions they are focussing on requires the leadership team to come on board.
3. Open communication channels so that team members feel confident to ask questions about changes and make sure you provide real answers.  So again put in place a new process whether this is a dedicated email address, formalised team briefing  process or regular change updates.  Most importantly it is not only two way communication but across communication talking with their peers and conveying the merits of change.

Without change in process there is no formalised reason why behaviours will or should change.  The only way employee engagement at all levels will be achieved is when something in the way they reach decisions, do their work or are measured changes and requires them to behave differently.  Leadership communication on its’ own will not achieve the level of employee engagement that brings about sustainable change.

why is it then that there is such a high turnover of management staff?  One always assumes that these are skills that are inherent, however for most people they need to be taught how to use these skills in the workplace.  Sometimes it gets too hard and with the complexities of everyday life some people choose a role where they must be responsible in their job but not necessary responsible for leading a team.  There are leaders and there are managers and both are important in all organizations.

Do you have examples where this is true at your place of work?  Why do you think there is such a high turnover in Management roles?

leadership styles

o The competencies for being effective at both are the same

o Though they differ, both competencies share a requisite focus on power and goal achievement.

o The competencies necessary to increase leadership capabilities are an expansion of those required for interpersonal and conflict management effectiveness.

o The competencies necessary for interpersonal and conflict management have a requisite awareness of political issues that competencies for increasing leadership capabilities do not.

When you think about the millions of dollars organizations spend each year on IT programs of work, wouldn’t it be prudent knowing that employees actually understand and most importantly embrace the reason behind the changes?  There is one way of ensuring that employees and their managers have got the message and truly understand the reasons for the new system implementation. And that is the means by which leaders communicate change.

Let’s start with reviewing how most organizations manage technology based change.  If your organization’s approach to this type of change is new skills training and employee communication strategies that include stakeholder management (translated briefings), intranet and email updates then that’s not managing change, rather it is focussed on information. So what is the difference and why do we need to do anything more than provide information?

IT systems are not introduced for the sake of a new system itself, they are introduced because there are benefits to be realised from a business management perspective. This may include more information on customer profiles and identifying other products or services clients may be interested in purchasing, the changes might focus on back office systems such as greater information for human resources management or accounting or they may focus on the supply chain and logistics. Whatever the reason there is a business reason for change and this is what employees need to understand if the full benefits of any system implementation is going to be realised.

Let’s look at an example. This financial services organization was introducing a new back office system. In the past employees worked in separate divisions so customers were transferred from one area to another to process their request. The new system meant that all of the customer details were now available to employees and that they would now work in teams and “own” the customer from the commencement to end of transaction. It was a complete system and work style change so before specific system training was introduced a simulated work area was established and employees were taken through the customer experience. It was important that they understood the benefits to the customer by looking at the changes through the eyes of the customer. This way we created the “Aha” moment, employees got the message better than any intranet, information session or email bulletin could have conveyed it. And when employees went into system training they clearly understood the benefits and business reasons behind the changes.

The five key things to remember when communicating technology changes.

1.    Be very clear about the business reasons for the changes – who will benefit and what will those benefits be?

2.    Establish why those benefits are important?  What will the impact be on the organization?

3.    Decide the key messages for your information strategy – what will you need to communicate, to whom and when?

4.    Concurrently design an engagement strategy at key points in your project plan that will engage employees at all levels in the reason for the technology changes.

5.    Remember to ensure engagement the message is not about the system itself but about the business reasons for the changes.

Finally, as change management professionals can we take the same approach to managing system changes and apply it to every new organization? The answer is clearly no because as every organization’s culture is different, so it follows that every approach to change management and employee communication must be different to maximise the investment and potential of the system changes that are implemented.

For more information and examples of case studies visit www.thefutureofemployeecommunication.com

If you are involved in a leadership role then you already know that one of the most important aspects of how successful you are as a leader today is measurement of your effectiveness on business outcomes.  But so much of that measurement is focused on the amount of engagement with teams rather than the quality of that engagement and the link to business outcomes.  So here’s what you can do as a leader.

 1.         Every organization conducts market research surveys.  These surveys typically measure customer satisfaction levels across services and products provided by your organization.  Sometimes they even ask questions about competitor products and services.  Organizations then take that information and work towards improving the rating they received by introducing improvements to services, products and information.

 Most organizations have a human resources department that usually conduct a staff survey annually.  This survey typically includes questions about communication within the organization, understanding the corporate vision, satisfaction with employee benefits and training and so on.  What I suggest is that organizations include a supplementary survey of just 10 questions at the end of this survey.  And these questions should be framed by selecting key questions from the customer survey and asking staff what do you think customers think about X?  These 10 questions in effect become your engagement measure.

