Archive for the ‘transformational leadership’ Category

There are two distinct ways transformational leadership can engage employees; one is to inform employees about what is happening in an organization, the other is to engage employees in the process of change.  In this article we are going to highlight 3 case studies that demonstrate clearly the different techniques and approaches to ensure that your leadership strategies bring about transformation in your organization.

Transformational Leadership Case Study 1: At this telecommunications manufacturing plant, the company decided to involve employees in the organizational changes that were taking place.  The company is involved in high technology and has approximately 1,900 employees.  After a senior management workshop it was decided that a customer service change programme be developed. 

One of the methods introduced was the round table concept.  The communications team organised for 18 people from a specific area to have a 90 minute meeting with senior managers.  However, the key to the success of these meetings was that the employees did most of the talking and the senior managers, most of the listening.  The organization planned to learn from these meetings what the barriers were to success and customer satisfaction.  Over a 10 week period, 50 round tables were scheduled.  At the completion of this exercise, approximately one third of the total of the organization’s workforce were involved in the round tables.  Participants in the round table programme were selected from every employment level with a balanced representation of gender and race.

Patterns in the issues that were raised began to emerge and senior management began to take notice of what were to become the main elements of the customer service change programme.  What was critical with this approach was that soon after the round table program of 10 weeks, employees began to actually see their suggestions adopted, and changes taking place.  To supplement the face to face meetings with managers, a bi-weekly newsletter was produced.  Each issue was 2 pages in length and included a dedicated space for employees to make suggestions to managers for improvement in customer service.

Transformational Leadership Case Study 2: This hospital wanted to cut costs and at the same time ensure that patients were not adversely impacted by the changes.  It was also a major provider of healthcare in a small community so it was essential that the reputation of high quality care was not reduced.

So they sought feedback using focus groups, telephone surveys and also contacting the carers.  Three key attributes in patient care came up as the main contributors to patient satisfaction.  The hospital staff concentrated on improving these 3 areas whilst still reducing costs. Cross functional teams were established with employees volunteering to take part.  An employee with strong project management skills was selected to lead each team.  A list of options to improve the experience of the patients was presented to management with details of costings and timeframes for implementation.  Agreement was reached on the changes and the senior management team ensured line managers were not blockers to the changes. 

Transformational Leadership Case Study 3: The main objective of this strategy was to educate staff in reading and understanding the company financial statements and how they directly related to the work that they were doing.  The other minor objective was the need for employees in other departments to understand how what they did impacted on the remainder of the organization and the bottom line.

Employees from all areas were encouraged to review the company books and financial statements.  An extension of this policy was to talk with all employees in groups and discuss what the figures meant, specifically how they related to the work that they were doing and then to the big picture of the organization’s profitability.  The strategy was more than an attempt to educate the workforce; rather it focussed on action plans when the budgets and finances were off course for their particular area.  The staff would then look at their operations and how they could do things differently to remedy the situation.  This method included training on understanding financial reports, which has the benefit not only of learning how to read the financial statements of the organization but also what action the team in each department could take to change the financial outcomes.  Copies of the financial statements were distributed to employees once there was recognition that they would understand what was being conveyed. By understanding and teaching employees the direct relationship between their work and the financial results of the organization they are more inclined to understand the message.

Finally the role of leaders during transformation is to ensure that all employees have understood the key message and that it means something to them.  Change Management is all about using a variety of methods and techniques to ensure that no matter how complex, long term or risky the message is, the desired outcome for the organization will be achieved. Employee engagement and transformational leadership are uniquely connected and by combining the two outstanding results can be achieved.

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.