Your workplace is filled with liars! How do I know?
I’ve got this straight from one of the foremost authorities on body language in business, Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. Carol conducted an extensive survey to research her new book, The Truth About Lies in the Workplace (Berrett-Koehler).
Here are a few of the startling facts she uncovered:
- · 67% of workers don’t trust senior leadership
- · 53% said their immediate supervisor regularly lied to them
- · 51% believe their co-workers regularly lied
- · 53% admitted lying themselves
Lies and deception are running rampant in the workplace. Fortunately, Carol’s terrific new book explains in easy to understand language:
- · How to spot a liar and what to do about it
- · How men and women lie differently
- · How to deal with liars whether the liar is above, below, or on the same level as you
- · The one lie you better not tell your manager
- · How to NOT look like a liar when you’re telling the truth
- · Ways to foster candor and decrease deception in your organization
Carol’s advice applies whether the liar is a co-worker, boss, customer, prospect or board member. Her tips will help you defend yourself and your company from backstabbers, credit taking colleagues, lying bosses, gossips, and cheating job applicants.
I recommend that you read The Truth About Lies in the Workplace. When you order your copy now, you will also receive over $500 worth of career-building bonus gifts from Carol’s friends (including Communitelligence). And that’s no lie.
P.S. If you think you are too sharp to be taken in by a con man like Bernie Madoff, you had better read Chapter 3: Why We Believe Liars and How We Play Into Their Hands twice. Get your copy now.
… if I were hiring a “Universal PR professional” to guide strategic communications in 2013 and beyond, here are some of my best practice tips to shape that PR person’s role:
- Be proactive and don’t wait to be asked. Today, we are looking for people who will raise their hands to get involved. For example, with the development of a social media policy, training initiatives and governance (new responsibilities that require PR to participate). You should never wait for someone to give you the assignment, especially if you identify an area in your department or company that needs support. Propose new ideas, do the research, and offer your assistance. The initiative you take will make you stand out among all the rest.
- Start with good communication on the inside. Take the time to discover how to be more efficient and productive with your teams. Make suggestions beyond simply using email communication on how to finish your projects on time and under budget. Use social collaboration tools on the inside of your company for better internal communications and then take the time to educate your peers on new ways to work together to increase overall productivity.
- Test technology … always. Don’t be behind the curve, instead stay ahead for advancement. Be ready to answer those leadership questions asking “why” and “how” your brand should participate in new social communities. Take the time to “Tech Test” in different areas including collaborative platforms, applications, monitoring software, influence tools, etc., which will make you a more valuable asset to your organization.
- Listen to be heard and to be relevant. Gathering customer intelligence is the best way to internalize information and then use it to communicate with meaning, through offline and new media channels. Since I started in PR, I was always told to listen first to solve problems. This is much more apparent today, as a result of social media. By truly “listening,” we can help people and build stronger relationships with our constituents.
- You are always on! Social media doesn’t sleep, so your organization’s readiness is key. Creating the social media crisis plan (integrated into an overall crisis plan) requires knowledge and skills. It’s imperative for you to build a system that catches negative sentiment early on before it escalates, and to put processes and people in place for different levels of escalation through new media
Read full article by Deirdre Breakenridge on PR 2.0 Strategies
With his team, Saku Tuominen, founder and creative director at the Idealist Group in Finland, interviewed and followed 1,500 workers at Finnish and global firms to study how people feel and respond to issues in the workplace. Tuominen’s findings are easy to understand — 40 percent of those surveyed said their inboxes are out of control, 60 percent noted that they attend too many meetings, and 70 percent don’t plan their weeks in advance. Overall, employees said they lacked a sense of meaning, control, and achievement in the workplace. Sound familiar?
Based on the study and the insights of Teresa Amabile, a professor at Harvard Business School, Tuominen recommends new approaches to changing our work processes that all tap into our unconscious:
- Think about one question/idea that needs insight and keep this thought in your subconscious mind.
- Clear your conscious mind by using this two-step system: move your thought(s) from your mind to a list and then clear your list when you have a short break (if your meeting is canceled, for instance, or your flight is delayed).
- Plan your week and month by listing three priorities you would like to accomplish.
- Make certain you have at least four consecutive, uninterrupted hours a day dedicated to the three priorities you identified.
This last point is key. Tuominen deduced that if you can schedule four hours with continuous flow and concentration, you could accomplish a lot and improve the quality of your thinking. As Tuominen aptly states, “you can’t manage people if you can’t manage yourself.”
7. Spend time with time wasters.
The classic business plan imposes efficiency on an inefficient market. Where there is waste, there is opportunity. Dispatch the engineers, route around the problem, and boom—opportunity seized.
