Steven Covey had the right idea. There are discreet skills and attitudes, habits if you will, that can elevate your conflict practice to a new level. This article shares a selection of habits and attitudes that can transform a good conflict resolver into a highly effective one. By that I mean someone who facilitates productive, meaningful discussion between others that results in deeper self-awareness, mutual understanding and workable solutions.
I have used the term ‘conflict resolver’ intentionally to reienforce the idea that human resource professionals and managers are instrumental in ending disputes, regardless of whether they are also mediators. These conflict management techniques are life skills that are useful in whatever setting you find yourself. With these skills, you can create environments that are respectful, collaborative and conducive to problem-solving. And, you’ll teach your employees to be proactive, by modeling successful conflict management behaviors
Understand the Employee’s Needs
Since you’re the ‘go to person’ in your organization, it’s natural for you to jump right in to handle conflict. When an employee visits you to discuss a personality conflict, you assess a situation, determine the next steps and proceed until the problem is solved. But is that helpful?
When you take charge, the employee is relieved of his or her responsibility to find a solution. That leaves you to do the work around finding alternatives. And while you want to do what’s best for this person (and the organization), it’s important to ask what the employee wants first— whether it’s to vent, brainstorm solutions or get some coaching. Understand what the person entering your door wants by asking questions:
- · How can I be most helpful to you?
- · What are you hoping I will do?
- · What do you see my role as in this matter?
- Engage in Collaborative Listening
By now everyone has taken at least one active listening course so I won’t address the basic skills. Collaborative Listening takes those attending and discerning skills one step further. It recognizes that in listening each person has a job that supports the work of the other. The speaker’s job is to clearly express his or her thoughts, feelings and goals. The listener’s job is facilitating clarity; understanding and make the employee feel heard.
So what’s the difference? The distinction is acknowledgement. Your role is to help the employee gain a deeper understanding of her own interests and needs; to define concepts and words in a way that expresses her values (i.e. respect means something different to each one of us); and to make her feel acknowledged—someone sees things from her point of view.
Making an acknowledgement is tricky in corporate settings. Understandably, you want to help the employee but are mindful of the issues of corporate liability. You can acknowledge the employee even while safeguarding your company.
Simply put, acknowledgement does not mean agreement. It means letting the employee know that you can see how he got to his truth. It doesn’t mean taking sides with the employee or abandoning your corporate responsibilities. Acknowledgement can be the bridge across misperceptions. Engage in Collaborative Listening by:
- · Help the employee to explore and be clear about his interests and goals
- · Acknowledge her perspective
o I can see how you might see it that way.
o That must be difficult for you.
o I understand that you feel _______ about this.
- · Ask questions that probe for deeper understanding on both your parts:
o When you said x, what did you mean by that?
o If y happens, what’s significant about that for you?
o What am I missing in understanding this from your perspective?
- Be a Good Transmitter
Messages transmitted from one person to the next are very powerful. Sometimes people have to hear it ‘from the horse’s mouth’. Other times, you’ll have to be the transmitter of good thoughts and feelings. Pick up those ‘gems’, those positive messages that flow when employees feel safe and heard in mediation, and present them to the other employee. Your progress will improve.
We’re all human. You know how easy it is to hold a grudge, or assign blame. Sharing gems appropriately can help each employee begin to shift their perceptions of the situation, and more importantly, of each other. To deliver polished gems, try to:
- · Act soon after hearing the gem
- · Paraphrase accurately so the words aren’t distorted
- · Ask the listener if this is new information and if changes her stance
- · Avoid expecting the employees to visibly demonstrate a ‘shift in stance’ (it happens internally and on their timetable, not ours)
- Recognize Power
Power is a dominant factor in mediation that raises many questions: What is it? Who has it? How to do you balance power? Assumptions about who is the ‘powerful one’ are easy to make and sometimes wrong. Skillful conflict resolvers recognize power dynamics in conflicts and are mindful about how to authentically manage them. You can recognize power by being aware that:
- · Power is fluid and exchangeable
- · Employees possess power over the content and their process (think of employees concerns as the water flowing into and being held by the container)
- · Resolvers possess power over the mediation process ( their knowledge, wisdom, experience, and commitment form the container)
- · Your roles as an HR professional and resolver will have a significant impact on power dynamics
- Be Optimistic & Resilient
Agreeing to participate in mediation is an act of courage and hope. By participating, employees are conveying their belief in value of the relationship. They are also expressing their trust in you to be responsive to and supportive of our efforts. Employees may first communicate their anger, frustration, suffering, righteousness, regret, not their best hopes. You can inspire them to continue by being optimistic:
- · Be positive about your experiences with mediation
- · Hold their best wishes and hopes for the future
