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Management by Coaching
Rallying the troops
Getting employee buy-in for something new takes more than just words
By Kimberly Paterson, CEC
As the agency CEO makes a speech unveiling a new strategy, employees nod their heads enthusiastically. She presents her case for the need to change and what she expects people to do differently. She shows the downward trend in premium volume. Then she makes it clear that year-end bonuses depend on improving the numbers and that every employee plays a role in the process. The next day the agency employees are observed cheerfully implementing the old strategy.
Have you ever found yourself in this situation and at a loss for what it takes to get through to your people? If so, you are not alone. Leaders realize that employees’ understanding and engagement are critical. Knowing the importance is one thing; knowing how to make it happen is another.
According to a major research study conducted by the Wharton School, executives rated communication as one of the top four barriers to effective strategy execution. The good news is that it is not that difficult to create communication that breaks through the barrier and drives action—once you understand five principles.
It takes more than you think
During my career, I’ve worked with hundreds of insurance organizations and have conducted an equal number of employee surveys. I’ve never seen a company guilty of over-communicating. (Don’t confuse good communication with distributing information.) The fact is that most leaders underestimate what it takes to get their message through and inspire people to take action.
Getting through to your people takes the right message, time, repetition and constant reinforcement. Being face-to-face is increasingly important. Many executives think that you call an employee meeting and then use written memos and e-mails to reinforce the message. Our experience shows that this is simply not true. People are drowning in information.
The result is that a growing percentage of your audience doesn’t read what you send. Think of it this way. Last night your 16-year-old son rolled in at three o’clock in the morning and you definitely smelled alcohol on his breath. This behavior is unacceptable to you. Are you going to slip a note under his bedroom door or send him an e-mail to let him know how you feel? Probably not. If your message is important, initiate face-to-face communication.
Plan your communication
Leaders spend 80%-90% of their time per week communicating and 10%-20% of their time planning. Effective communication requires planning, and that planning process includes four components:
• Outcome. Instead of thinking about what you want to say, think in terms of the outcome. What do you want people to think, feel and do as a result of your communication? This is what you build your message around. Think infomercial. Everything you see and hear is driving you to take action.
• Audience. Know the questions that may be in your audience’s mind. This is a minefield for many leaders. Leaders tend to focus on the strategy and how the organization needs to change. Research shows there are seven questions you must answer before employees are ready and willing to talk about how they can help the organization move forward:
1. What’s my job?
2. How am I doing?
3. Does anyone care about me?
4. What does our organization stand for?
5. Where is our organization going?
6. Where is my department going?
7. How can I play a role?
I observed this principle in action a few weeks ago when listening to a CEO launch a new business initiative to his employees. He explained the new strategy and goals clearly and concisely. He outlined what was expected of each department as well as the timing of the transition. When he opened the floor to questions, the only ones he received were about how it impacted an individual’s job or department, the company’s flextime policy, and its benefit plan.
Know what is on employees’ minds. Make sure you address those questions before you attempt to engage them on big-picture issues.
• Message. If you want your strategy to take hold, it needs to be built into the way your organization talks. If your staff can talk about your strategy, tell stories about it, and talk to their managers about it and feel confident doing so, then your strategy is doing exactly what it was intended to do—guide behavior.
The trick to talking strategy is making strategic ideas “sticky.” A great book to read on this topic is Made To Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. They offer these three tips for communicating strategy:
1. Be concrete. The beauty of concrete language, rather than vague business-speak, is that everyone will understand it in a similar way. For example, when food retailer Trader Joe’s wanted employees to understand their target customer, they used the concrete example of an “unemployed college professor” rather than the vague marketing terminology of “upscale but budget-conscious consumers.”
2. Say something unexpected. If a strategy is common sense, don’t waste your time communicating it. It’s critical for leaders to identify the uncommon sense in their strategies. What’s new about the strategy? What’s different?
3. Tell stories. A good story beats an abstract strategy statement every time. Remember, you can construct the moral from the story but not the story from the moral. If your company doesn’t have stories that convey your strategy, that should be a warning flag—it may not be sufficiently clear to influence people how to act.
• Evaluation. Know how you will define success and how you will check for understanding. Communication takes place in the mind of the listener. Good communication is a dialogue where questions can be asked, ideas can be challenged and meaning can be personalized.
One of the best ways to gauge the effectiveness of your communication is by the questions people ask. If they ask basic questions, you somehow missed the mark. If their questions are forward-looking or more detail-oriented, your team got the message and is thinking a step ahead of you about what’s next.
Another way to check understanding is to survey. Inexpensive programs like Zoomerang and Survey Monkey make it fast, easy and affordable to conduct simple research.
The words aren’t what really matters
When communicating with others we tend to focus on our words. They are the weakest tool in our arsenal. Albert Mehrabian, professor emeritus of psychology at UCLA, says that when it comes to sending and receiving emotion, gestures count for 55%, tone for 38% and words for a mere 7%.
Neuroscientific research proves that the delivery is more important than the message. In a recent study, neuroscientists observed two groups. One received negative performance feedback accompanied by positive emotional signals—namely nods and smiles. The other group was given positive feedback but delivered with frowns and narrowed eyes. Subsequent interviews were conducted with the two groups to compare their emotional states. The people who had received the positive feedback, accompanied by the negative emotional signals reported feeling worse about their performance than the participants who had received good-natured, but negative feedback.
One CEO with whom I worked was a warm, caring and hardworking executive. His problem was that he had a permanent furrow in his brow. He tended to look worried and sometimes angry even when he wasn’t. He also wore bifocals. When focusing on someone he often appeared to be scrutinizing and looking down on them. Because of this, he was extremely intimidating to employees.
Through coaching, he became aware of how he was perceived and how to shift the physical energy he was projecting. Pay careful attention to the energy you project through your tone, facial expressions and gestures. That is the major source of information for most people.
The effectiveness of your communication hinges on your credibility
The effectiveness of any message, no matter how well-crafted, depends on the credibility of the leader. Past performance determines just how seriously the leader’s message will be taken. Three things tend to jeopardize a leader’s credibility.
The initiative “du jour”—Too many initiatives are introduced and abandoned. Employees become jaded and tune out. When another initiative is introduced, their reaction is “this too shall pass.”
The say/do phenomenon—Employees hear the speech. It sounds good but their manager’s actions and the agency’s policies and day-to-day decisions aren’t aligning with what the leader said. Effective leaders make sure they have management team support before rolling out an initiative.
For a new strategy to have a chance of success, 75% or more of company management must be convinced that business as usual is not acceptable. Eager to move forward, leaders often misinterpret obligatory compliments and lack of resistance as buy-in, when in reality key managers silently disagree with the plan.
An unwillingness to face reality—People want to be challenged. But nothing de-motivates employees faster than being asked to play a game they believe they cannot win.
Be specific and demand accountability
Big picture messages and assumptions that people know what to do next seldom work. Effective communication gives people a clear understanding of what is expected of them, how they will be measured and how they will be held accountable. Without that specificity, the majority of people will sit back and assume someone else will shoulder the responsibility.
Conclusion: It’s worth the effort
Effective communication takes focus, planning and skill, but it is well worth the investment. Beyond capturing the hearts and minds of your people, communication has a direct impact on the bottom line. According to a study conducted by Watson Wyatt Worldwide, companies with the most effective communications see a 29.4% increase in market value, a 26% total return to shareholders (compared to -15% in the worst communicating companies), and employee turnover rates that are 50% below the worst communicating companies.
The author
Kimberly Paterson is a business and Certified Energy Leadership Coach. She can be reached at kpaterson@cim-co.com. |