That’s a great way to make money, but it’s not necessarily a way to find the future. A better signal, perhaps, is to look at where people—individuals—are being consciously, deliberately, enthusiastically inefficient. In other words, where are they spending their precious time doing something that they don’t have to do? Where are they fiddling with tools, coining new lingo, swapping new techniques? That’s where culture is created. The classic example, of course, is the Homebrew Computer Club—the group of Silicon Valley hobbyists who traded circuits and advice in the 1970s, long before the actual utility of personal computers was evident. Out of this hacker collective grew the first portable PC and, most famously, Apple itself.
This same phenomenon—people playing—has spurred various industries, from videogames (thank you, game modders) to the social web (thank you, oversharers). Today, inspired dissipation is everywhere. The maker movement is merging bits with atoms, combining new tools (3-D printing) with old ones (soldering irons). The DIY bio crowd is using off-the-shelf techniques and bargain-basement lab equipment, along with a dose of PhD know-how, to put biology into garage lab experiments. And the Quantified Self movement is no longer just Bay Area self-tracking geeks. It has exploded into a worldwide phenomenon, as millions of people turn their daily lives into measurable experiments.
The phenomenon of hackathons, meanwhile, converts free time into a development platform. Hackathons harness the natural enthusiasm of code junkies, aim it at a target, and create a partylike competition atmosphere to make innovation fun. (And increasingly hackathons are drawing folks other than coders.) No doubt there will be more such eruptions of excitement, as the tools become easier, cheaper, and more available.
These rules don’t create the future, and they don’t guarantee success for those who use them. But they do give us a glimpse around the corner, a way to recognize that in this idea or that person, there might be something big.
I frequently post what my University of Maryland University College Students think are some of the better PR campaigns out there. Here are some nominees from my Fall 2006 class.
Cecelia McRobie likes the GE Ecomagination Challenge. She writes, “I do feel that is it a best practice based on its message, audience and purpose. The Ecomagination Challenge is a contest for college students. General Electric is asking students to submit ideas that would make their schools more environmentally responsible. The winner receives a $25,000 grant to complete the project, plus MTV will perform a concert at the winner’s school. Visit:http://www.ecocollegechallenge.com/
She continued: “I believe this is a best practice because it helps the environment while getting young people involved in making our world better. This is an attractive contest because it involves MTV and a monetary award. The title, ‘Ecomagination Challenge’ plays off of the GE slogan, ‘Imagination at Work.’”
Don’t you just love those Imagination at Work television commercials?!!
The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty has come up before. This time, student Mona Ferrell selected it as her favorite best practice. She wrote: “The Unilever-Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, launched by Edelman Public Relations Worldwide, was a rather extensive PR campaign focusing on body image. What made this campaign so successful and deserving of ‘benchmark’ status for me is that the company did not push its product with the typical statement of ‘if you use our product you will look more youthful.’ Instead, using multiple PR tactics, the campaign promoted ‘their products with a message of real beauty by encouraging women and girls to celebrate themselves as they are — while using the products, of course.” (Howard, T. USA Today, http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.co.nz/in-the-news/ad-campaign.asp)
“The television ads pushing the ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ theme used ‘real’ women, not models. Questionnaires were also devised asking women to write in and share their views on what makes them feel beautiful. Live discussion boards with this same theme were also set up so that ‘real’ women could talk to each other about beauty and self-acceptance. PRSA awarded Unilever-Dove and Edelman Public Relations Worldwide with the ‘Best of” Silver Anvil Award for 2006 for the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty. http://www.prsa.org/_Awards /silver/winners2006.asp”
Now, here’s a campaign that will wipe that smile off your face. It came from student Jaime Foisy and it’s about Charmin’ at the Fair. She wrote: “In my opinion the best way to advertise a product is to make it complement an event where it will get a lot of use, and is unexpected. Charmin’ did this at the San Diego Fair last summer. There we were at the fair and I kept seeing all these posters for Charmin’ toilet paper, but really thought nothing of it…until I had to use the restroom. So, there I was standing in front of the facility, dreading having to go in…As I walked in I was shocked! Sponsored by Charmin, these restrooms were immaculate! I could not believe it! … it got tons of publicity and goodwill among people of all ages and types.”
Natasha Lim highlighted Ultragrain Win: Proving Kids Love Whole Grains a Whole Lot
http://investor.conagrafoods.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=97518&p=irol-newsArticlebra &ID=731145&highlight=
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/prnewswire/2006/06/09/prnewswire200606091145PR_NEWS_ B_MAT_NY_NYF057.html
She wrote: “ConAgra Foods and their PR firm, Ketchum Public Relations, launched a Silver Anvil Award-winning PR campaign aimed at promoting whole grain foods in school cafeterias. ConAgra Foods is pushing products that boast ultragrain flour which offers more whole-grain nutrition with the white flour taste that a majority of kids prefer. According to a ConAgra Foods news release, ‘the new flour bakes and tastes like white flour, but has nine grams per serving of whole grains.’ The new U.S. Dietary Guidelines and the MyPyramid food guide recommend that Americans raise their whole grain intake from one serving to three servings daily. Currently only one out of 10 people get the recommended serving amount.