- · Encourage them to work towards their hopes
Be Resilient. Remember the last time you were stuck in a conflict? You probably replayed the conversation in your mind over and over, thinking about different endings and scolding yourself. Employees get stuck, too. In fact, employees can become so worn down and apathetic about their conflict, especially a long-standing dispute; they’d do anything to end it. Yes, even agree with each other prematurely. Don’t let them settle. Mediation is about each employee getting their interest met. Be resilient:
- · Be prepared to move yourself and the employees though productive and less productive cycles of the mediation
- · Help the employees see their movement and progress
- · Be mindful and appreciative of the hard work you all are doing
Hopefully, you’ve discovered that these are your own habits in one form or another and that your organization is benefiting from your knowledge. You can learn more about workplace mediation and mediation in general from these books and websites:
The Power of Mediation
Bringing Peace into the Room
Difficult Conversation: How to Say What Matters Most
http://www.ne-acr.org (The New England Association of Conflict Resolvers)
http://www.mediate.com (mediation portal site)
http://www.workwelltogether.com (conflict management toolkit)
“Mediation is based on a belief in the fundamental honesty of human beings. Which is another way of saying we all want to be treated justly – that is according to our unique situation and viewpoint on the world. And we cannot expect to be treated justly if we do not honestly reveal ourselves.” ~ the Honourable Neville Chamberlain, British Prime Minister 1937
Dina Beach Lynch, Esq. was formerly the Ombudsman for Fleet Bank and is currently CEO of WorkWellTogether.com, an online conflict management toolkit. Dina can be reached at Dina@workwelltogether.com
What do 2-year-olds and CEOs have in common? They should be asking lots of questions.
According to Peter Senge, asking good questions is one of the most effective ways to open our mind, be more present and learn from others.
When we ask good questions, we take an important first step to explore the uncertain.
The start of a new year—especially the start of a new decade and a tumultuous 2009—is an opportune time to consider the questions you and your leaders are asking.
From a leadership communications perspective, start asking questions about these three key categories: purpose, people and process.
Purpose Questions
- What’s our reason for being and are we still true to it? (As the Wall Street Journalist columnist Peggy Noonan wrote in Look Ahead with Stoicism—and Optimism, many institutions seemed to have forgotten their mission the last decade.)
- What’s the organization’s focus? In other words, how well do your 2010 plans and goals sync up with your mission?
- How well can your stakeholders articulate your mission? Do they know the organization’s priorities and their own? Do they need support from you?
People Questions
- How well are you and the leaders listening to your stakeholders? What insights are you gathering from customers, employees, partners, vendors and others?
- How well are the leaders connecting with employees and inspiring them? Do employees know what you expect of them? To what extent are they taking responsibility for what needs to be done, rather than sitting back and waiting on having the right authority? To what degree are employees anticipating customer needs?
- From the perspective of someone who’s helping leaders with their communication, where’s the leverage? How have you divvied up responsibilities? What are you delegating to each other? What’s the most efficient? What’s the most effective?
Process Questions
- What can you stop doing this year to save time and resources? You either want to stop it because it’s not effective; it’s wasteful or no longer valued. For example, are there standing meetings that have outlived their usefulness? Reports? Questions on surveys?
- What could be working better? Do you need to tweak ways you’re working? Are you using the measurement data you’re gathering to fine-tune your communication channels, messages and meetings? And when did you last consider whether you’re easy to work with or not? (For some ideas, read the article “Are you easy?” in the January issue of THE LEAN COMMUNICATOR™.)
- What do you need to start doing? Do you need to listen to more voices? Involve people more? Measure more relevant issues? Experiment more with social media?
These simple questions can start some very involved and thorny discussions. They also may expose some vulnerabilities in processes, people and purpose.
In fact, Senge says the mere act of asking difficult questions can show a sense of vulnerability, which is why leaders (but not 2-year-olds) are often reluctant to ask challenging questions that will ignite demanding conversations. Yet, these conversations are necessary to make sure you’re on the right track for 2010 and the rest of the teens.
Liz Guthridge is a consultant, author, and trainer specializing in strategic change communications. Department leaders of Fortune 1000 companies hire Liz and her firm Connect Consulting Group LLC when they need their people—who are confused, angry or in denial—to adopt complex new initiatives so they can quickly change the way they work. For more information, contact Liz, liz.guthridge@connectconsultinggroup.com or 510-527-1213. Follow Liz on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/lizguthridge.
At some date in the first months of 2010, women will cross the 50% threshold and become the majority of the American workforce. Females already make up the majority of university graduates in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries as well as the majority of professional workers in several rich countries, including the United States. And women already run many of the world’s great companies, from PepsiCo in America to Areva in France.