 2.         Typically the result demonstrates disparity between what customers think and what employees think customers think.  Once you have the difference measured between perception and reality then you have the opportunity to commence dialogue about with your employees about what customers really think.  Most importantly it allows you to design transformational leadership strategies specifically to target that business issue.  So now you have a business issue and know the key messages for your leadership communication strategy.

 3.         One year on when the customer survey is conducted, you ask the same questions and again do the same with the staff survey.  What you seek to find is that the measure of the perception staff have of what customers think and what customers actually think have moved closer together and towards the organizations desired outcome.  This becomes your business measure of whether you as a leader have engaged employees.

 4.         This information is important because your ultimate aim in transformational leadership has to be to create the “Aha Moment” for employees.  The “Aha Moment” is based on information that challenges the employee’s belief about an aspect of the business.  The information that suddenly helps employees say, “Now it makes sense”, “Now I understand”, “Now I can do something about it”.  It is only once you see this gap close between what customers actually think about an issue and what employees think the customer thinks that you have a measure that demonstrates your transformational leadership strategy has been successful.  If the gap still exists then the design of your strategy is flawed in someway.

 5.     Finally, it is important that you measure employee communication tools such as readership of your staff magazine, access of the intranet and other tools.  However the only way to impact perceptions of the value of those tools is the contribution to an organization against business outcomes.

 This approach to measurement is low cost.  The investment in the human resources staff survey and the marketing departments’ customer research is already locked in.  You are simply adding 10 questions to the end of the human resources survey based on the marketing questions.  The engagement strategies are generally low cost because they involve people, not tools.  By this I mean that employees are involved in doing something differently to bring about change in an organization.  The staff newsletter and other information tools already exist, all you do is tailor the articles to reflect the main focus of your transformational leadership strategy.  This low cost yet highly effective approach will ensure that you can measure your strategies against business outcomes.

When we think of leadership communication most organizations focus on information tools. These include intranet sites, staff magazines, CEO blog, Town Hall meetings and so on. Whilst all these employee communication methods are to be applauded, they inform employees about what is going on. To truly engage employees in the process of change, for instance, a merger or acquisition, a re-organization, financial results or corporate social responsibility, leadership communication methods need to be designed to actively engage employees. Employee engagement should always result in some positive change of behaviour which will then lead to the achievement of organizational goals. Just distributing information by any of the above methods will not achieve the change in employee behaviour and organizational outcomes you are looking for.

Here are 5 tips that will ensure that your leadership communication methods do achieve those outcomes.

1. The first tip is to establish whether the tools and methods you are currently using as a leader to communicate with employees are engagement strategies or information tools. So gather all the tools used and identify all the methods used, their frequency, intended audience, whether they are one way or two way communication vehicles and review the key messages.

2. The second tip is important because your ultimate aim as a leader has to be to create the “Aha Moment” for employees. The “Aha Moment” is based on information that challenges the employee’s belief about an aspect of the business. The information that suddenly helps employees say, “Now it makes sense”, “Now I understand”, “Now I can do something about it”. Once you know what the “Aha Moment” is this will form your key message and the basis of your design of your employee communication strategy.

3. This third tip explains the best type of research to find out what the “Aha Moment” is, and the best type for this purpose is focus group research. Focus group research allows you to ask employees about your business and their thoughts on competitors, to identify the largest gap between what customers think and what staff think customers think, and to identify what would create a paradigm shift in employee’s thinking. It also helps you identify how you will measure the impact of your leadership communication strategies in the change in employees thinking and to determine how significant it is to achieving the business objectives. Focus groups are a good format as they allow issues to be explored further and sometimes will uncover issues or ideas which hadn’t been considered prior to the session. Focus groups generally are held for one and a half hours duration and in groups of 8 – 10 participants. The facilitator’s role is to lead the discussion but leave the actual dialogue to the participants, bringing them back to the main issue if they have gone off on a tangent or to ensure that all the topics that you wanted to cover within the allocated timeframe are covered. A well facilitated focus group will identify the key messages for your communication strategies as they relate to a particular business issue.

4. The fourth tip is that once you have the focus group outcomes, you can then begin designing leadership communication strategies that engage employees. You should have a clear understanding about what employees know and what the facts are, and the gap between the business facts and staff perceptions. This forms your key message to create the “Aha Moment”.

5. The fifth tip is that you take the key information from the focus groups, identify a business issue that you feel certain your leadership communication strategies can impact. By using that information you then implement a personalized leadership communication strategy that can be measured by business outcomes. Once you have gathered all this information you then need to design leadership communication strategies that engage employees around the one central message.

Many of these employee communication strategies will actively involve employees in some aspect of change by designing communication methods that will require employees to participate. These engagement strategies are then supplemented by communication information tools.