The two main food items that are being pushed in school cafeterias are: new wholegrain pizza products under a brand called “The Max” and wholegrain burrito products under the name “El eXtremo”. To ensure that schools sign the products on as part of their lunch menu, a PR campaign was launched that was geared toward school directors focusing on the School Nutrition Association Annual Conference that would help create a positive buzz, promote sales, and prove that kids would eat them.
“I think ConAgra Foods and Ketchum PR executed a good campaign. They made a smart decision to aim their ultragrain products toward the school systems’ cafeteria food. They knew that they could win their products over with school directors by promoting healthier food for kids. In recent years there has been push for kids to stop eating unhealthy junk food and to start eating things that are better for them, such as more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. This campaign supports this push for healthy eating by doing something about – putting healthy food products that kids will like on the school lunch menu. Their positive action is why this campaign works.”
Student Michelle Jones likes Energy Star. She wrote: “The ENERGY STAR public relations campaign is a great example of persuasive public relations. In fact, this particular campaign has several characteristics of an outstanding campaign. As background, the ENERGY STAR campaign (program) started in 1992 as a joint program between the Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy and was specifically designed to encourage everyone to “save money and protect the environment through energy efficient products and practices.” From this statement, it is apparent that this U.S. Environmental campaign had a very clear objective, which is essential when considering what makes an effective
campaign.
“In addition, this particular campaign had several creative components connected to it. The infamous logo that we have all seen on several products is an example of this creativity. In order for a product to be eligible for ‘the star’ the business or the company had to prove that their products would use less energy, save money, and help protect the environment. Throughout this ongoing campaign, several partners and relationships were also established. As a result of this approach, several reputable sources joined forces with ENERGY STAR.
“On top of having a clear objective and being very creative, ENERGY STAR does an excellent job with measuring its results. In fact, the ENERGY STAR web site reports that ‘Americans, with the help of ENERGY STAR, saved enough energy in 2005 alone to avoid greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those from 23
million cars — all while saving $12 billion on their utility bills.’” References: http://www.energystar.gov/
Public figures get in trouble all of the time and are then forced to apologize. Whether it is TV preachers who claim to know why God strikes some people down or Olympic athletes who brag about skiing while drunk, big shots are often forced into the role of the contrite. Few pull it off well, because they don’t seem to be sincere and they don’t seem to grasp why what they said or did it offended anyone.
Oprah Winfrey, once again, is in a class by herself. Not only is she only the world’s greatest talk show host, but she is a world class apologizer too. Winfrey suffered a rare ding to her public image when she promoted James Frey’s phony memoir “A Million Little Pieces.” She made matters much worse for herself when she defended Frey after he was exposed as a fraud. Winfrey called to defend him on the Larry King Show, saying the controversy was “much ado about nothing.”
What happened next was not the usual treatment for media darling Oprah. She was roundly denounced by columnists, pundits, editors and talk show hosts around the globe for essentially saying that “the truth doesn’t matter anymore.”
Oprah countered several days later on her show when she brought back disgraced author Frey and his publisher Nan Talese. Regarding Oprah’s call to King defending Frey, she said “I regret that phone call. I made a mistake and I left the impression that the truth does not matter and I am deeply sorry about that. That is not what I believe.”
Additionally, Winfrey said that she felt “duped” by Frey and she used the platform of her own TV show to rake Fry and his editor over the coals repeatedly.
So why was Oprah’s apology effective whereas as most politicians and public officials fail in their own apologies?
1. She said she was sorry and that she made a mistake. She didn’t sugar coat things or claim that she had “misspoken.” She didn’t apologize just for having offended people. She apologized because she had made a serious mistake.
2. Oprah didn’t try to minimize her sins. She showed she really understood why people were upset. She spelled out that her mistake was giving people the impression she didn’t care about the truth.
3. She seemed sincere. By spending so much time on her blunder and by giving airtime to her critics, Oprah seemed genuinely troubled by the course of events and sincerely sorry.
4. Oprah tried to take actions to correct the problems. She practically chopped off the fingers of Frey and his editor in order to keep them from writing and publishing again. This shows she takes the issue seriously and isn’t just doing a quick PR spin.
5. By apologizing to her viewers, admitting that her critics were right, and offering no defense for her actions, Oprah revealed herself emotionally to her fans and the world. She also left no other rational reason for anyone to be angry with her or to criticize her. Thus, the only logical reaction left from her audience was to give Oprah forgiveness.
That is a successful apology and that is yet another reason why Oprah is the queen of all media.