As a speaker at business conferences, I’ve addressed organizations around the world, and I’ve seen the genuine commitment that many companies have made to develop the leadership abilities of female employees and to create workplace environments with family-friendly policies and flexible work arrangements — all in hopes of attracting, retaining and grooming women for top management roles.
But despite this effort and this progress, far-too-many talented females, still bump their heads on a glass ceiling: Only 2% of the senior leaders of America’s largest companies and 5% of their peers in Britain are women.
In my book, “The Nonverbal Advantage: Secrets and Science of Body Language at Work,” I talk about the power of silent signals in the workplace. So I was fascinated to come across research that helps explain why even the best-intentioned efforts at developing women leaders are failing.
This is research that deals with emergent leadership in groups of equal status. And the findings have everything to do with body language.
Doré Butler and Florence Geis at the University of Delaware compared the nonverbal affect responses to male and female leaders and found that intellectual assertiveness by women in mixed-sex discussions elicits visible nonverbal cues of negative affect. Females taking a leadership role in the group received fewer pleased responses and more displeased responses from fellow group members than male leaders speaking up and offering the same input.
From earlier research, we know that displeased expressions by fellow group members
cause a leader’s contribution to be rated less valuable than the identical contribution when
embedded with cues of approval. So you can see how women’s ideas can be devalued
simply by receiving less positive and more negative responses than men’s contributions of
the same objective quality.
Here’s what can happen in a team meeting: A woman states her opinion. In response, negative nonverbal affect cues — frowns, head shakes, eye contact avoidance, etc. — are displayed, processed, and often mimicked by the entire group to produce a negative consensus about the value of her contribution. And all of this occurs without individuals on the team being aware of what’s happening.
At a time when conscious responses (direct answers on questionnaires, etc.) are becoming increasingly egalitarian, covert, unconscious responses still reflect discrimination against women taking a leadership role. Since hiring, salary, and promotion (especially to top leadership positions) often depend on being recognized as an emergent leader, this puts females at a distinct disadvantage.
Three key points:
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This was a study of leadership behaviors in peer groups. There is no evidence to suggest that women in formal leadership roles generate any greater negative (or less positive) emotional cues than do their male counterparts.
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This was not about men discounting the contribution of women. The groups in the study had an equal mix of male and female members.
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The power of nonverbal communication lies its unconscious nature — and bringing the covert into awareness can help nullify its effect. (So, circulate this article!)
So, if you want to groom women for top positions in your organization, keep doing those things that have proven to be helpful: Offer females the coaching, mentors, and career opportunities that develop leadership potential.
But, in addition, pay attention to your own body language. Employees look for and emulate the nonverbal signals they get from their bosses. Current leaders can help create a level playing field for emergent leaders by providing the same cues of positive affect (eye contact, smiling, nodding, leaning forward, etc.) when listening to women as they do when listening to men.
Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. is the author of nine books including CREATIVITY IN BUSINESS and “THIS ISN’T THE COMPANY I JOINED” — How to Lead in a Business Turned Upside Down. She delivers keynote speeches and seminars to association and business audiences around the world. For more information or to book Carol as a speaker at one of your events, please call: 510-526-1727, email: CGoman@CKG.com, or visit her website: http://www.CKG.com.
What other actions should you steer clear of on Fridays?
I’ve learned a few things about selling a house. I know, for instance, that much depends on timing (economic timing as well as the time of year you put the house on the market), and of course the mantra “location, location, location” is still paramount. I’ve also found out that a property needs “curb appeal.” That is, it needs to make a special, positive, and instant impression when prospective buyers first see it.
So when I read Drew Westen’s fabulous book, The Political Brain (about the role of emotion in politics), I wasn’t at all surprised to learn that curb appeal is also crucial in political campaigns.
Of course, Westen is referring to personal curb appeal. According to Westen, “One of the main determinants of electoral success,” he explains, “is simply a candidate’s curb appeal. Curb appeal is the feeling voters get when they ‘drive by’ a candidate a few times on television and form an emotional impression.”
Research shows that personal curb appeal can be assessed quickly. Psychologists Nalini Ambady and Bob Rosenthal conducted experiments involving what they called “thin slices of behavior.” These studies have been referenced in numerous writings – most famously, in Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Blink. In one such study, subjects watched a 30-second clip of college teachers at the beginning of a term and rated them on characteristics such as accepting, active, competent, and confident. The results were startling. Raters were able to accurately predict how students would evaluate those same teachers at the end of the course.
Personal curb appeal is also primarily a nonverbal process. When Ambady and Rosenthal turned off the audio portion of the teachers’ video clip, so that subjects had to rely only on body language cues, the accuracy of their 30-second predictions remained just as high.
How’s your personal curb appeal? When your co-workers, clients, and business partners “drive by” you, how do you come across? If you’d like to improve, here are five tips to keep in mind:
1) Dress for success.