Yes, the technology for podcasting has never been easier. Microphones, editing equipment, mixers, the equipment keeps getting cheaper AND higher in quality. But the most important part of any podcast is the human quality. Namely, are the people talking saying anything interesting, and is their style tolerable?
More major corporations are starting to use podcasting technology to communicate with their most important customers and prospects around the globe. But once you start a podcast, there are a lot of tough questions to answer.
1. Do we try to write out an entire script for our executives to follow?
2. What is the best structure to use?
3. Do we have one person talking? Two? A group?
4. What is the best format?
5. Do we edit the show to make it sound more professional?
6. What is the best length of time for a podcast?
Here is how I advise my clients on these questions:
1.Never use a full-text script. Reading into a microphone is impossible to do well for the non-professional. If you give business execs a script to read they will be monotone and boring.
2.A simple one or ½ page piece of paper with an outline is the best thing for your executives to use as guidance through out the show.
3.It’s extremely difficult to have one person do a podcast effectively. Likewise, a group of people can be confusing and unwieldy. I recommend 2 people having a conversation.
4.The best format is to have two people talking together in a real conversation. Don’t have one person talk for five minutes going through a laundry list of topics and then switching to the other person talking for five minutes—that’s boring and sounds like a dry college lecture. Instead, have one person talk about one point for under a minute. Then, have the other person ask a follow up question on that subject. Then, the second person introduces his or her first point. The first person asks a follow up question and then the back and forth pattern can continue for the whole podcast, with no one person ever talking for more than a 40-50 second period without being interrupted by the other.
5.I don’t recommend editing the podcasts. If you let executives know the show will be edited, they will be less focused and prepared and will slip into bad habits. It will take less time for everyone if you record it live-to-tape (now digital).
The best length of time is whatever length it takes to cover your topics. It could be 90 seconds or it could be 25 minutes. Since you aren’t doing commercial radio with hard time breaks, your topics and content should dictate the length, not some artificial, pre-determined limit. Talk as long or short as you need to in order to communicate your messages.
“Less is More” may sound like a 70’s advertisement for a Volkswagen Beetle, but it really is the key to success for communicators who are speaking to live audiences or the news media. By “less” I don’t mean shorter or being more concise. “Less” means fewer message points.
The rule of thumb I use is this: try to communicate three message points in a media interview; five message points if it is a speech or presentation. If you try to communicate more than this (unless you are in a classroom with highly motivated students) you will fail.
If you doubt this then take this test:
1 – Write down every message point you remember from any one person you saw on the evening news last night.
2 – Write down every message point you remember from the best speaker you’ve seen in the last month.
It’s not easy, is it?
Here’s where the system breaks down in real life: Executives are harried and they don’t want to take the time to scrutinize their 60 message points and put them in priority, so they just dump all 60 points. Or, executives are afraid of looking “dumb” or “unprepared” so they attempt to show everyone how smart they are by covering 60 points.
Here’s the problem: It’s easy to “cover” 60 points in 20-30 minutes, but it’s impossible to “communicate” 60 points in that amount of time.
One of the most time consuming things I do in every presenting course I conduct with clients is have them brainstorm on all of their message points and then narrow them down to either three or five final points. Occasionally, this can be done in 5 minutes. The average amount of time is one hour. For one particular disorganized politician, I once had to spend 5 hours getting him to narrow his messages down to three.
But this is a critically important step—no matter how long it takes, take as much time as you need. Because if you don’t narrow your message down to the most essential points, you will not be effective in communicating anything. You can have perfect diction, great hand motions, fantastic eye contact and all the rest, but if you try to cover 60, 30 or even 20 message points, you will fail if you haven’t put your messages in priority and then eliminated any that don’t make your top five or three.
I know it takes time to prioritize your points and eliminate all but the top handful, but if you don’t take the time to do it, your audience won’t take the time to remember anything you say.
We all have people with whom we have to work to get things done. Our ability to communicate with clients, customers, subordinates, peers, and superiors can enhance our effectiveness or sabotage us. Many times, our verbal skills make the difference.
Here are 10 ways to increase your verbal efficacy at work:
There are many different styles of effective communication, but arguing with someone is typically the worst possible way to attempt to communicate. Once you enter the mode of arguing, listening shuts down by everyone in the argument.
Now, I’m the first one to admit it, I like arguing. In fact, for many years I was a TV and radio talk show host with a focus on politics. So yes, I argued for hours everyday. And I listened to a lot of people yelling and screaming at me on the air.
However, there is a difference between arguing on a talk show versus arguing with a boss, client, customer, friend or family member. If you or I argue on a TV or radio show, we might not convince the person we are arguing with, but we might convince the vast audience.
Back to real life: you don’t have an audience when you are arguing (unless you count your kids listening to you argue with your spouse). So it really never pays to have arguments in real (non-media) life.
You may have won high school or college debate competitions, you may be a successful courtroom lawyer, but arguing with people in real life will typically not result in you communicating your messages effectively. It will most likely make you hated — so don’t do it.
How can you avoid an argument?
If someone interrupts you, don’t interrupt back. If someone gets louder and angrier talking to you, don’t get louder back. Maintain your own conversational volume.
If someone makes several factual mistakes in a heated discussion with you, don’t revel in correcting every single fact. Instead, focus on something you agree on.
My goal is not to train you to let people walk all over you or to turn you into a bland yes-man/woman. There may be times when you want to argue with friends just for the fun of it – I know I do. Just make sure you aren’t fooling yourself into thinking you are actually communicating.
Of course you should state your opinions with confidence. Of course we all disagree with people from time to time; that is a normal course of human interaction.
But the second the person you are talking to feels that you two are in an argument, your ability to communicate messages has just dropped dramatically. So do whatever you can to lower the volume, temperature, cross talk and interruptions (not to mention name-calling) to insure maximum communication.
To all keyholders of the company spam cannon, before causing immense collateral damage by firing off emails that don’t fit with the lovely idea of your brand, follow these ten pointers and, with me at least, you’ll be guaranteed a pair of eyes.
Give me whitespace and time to think
My eyes often refuse to work. They close on the world of advertising and allow me to walk into the middle of roads without realising it.
Quora’s welcome email is an industrial eye-wash station and not only left me opthalmically refreshed, but gave me the most important information, and nought else.
Give me welcome emails (if you have to) and make sure their content is well-defined
Don’t send me continuous wishy-washy ‘your account’ emails, telling me how great your services are. I ain’t got the time, MAN.
Do like the FT and make each of your welcome mails distinctive. You can see from my inbox, the FT firstly welcomes me (manners); secondly, promotes its reports; thirdly, introduces market data services; fourthly, its blogs and multimedia; fifthly, its lifestyle section.
Give me your digits
I’ve opened your email, you’ve interested me with your content, but I don’t want to book online because I’m superstitious and will only buy something from men called Gareth. So do like Lastminute.com and give me a prominent phone number.
Read full article via Econsultancy: Digital Marketing Excellence
“Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.”
That quote, attributed to George Bernard Shaw, unduly portrays teachers as being better at telling others how to do something than knowing how to do it themselves.
Of course, not all teachers have failed at doing what they teach others to do. I’ve found this especially to be true of people who spend years toiling in a profession and then share their real-world experience and knowledge as college professors. As a mass communications major at Virginia Commonwealth University in the 1980s, I learned the most from people like Jack Hunter and Joan Deppa – teachers who had been or still were journalists and editors and who knew what we would face as reporters.
My mentor in corporate communications is Les Potter of Vienna, Va., who is somewhat of a legend in our profession. Potter’s career spans more than 30 years and includes positions in corporations, non-profits, huge consulting firms and his own practice. He’s traveled the world, helping to plant the seeds of strategic communication in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina. A former chairman of the International Association of Business Communicators, he has received its highest honor – IABC Fellow – and is always among the most popular speakers at its international conferences. It makes me tired to think about all this man has done – never mind that Potter has spent half of his life in a wheelchair due to an accident.
You would think a guy in Potter’s position would be content to sit back and bask in the glory of a job well done. But a couple of years ago, in his late 50s, he decided to take what he felt was the natural next step of his career. He became a visiting professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Towson University. That’s not all. He also began working on his doctorate in Instructional Technology at Towson.
Ask anyone who knows him – and that includes thousands of communication professionals around the world – and they’ll probably tell you Potter is the last person they’d think would need to go back to school. One of the things I admire most about him is his appetite for learning. Even as Potter has mentored me through the years, he always makes me feel as if he’s learning as much from me as I am learning from him.
Nothing illustrates Potter’s attitude toward learning better than the fact that, just last week, he created a blog: “More With Les” at lespotter001.wordpress.com . He didn’t join the multitude of bloggers because it’s the latest fad. He did it so he could learn the new social medium as a participant and then transfer his knowledge to his students.
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Read his reasons for blogging, which always appear on his blog’s home page:
1. To continue learning by blogging for current and former students and friends.
2. To help prepare my students for successful participation in the social media revolution (and me, too).
3. To enable my current and former students and friends to help me be a better instructor.
4. To connect current and former students with my incredible network of professional friends and colleagues, and vice versa.
I can think of no better reason to join the fray of new social media – and I can think of no better person to join it.
- YouTube Video made in a HAAGA-HELIA course to show the cultural differences in the workplace through gestures.
In the last issue of Inside Out (Proof for the profitability of engagement), I talked about what it takes to get employees engaged in systematic continuous improvement. I also cited recent research that proves the huge bottom line impact you can produce from doing it effectively.