Joyce is a successful educator and entrepreneur. One of the secrets of her success is the way she dresses. Even when traveling for a vacation, Joyce is in a business suit and heels. Her motto: “Wear great clothes. You never know whom you’ll meet!”
When it comes to curb appeal, the way you dress matters. A lot. Clothing has an effect on both the observer and the wearer. It has been proven that people are more likely to give money (charitable donations, tips) or information to someone if that person is well dressed. And, if you’d ever watched actors at their first dress rehearsal, you’d be convinced of the power of the right costume to powerfully impact what the wearer feels.
Dressing for success doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to wear a suit to work. Many organizations have a more casual dress code. But it does mean that whatever you wear should help you make the statement that you are a competent professional.
2) Maintain positive eye contact.
Eye contact is most effective when both parties feel its intensity is appropriate for the situation. This may differ with introverts/extroverts, men/women, or between different cultures. But, in general, greater eye contact — especially in intervals lasting four to five seconds –almost always leads to greater liking.
Looking at someone’s eyes transmits energy and indicates interest. As long as you are looking at me, I believe that I have your full attention. In my book, The Nonverbal Advantage: Secrets and Science of Body Language at Work, I offer a simple way to improve your likeability factor: Whenever you greet a business colleague, remember to look into her eyes long enough to notice what color they are.
3) Learn to speak the body language of inclusion.
Back-to-back doesn’t do it. But belly-to-belly – facing people directly when talking with them – does. Even a quarter turn away signals your lack of interest and makes the speaker shut down.
Remove barriers between you and the other person. Take away things that block your view. Move the phone or stacks of paper on your desk. Better still, come out from behind your desk and sit next to the person you’re dealing with.
Use palm-up hand gestures when speaking. Keeping your movements relaxed, using open arm gestures, and showing the palms of your hands — all are silent signals of credibility and candor. Individuals with open gestures are perceived more positively and are more persuasive than those with closed gestures (arms crossed, hands hidden or held close to the body, etc.).
Synchronize your body language to mirror your partner’s. Subtly match his stance, arm positions and facial expressions. You may not realize, by the way, that you do this naturally with people you genuinely like or agree with. It’s a way of nonverbally signaling that you are connected and engaged.
4. Use your head.
The next time you are in a conversation where you’re trying to encourage the other person to speak more, nod your head using clusters of three nods at regular intervals. Research shows that people will talk three to four times more than usual when the listener nods in this manner. You’ll be amazed at how this single nonverbal signal can trigger such a positive response.
Head tilting is another signal that you are interested and involved. As such, head tilts can be very positive cues when you want to send messages of empathy and understanding. But a tilted head is also subconsciously processed as a submission signal. (Dogs will tilt to show their necks in deference to a more dominant animal.) And in business negotiations with men, women – who tend to head-tilt the most – should keep their heads straight up in a more neutral position.
5) Activate your smile power.
A smile is an invitation, a sign of welcome. It says, “I’m friendly and approachable.” The human brain prefers happy faces, recognizing them more quickly than those with negative expressions. In fact, a smile is such an important signal to social interaction that it can be recognized from 300 feet — more than a football field away.
Most importantly, smiling directly influences how other people respond to you. When you smile at someone, they almost always smile in return. And, because facial expressions trigger corresponding feelings, the smile you get back actually changes that person’s emotional state in a positive way. This one simple act will instantly and powerfully increase your curb appeal.
Drew Westen found that, after party affiliation, the most important predictor of how people vote is their emotional reaction (gut feeling) toward the candidate. I found similar results in the work place. We all want to do business with and work for people who come across as friendly, trustworthy, competent, confident, and empathetic.
I can’t guarantee you’ll win a political election. But improve your curb appeal and I will guarantee that you’ll be more successful in your career.
Do you stay grounded in the basics when it comes to leadership communications?
The basics entail:
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Appreciating that information overload is a significant barrier to effective communication.
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Regularly using face-to-face as one of your channels.
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Being accountable, which involves measuring, adjusting and reassessing.
How can you tell if your organization is teetering toward disengagement?
Here are four common warning signs. None of them will surprise you, but perhaps you should remind yourself just how ominous they are.
If you notice even one, you should take action. If you don’t act, you will soon notice another one, and then another, and eventually all four.
Not in My Silo. Companies consist of divisions and departments. In the best organizations, these divisions and departments work together. There are lots of cross-functional efforts to resolve issues and develop new products and services. The “enemy” is understood to be the competition, not another part of the same company. In the worst organizations, the various divisions and departments keep to themselves and scorn one another. They never exchange best practices or collaborate on common challenges. The executives in one division or department may not trust or even know their counterparts elsewhere in the organization. So you hear blame and recrimination when you should hear camaraderie and collective good will. Most organizations are somewhere between the extremes. Which way you’re trending is an important indicator. When in doubt, ask the smokers who take breaks outside with smokers from other departments. They have the inside scoop.
The Proverbial Gorilla. Let’s say you are planning the agenda for an important management meeting. Everyone knows that a particular issue needs to be addressed. But no one is willing to say so. The planning proceeds apace, and the agenda gains final approval—without any mention of the critical issue. What you have here is fear and cynicism. No one wants to risk censure for speaking up, and no one expects anything to change anyway. So everyone just goes along. You can bet the issue will come up at the important management meeting. It just won’t be on the agenda, and it won’t have a microphone. It will be in the hallways, in whispers.
The Three Monkeys. Japanese folklore offers a wonderful metaphor for this common problem: the three wise monkeys who hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil. Similar to the Proverbial Gorilla, this phenomenon instead describes the reluctance of employees, supervisors, and middle managers to alert senior management to imminent delays and problems, until it is too late to do anything about them. Research shows that almost everyone is aware of a pending issue of some sort, but few people have the courage and confidence to speak up. Management that “shoots the messenger” is usually why.
The Naked Emperor. We all remember the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale about the emperor who buys new clothes from swindlers who sell him such fancy silk that only the smartest and wisest people can see it. Of course the emperor is embarrassed to admit, even to himself, that he cannot see the fabric. So he proceeds to dress in his new “suit,” and he goes out in public stark naked. No one dares tell him he is naked, save a little boy who is too innocent to know better. If, as a manager at any level, you do not have relationships of candor and honesty, you risk walking naked in public. At the very least, you need someone to tell you the truth about your leadership. If you have no one, get a coach and listen to her or him. Above all, don’t shoot the messenger!
There are others, but in most organizations with engagement issues, these four are the most common. The good news is you can see them plainly. The tough part is turning things around.
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Thomas Lee has been benchmarking best-practice companies in organizational communication for almost 15 years. To date he has personally benchmarked almost 30 leading American corporations, including 3M, Motorola, Hewlett-Packard, DuPont, Weyerhaeuser, Levi-Strauss, McDonald’s, Shell Exploration, Duke Energy, and many others.
Everyone is familiar with corporate culture. But you may be surprised to learn that, less than a generation ago, it was unheard of. Indeed, the concept was initially controversial.
Companies resisted the notion they were about anything more than their numbers.
Terrence Deal and Allan Kennedy introduced the term in their trailblazing 1982 book, Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life. Since then, companies have come to compete on culture as much as on goods and services. You see it whenever a company touts its ranking on the Best Places to Work list.
Sociologists define culture as the totality of attitudes and behaviors that distinguish one group of people from another. In business, culture is commonly regarded as “the way we do things around here.”
There are profound cultural differences between Google and Microsoft, between Toyota and General Motors, between Southwest Airlines and Delta Air Lines, between Nordstrom and Macy’s, between Bank of America and Chase Bank. The list could go on.
Now just as cultures vary from company to company, so do cultures vary within a single company. Each corporate culture consists of many smaller subcultures. The closer you look at subcultures, the more variability you see.
For example, in any one company, you may notice cultural differences between headquarters personnel and field representatives, between the engineering geeks and the marketing mavens, between salaried staff and hourly workers, between the day shift and the night shift, between manufacturing and sales, and so forth.
All these fault lines reflect the priorities and sensitivities of various perspectives, owing to the divergent circumstances, backgrounds, and values of people.
Another kind of subculture, equally important, gets too little attention. It reflects particular processes, such as quality or planning. Of special importance to me is the culture around communication of business issues and information.
By culture of communication, I mean the tendency of people throughout a company to share information, ideas and their intuition on business matters in a particular way. It is less about the flow of official information and more about the countless decentralized eddies of information converging and diverging throughout a company.
Ideally, any company’s culture of communication would have as its hallmarks eight descriptors that just coincidentally begin with the same letter: clear, credible, compelling, constructive, continuous, collaborative, civil, and concise. That’s a tall order, but it’s mightily important to a company’s success.
You can easily think of examples, for better and for worse. A worst-case scenario might involve the proverbial Mushroom Theory, keeping employees in the dark and feeding them–well, you get the idea. A best-case scenario would embrace employees as intellectual partners in the enterprise, whose thinking is integral to the company’s success. You can see just how critical communication is to performance.
Here are 17 diagnostic questions that a company’s leadership should ask itself to get a quick fix on its communication culture:
- Do people share business information quickly and eagerly, slowly and reluctantly, or not at all? How does management set the right tone for this?