After 15 years of benchmarking and refining a process that’s been used by several Baldrige Award winning companies, we’ve found that some of the “tried-and-true” principles for accomplishing that goal aren’t really so true after all. In fact, what actually works – what makes an improvement process a fully integrated system instead of a one-off activity – is somewhat counterintuitive.
“Bigger” isn’t always “better.”
One classic flaw in most suggestion programs is the emphasis on hitting “home runs.” It seems like it makes sense to focus on the big wins at first glance, but there are two problems with that notion. First, big things are hard to plan and implement, and not many employees are equipped to take them on. So it limits participation. Second, when employees get bigger incentives for bigger improvements, that’s where they tend to focus their attention – and they wind up walking right past hundreds of smaller ideas – the “base hits” – along the way.
The counterintuitive key is to set up the incentive structure to value every idea equally regardless of its size and impact. In our “Un-Suggestion System,” we use a random drawing to accomplish that goal. For every approved improvement that an employee implements (not just suggests), his or her name is entered once into a bi-weekly drawing. Depending on the size of the organization, approximately 10%-20% of the names are pulled each time. Importantly, the value of the awards is very modest – usually no more than $50 – regardless of whether the idea saved $100 or $10,000. The value of the award has absolutely nothing to do with the value of the improvement.
That approach works for several reasons:
- People aren’t wasting time trying to cost-justify a lot of small improvements that any well-trained supervisor can see right away will make things work better, faster, cheaper, cleaner, easier or safer.
- It keeps employees focused on the little things that they have control over.
- It emphasizes the intrinsic merits of the improvements and the inherent motivation that everyone has to make things work better rather than the “prize money.”
- In the end, the most motivating factor for employees is that someone is actually taking their ideas seriously, helping them get those ideas implemented, and thanking them for their contributions.
Committees aren’t close enough to the action.
If you want to make sure that employee suggestions get evaluated and implemented, set up a suggestion committee to review and approve everything – right? Wrong! Dilbert would have a field day with that notion. Setting aside all the jokes about committees in general, let’s look at how that process typically works.
An employee comes up with an improvement idea and submits a suggestion. After going to the supervisor and probably to a manager, the idea eventually works its way to the suggestion committee. That “team” gets together maybe once every month or so to review a slug of suggestions. Of course, they’re doing double-duty. Not only do they have their own jobs to do, now they have to take on another load. What’s more, they often don’t know much about the improvements that are being proposed, so they have to do some research. By the time they finally make a decision, it’s been weeks or even months. Employees lose interest, and they aren’t very motivated to submit additional ideas.
So what’s the alternative? Keep it local – focusing most decision-making where the improvements will be implemented. You make it the job of every supervisor to review, evaluate and approve or decline the vast majority of improvement ideas. You also make it the responsibility of employees to get their ideas implemented. If they need help from their supervisor or someone else, they can get it – but they “own” it.
Here’s another benefit of that approach. It bolsters the role of the supervisor as a coach. To optimize that role, supervisors need the right kind of skills, of course. They have to learn how to evaluate improvement ideas, lead process improvement meetings, encourage employee participation, help people get their ideas implemented and acknowledge them for their contributions. Those duties also need to be included in the supervisor’s job description and assessed as part of their performance reviews.
While the principles are basic, making the shift from a “suggestion program” to a more viable and vital “improvement system” is not easy or “intuitive” for most people. But when that system produces dramatically more implemented improvements than a traditional program, the rewards far outweigh the effort.
Les Landes, Landes & Associates
Buy Les’s webinar replay: Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement
When I was a kid, I really wanted to learn to play the piano. Weird, huh? Unfortunately, we couldn’t afford it, and the apartment was too small for one anyway. So when my youngest daughter decided she wanted to take lessons, I was thrilled. I couldn’t wait for her to become good enough to enjoy the music more than she dreaded the practice. That was three years ago when she was 10. Luckily, she was persistent – and I was patient. Now when she sits down to play, I stop whatever I’m doing to listen.
What Do You Mean, Dad?
The other day, she was playing something very moving, and I told her that when she plays, it makes my heart soar. She looked surprised and asked me, “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” I couldn’t believe the question, and I quickly assured her it was very good. “Then why does it hurt your heart?” she asked. That’s when I realized she thought I said her playing made my heart “sore.”
It was a vivid reminder of a lesson I learned years ago from my communication mentor, David Berlo – Meanings are in people, not in words or symbols. That lesson is obvious when it comes to homonyms like “sore” and “soar,” but it’s more subtle and complex in other forms of communication, and professional communicators need to be highly sensitive to all of its nuances in everything we do.
Align People’s Meanings – Inside and Out
That sensitivity is especially vital when it comes to aligning the meanings that people inside and outside the organization have for the words and symbols that organizations use to communicate. It’s common practice to do focus groups with customers to test promotional messages for interpretation and impact before rolling out a big advertising campaign. However, you rarely see the same attention given to assessing how employees inside the organization interpret those promotional words and symbols. What’s more, the implications are seldom considered for how employees need to perform in order to deliver on the promises being made in the marketplace.