- Are most supervisors addressing performance issues as they arise, in a spirit of support and improvement, or pushing aside the uncomfortable issues and beating around the bush? What is the core message there?
- How well do senior executives rise to the challenge of sharing a vision, of conveying news about the marketplace and competition, of inspiring camaraderie and performance through the ranks? Is it a claim on their time?
- How often do employees learn of substantive developments through the grapevine or by viewing a local TV newscast? How do they feel when they do?
- What kinds of misconceptions are contaminating the truth of the company and its future as perceived by key stakeholders? How does management inadvertently contribute to the rumor mill?
- When supervisors and managers realize a deadline will be missed or a budget exceeded, how long do they sit on the information before the inevitable occurs?
- To what extent do hourly employees feel genuinely empowered to offer suggestions for improving a process? What is management’s reaction on hearing suggestions?
- How does “street” intelligence picked up by ground-level workers make its way to senior management, if at all? Is it valued? How many levels must it pass through? Is it still coherent by the time it gets to the top, if it ever gets there?
- Do the company’s publications and intranet sites have an unrealistic optimism, the narrative equivalent of a graphical hockey stick?
- Does the organization rely on cascading important strategic information down through the ranks one level at a time? How much information ultimately gets through?
- On introducing a new initiative or program, does senior management think through the day-to-day implications on rank-and-file employees? How does it convey those implications and expectations?
- Is proprietary information shared with employees or kept close to management’s chest? How often are employees reminded that, in the parlance of the home front in wartime, “Loose lips sink ships”?
- Does the company convey information about its competitors? Is the attitude toward competitors one of respect or hostility?
- Are decisions, visible behaviors, a spirit of collaboration, and other informal tools of communication managed as communication? Or are they left as an afterthought and allowed to interfere with strategic messaging?
- Do middle managers hoard information that would be of strategic use to subordinates or peers?
- How much infighting is there between departments? Do they withhold information in attempts to embarrass one another? Is there a tendency to elevate minor issues?
- Finally, what kinds of communication are just completely unmanaged and thereby allowed to send unintentional messages? Don’t settle for your own point of view as a response to these questions. Challenge yourself. Get a cross-section of employees together over pizza at lunch time and go through these questions one-by-one. I’m betting the discussion will cast a spotlight on some critical problems.
Then, treat the revelations as a diagnostic. Do something about them. And for a change, tell your people what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, how you yourself are committed to change, when they can expect to see the difference, and how they can hold you accountable.
The sooner you pick apart your culture of communication, the sooner you can use it to gain a competitive advantage that your rivals are ignoring.
Liz Guthridge is a consultant, author, and trainer specializing in strategic change communications. Department leaders of Fortune 1000 companies hire Liz and her firm Connect Consulting Group LLC when they need their people—who are confused, angry or in denial—to adopt complex new initiatives so they can quickly change the way they work. For more information, contact Liz, liz.guthridge@connectconsultinggroup.com or 510-527-1213. Follow Liz on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/lizguthridge.
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For text messages on cell phones between co-workers, let them decide what to do. Yes, this may be AYOR (At Your Own Risk) behavior, but is it worth the time to be the TMA (Too Many Acronyms) police?
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For email and other communication though—especially messages to customers, vendors and others outside the organization, drop the jargon and abbreviations.
This applies to company-specific acronyms that are totally undecipherable. (Would you translate “CHR” as “Contact HR”? One of my clients uses that acronym regularly in its merger communications. Not exactly welcoming to their newly-acquired employees.)
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For any type of recognition or appreciation, use language and gestures that the individuals you’re acknowledging welcome. For example, having KUTGW (Keep up the good work)show up as a text message or email doesn’t seem warm, friendly or motivational to this curmudgeon.
Clearly, there are basic ‘hygiene’ factors that companies need from their comms people: strong written/verbal skills; excellent conversational and presentation skills; an eye for design; awareness of communication technology trends and corresponding audience reach strategies.
However, a good PRO will always stand out on a number of more complex, intuitive and leadership levels and I would proffer the following attributes:
1) Acts as strategic and trusted advisor to the leadership team (including the CEO, CFO and commercial and functional heads); contributes with authority to strategic corporate discussion and works on his/her track record to be viewed as a contributing equal;
2) Through accumulated insight and marketplace persceptiveness, may be in a truly unique position within any organisation to ‘Bring the Outside World’ in to corporate thinking, ensuring sound future governance and guiding strategies that help protect any company’s future ‘Licence to Operate’ in the open, global marketplace;
3) Is an astute and credible diplomat, able to navigate elegantly through all layers and across all organisational silos to inform, to encourage collaborative thinking and to galvanise operational solutions to any issues or opportunities faced by a company in its public and employee dealings;
4) Intuitively understands and bridges the interdependency between internal and external reputation and has astute command of the theory and tools/practice of its delivery;
What attributes would you add to this list?
Too many years ago to confess, my high-school English teacher thought I had a few things to learn about respect. I still remember her dismay when I submitted an assignment one afternoon. Instead of gently handing an essay to her, I dropped it on her desk. That was bad enough, but she thought I had thrown it at her.
In retrospect, perhaps I didn’t quite drop it. Perhaps I tossed it. Perhaps I even tossed it with a dramatic, self-important flourish. All right, perhaps I did throw it—but to her, not at her. After all, these things are a matter of perspective.
Some weeks later, in a simple act of leadership for which I never properly expressed my appreciation, she made sure I didn’t carry this adolescent arrogance off to college. Days before graduation, she presented me with a wry verse by the Eighteenth Century Scottish poet Robert Burns, and she asked me to think about it:
O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us
An foolish notion:
What airs in dress an gait wad lea’es us,
An ev’n devotion!
Originally written in Scot two hundred years ago, the verse requires translation today. It laments the fact that you can never presume to know how others view you. You cannot objectively size up yourself, for your character cannot stand before a mirror that doesn’t lie. The measure that other people take of you is theirs alone to determine. Often, it is theirs alone to know.
The bard of Scotland is musing: Oh, for the power of God to see ourselves as other people see us! It would save us from so many blunders, in the way we appear and the way we behave!
We Are the Persons We Are Perceived to Be
His lesson is ever truer amid the superficiality and spin of the early Twenty-first Century. You can try to polish your image—your personal brand, as the new vernacular has it—but ultimately you cannot control it. It is always for others to judge, often by caprice, and always by criteria of their choosing.
Whatever excuses or reasons that you use to justify your behavior and decisions—however altruistic you regard yourself, however honorable, however noble—others are entirely free to discount. They can look at you and easily substitute a low common denominator of self-interest. They can assume that, from the first moment to the last and every moment between, you are looking out only for yourself.
From there, it is a small step to the next question: whether, and to what extent, they perceive your self-interest to be compatible with their own self-interest. If they determine it is not, then the possibility of a leadership connection is slim. You can talk yourself hoarse, but they will not be receptive to your message. As leaders, you are most unlikely to reach them. Moreover, their cynicism can spread like cancer. It can threaten your leadership of others. Change can become impossible.
Conversely, if they find some common ground with you, then the possibility of leadership remains real. You can march forward together. But the common ground is essential.
Recognizing this, a wise leader goes out of his way to accommodate the concerns of all stakeholders. In business, that requires looking beyond the single-minded goal of creating wealth for investors. It requires showing real, not merely rhetorical, appreciation and respect for the importance of the work that every person does and could do, anywhere in the organization, and for the needs and interests of all customers, for the growth and well-being of employees and their families (and of vendors and their families), and for the long-term viability of the organization itself.
Pay Yourself a Dividend
Together, this balance beam of concerns is a continuing reflection of the integrity—the wholeness, the oneness—of the enterprise itself. It is inclusive. It appreciates and embraces everyone’s vital interests. Companies that lose sight of this balance have usually paid a costly price—up to and including market erosion, bargaining representation, technology decline, and tarnished brands.
Tilt this way, and investors are happy over the short term, but quality erodes, employees disengage, and customers wander. Tilt that way, and employees grow complacent while investors revolt and customers defect. Tilt yet another way, and process dominates, but you can miss the jump on an opportunity, a new market or a new technology. Balance is critical but precarious.
It is here, at this intersection of perspectives and interests, where we find a leader’s informal voice: explicit and implicit communication between leaders and followers that shapes their essential relationship, if they are to have one. It is both verbal and non-verbal. Some of it is deliberate and calculated. Much of it, alas, is inadvertent and even careless. Almost all of it is subject to interpretation and perception, which depends as much on what people already believe as on what they actually see and hear.
Its impact can be completely at odds with its intent. It is fraught with peril. At first, it will seem difficult to manage. But it carries enormous potential for leadership. In any case, while it can be neglected, it cannot be silenced. It will speak. It will be heard. So it is important that you manage the informal voice. Otherwise, it will manage you.
Look Back Over Your Relationships
To appreciate its importance, think over the relationships you have had with a boss. Go back over all the jobs you have had. Begin with the part-time jobs you had as a teenager: taking orders and giving change at a local McDonald’s. Continue on to your present position: giving orders and taking charge as a manager. Single out the best relationships with a boss you ever had, and single out the worst. Think about the ones between.
Quickly you will recognize that every relationship with a boss fell somewhere on a continuum of mutual respect, mutual dignity, mutual trust, mutual dependence, and mutual concern—each a part of the chemistry, a part of the fabric, of relationships.