Inside or out, with one person or many, here are some guidelines to help you avoid the “meanings trap”. . .
- Don’t ask what a word means – because IT doesn’t mean anything. Instead, ask what people mean by the words they use.
- Don’t assume people know what you mean when you tell them something or send out a message. Check to make sure they’ve interpreted it the way it was intended.
- Don’t ask people if they understand what you mean if you want to make sure they understand something important. Ask them to repeat what you’ve said until you’re satisfied you share the same meaning.
- Don’t expect to find common ground in a debate about the meaning of a word, but rather in a conversation committed to a common understanding of what is meant by the people using it. As the famed communication theorist, Marshall McLuhan, once said, “Propaganda ends where dialogue begins.”
- Les Landes, Landes & Associates
Buy Les’s webinar replay: Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement
My friend and colleague, Richard Barrett, wrote a book several years ago called “Liberating the Corporate Soul.” It’s exceptional on many levels, as I wrote in a review that is posted on Amazon.com. One remarkable quality about Richard’s book is how it is both wonderfully inspiring and technically rigorous. Marcello Palazzi, Co-Founder and Chair of the Progessio Foundation said that “Liberating the Corporate Soul achieves the impossible: it integrates the intangibles of ethics, vision, and consciousness into a tangible measurement system.”Much of Richard’s work is rooted in his experiences from when he worked at the World Bank. During his years there, he developed a strong conviction that the institution needed to focus more of its attention on the issue of human rights in its monetary policies and decision-making. Since he was a mid-level manager with limited influence, he decided that he would need to take a less conventional approach if he wanted to reach the ears – and hearts – of senior management.
Les Landes, Landes & Associates
Buy Les’s webinar replay: Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement
Stop and LISTEN. To be a successful communications professional means you are an exceptional listener. The more you listen, the more you learn. The less you listen, the less you learn.
When you consider the role of a communications professional, we better be doing a lot of real listening. We need to be aware of and understand the needs and goals of our internal clients and each employee audience subgroup — different generations, different functions, management vs. non-management, c-level and more.
From one-on-one meetings to interviews, focus groups to department meetings or townhall to board meetings, listening is key. So how much listening are you doing? Media guru Roger Ailes, author of You Are The Message, says people should strive to listen 60 to 70 percent of the time and talk 30 to 40 percent.
Here’s Roger Ailes’ tips for becoming a better listener:
- Relax and clear your mind so that you’re receptive to what’s being said.
- Never assume that you’ve heard correctly just because the first few words have taken you in a certain direction.
- Don’t overreact emotionally to speakers’ words or ideas, especially those that are contrary to your views.
- Before forming a conclusion, let the speaker complete his or her thoughts.
- Listen for intent as well as content.
- Try to listen without overanalyzing.
- Remember that human communication goes through three phases: reception (listening), processing (analyzing), and transmission (speaking).
- Being a good communicator is a natural skill for only a few people. Most of us have to work at being good communicators and learn to observe not only how we speak and listen, but also what kinds of unspoken messages we send to our colleagues.
My tip. The next time you meet with someone, make a mental note of how many times you’re silent. Remember, silence is golden.
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Great communicators employ many different skills as they pursue success. Many of us focus on continual improvement in the tactical skills that carry our role — particularly true early in one’s career. Later, leadership, analysis and relationship skills help us become trusted advisors and strategic contributors.
One of the most important skills we can employ is giving unsought counsel – having difficult conversations with executives and clients where you disagree or offer an alternate view from theirs. I recently found myself in such a situation. The client is a new client and we don’t know each other well. She and her team are very interested in intranet governance and social media.
It is my practice to review current business and communication goals and objectives to better understand what drives the organization. The communication goals and objectives in place in this client organization are not strategic, not focused on behavior, and not likely to successfully position communication as the trusted advisor it should be. They also aren’t contributing to a strategic view of communication that drives the business.
Improving intranet governance and using social technologies may result in some successes, but couched in a flawed communication strategy, these things won’t have near the impact they could if the communication strategy itself were sound. Can you say “time for a tough conversation”?
What this requires most is courage – courage to think along a different line, to be observant of issues for which we’re not responsible, to speak up without prompting or expectation. Courage is in short supply in communication circles.
The best thing you can do is to prepare. Ask yourself the right questions first, and you’ll be better able to deliver clear messages and ask appropriate questions of the client. Consider:
1. What’s my relationship with the person and how might the conversation affect that relationship?
2. What would be the outcome if I never have the conversation? Bad enough to warrant intervention?
3. What are the two messages on which I can focus to get at the heart of the matter?
4. What is the balance to those two messages that helps to persuade and also lighten the negativity?
5. What examples can I offer in support of my concern?
6. What questions can I ask to get the client thinking along my lines of thought?
7. What solutions will I offer?
8. How will I wrap up the discussion in a positive and productive way?
What other tips do you have for giving unsought counsel? Share those and examples of a time when you worked through such a situation successfully.
Stacy Wilson, ABC, is president of Eloquor Consulting, Inc., in Lakewood, Colorado
A client recently asked me if I had a tool that would help her track and collect measurement data during the course of a project. “Have you got a tool for that?”
It made me realize that when it comes to measurement we really harp on the planning skills. Which is crucial. But the collection, tracking, analysis and reporting are equally important. How many of us have planned our measurement, but never carried through?
So, here are some tips that will get your measurement skills up to speed across the entire measurement lifeline.
- Planning
- Target metrics that connect to business goals and prove communication success
- Find out what the organization is already collecting
- Determine the frequency of collection, approach of collection (e.g., survey, interview, electronic) and owner for each metric
- Collection and tracking
- Identify due dates for all the collection activity
- Determine all the collection logistics in advance so you don’t miss anything
- Automate what you can (e.g., invitations, reminders, electronic data reports)
- For longer-term efforts with multiple measurement points, document key data points and findings as they come in
- Analysis
- Identify the three most relevant findings
- Identify the most surprising finding
- Identify the findings that require additional follow up
- Categorize, count and analyze open-ended comments
- Consider the benefits of cross-tabulating some of your quantitative data
- Assess what worked well in the data collection process and what did not
- Reporting
- Understand the expectations and interests of the stakeholders to whom you are reporting
- Break out recommendations by short-term and long-term timing
- Identify those findings that best connect to goals
- Be realistic about how much you can present in the given time
- Determine which visuals and which words will be most useful to incorporate
- Identify the final call to action
- Anticipate questions and prepare a response
If you approach items two through four with the same diligence communicators typically approach item one, you’ll be more apt to follow through. And follow through means having more and better data, and more and better data means proving our value.
Proving our value through great measurement is one ingredient in the recipe for becoming a trusted advisor. Thinking strategically throughout the measurement lifeline is another. And, yes, we have tools for every step of the way.
Stacy Wilson, ABC, is president of Eloquor Consulting, Inc., in Lakewood, Colorado
As I prepare to head west for this year’s IABC World Conference and then east for the Communitelligence conference, I am thinking a lot about networking and follow up. At this stage of my career, networking is the main reason I attend conferences.
Networking also continues to be a primary reason people join associations and other groups and attend conferences. Yes, the programming is important and recognition of excellence is good. But, finding colleagues who know stuff – well, that’s the real prize.
Where I sometimes, like others, fall short is in the follow through. So, here are some tips for those of us heading off to conferences in the next few weeks.
- Get their business card – don’t rely on the other person to follow up with you to acquire their contact information
- Ask if they are using Twitter or LinkedIn or another networking tool where you can connect
- If you decide to add them to your contact list, add a note about where you met and what you discussed in that first meeting
- If you send them an invitation to connect from something like LinkedIn, customize the message – you won’t appear to have tried very hard if you use the default message alone
- If they are on Twitter, follow them for a while – maybe they’ll follow you back
- Send a personal note (handwritten is very nice but uncommon, making e-mail the preferred choice these days) about how much you enjoyed meeting them
- Include a link to an interesting article in your note
- If you committed when you met to call (“I’ll give you a call…”) then call – don’t commit and then bail out
- If you committed to follow up at some time in the future, put a tickler in your calendar so you don’t forget
Networking is important for communicators at every career stage. Obviously, right now it is really important if you’ve lost, or are at risk of losing, your job. But we should always be looking out for those new great connections. Always building our catalog of talent we can turn to in a pinch.
If you’re a consultant or independent, you know these chance meetings can turn into new clients. If you hire sub-contractors, that new acquaintance may be the next perfect person to add to your team. If you work in an organization, you might have just met your future boss, or a future co-worker, or a consultant who can help make your next project shine.
Last tip: never go anywhere without a couple of business cards in your pocket. I even hike with them.
Stacy Wilson, ABC, is president of Eloquor Consulting, Inc., in Lakewood, Colorado
Comments |
RE: Great networking is all about diligence |
Great comments! Agree that you should always have business cards on you. For example, in a casual conversation with one of the humans at the dog park, I learned that her best friend worked for Great Places to Work. At the time, I was wanting to connect with someone there. The dog bond, aided by a card, made it very easy! |
Posted on Sunday, Jun 07, 2009 – 05:58:00 AM CST lizguthridge |
Another thought |
One thing I should have added to this is that new contacts often turn into great resources of information. This just happened to me last week. A new contact turns out to have just the information I need for a client project. If it hadn’t been for all the networking last month at the Council of Communication Management conference, I wouldn’t have all the information I really wanted. Stacy |