The best relationships were endowed with high levels of respect, dignity, trust, dependence, and concern by both of you. You hated to see these relationships come to an end. The worst were just the opposite: low levels of respect, dignity, trust, dependence, and concern for each other. You probably couldn’t wait to move on. Furthermore, in the hardship of those difficult relationships, you and your boss probably went to some lengths to conceal your real thoughts. Unless and until you talk it through, as the Scotsman so poetically bemoaned, you can never know exactly how another person truly views you and your relationship. Oh, wad some Power.
Now take this analysis one more step. Ask yourself what determines someone’s perception of relational vigor, especially across the boss’s desk. What do we hear and see and feel that tells us whether a relationship is good or bad, warm or cold, cooperative or competitive, improving or deteriorating?
Chances are your list will come pretty close to ours. On the basis of numerous focus group and discussions in workshops at large corporations, we have identified many such determinants. Each consists of something that managers either say or do, either proactively or reactively. It is often a pattern that reveals deep-seated preferences and priorities.
Together, these are the components of what we term the informal voice. All these determinants offer particular opportunity for nurturing the relationship and therefore leadership. But they need to be managed. To be managed, they must first be seen, acknowledged, and appreciated. Unless and until you see them, you cannot manage them.
Thomas Lee has been benchmarking best-practice companies in organizational communication for almost 15 years. To date he has personally benchmarked almost 30 leading American corporations, including 3M, Motorola, Hewlett-Packard, DuPont, Weyerhaeuser, Levi-Strauss, McDonald’s, Shell Exploration, Duke Energy, and many others.
1. Reduce the power distance between executives and employees. Coach your leaders to tone down their position of power and all the trappings when they meet with frontline managers, employees and other individuals who are low on the pecking order. This means dressing appropriately, talking genuinely without jargon, and taking time to listen carefully. Also, choose meeting spaces and seating arrangements that put everyone at ease, rather than show off the leaders as the royalty in the room. These details will help encourage a conversation rather than an “expert to idiots” speech.
2. Tell stories. Stories are another effective way to humanize leaders and share critical messages. Stories, especially those rich with believable characters, a plot, location, action, props and a moral, are memorable. They appeal to our emotions, not just our logic, and inspire us. They also connect us to each other, our shared mission and our values. If your leaders aren’t great story tellers, help them or get them help. (One article to start is Filmmaker Peter Gruber’s The Four Truths of the Storyteller, Harvard Business Review, December 2007.) And advise your leaders to listen to others’ stories too; don’t do all the talking.
3. Experiment with multi-media. When your leaders can’t be upfront and personal with stakeholders, at least get their image and voice out there. The digital revolution has made video production and audio casts so much simpler. At the IABC World Conference 2009, speaker after speaker either showed or talked about leaders doing low-production but high impact short videos and podcasts (3-5 minutes). To be effective, your leader doesn’t have to be using every media; just the ones he or she are willing to try.
Most leaders agree that effective collaboration is more important than ever in today’s turbulent business environment. In a “do-more-with-less” reality, it takes ongoing teamwork to produce innovative, cost effective and targeted products and services. In fact, a company’s very survival may depend on how well it can combine the potential of its people and the quality of the information they possess with their ability (and willingness) to share that knowledge throughout the organization.
But here’s the problem . . .
The collaboration that is so critical to organizations is being blocked by knowledge-hoarding silo structures and the accompanying “silo mentality” that has become synonymous with power struggles, lack of cooperation, and loss of productivity.
So what’s to be done? Here, from A to Z, are my most successful strategies, based on 25 years of helping clients around the world tear down silos, reduce conflicts, and increase collaboration.
A. Find ways to ACKNOWLEDGE collaborative contributors. Recognize and promote people who learn, teach and share. And penalize those who do not. In all best-practices companies, those hoarding knowledge and failing to build on ideas of others face visible and serious career consequences. In those top companies, employees who share knowledge, teach, mentor, and work across departmental boundaries are recognized and rewarded.
B. Watch your BODY LANGUAGE. All leaders express enthusiasm, warmth, and confidence — as well as arrogance, indifference, and displeasure through their expressions, gestures, touch, and use of space. If leaders want to be perceived as credible and collaborative, they need to make sure that their verbal messages are supported (not sabotaged) by their nonverbal signals.
C. Focus on the CUSTOMER. Nothing is more important in an organization – whether it’s a for-profit company or a non-profit group – than staying close to the end user of the service or product you offer and encouraging feedback and 2-way dialogue. When you build collaborative relationships with your customers, you give them power and investment in your organization’s success.
D. DIVERSITY is crucial to harnessing the full power of collaboration. Experiments at the University of Michigan found that, when challenged with a difficult problem, groups composed of highly adept members performed worse than groups whose members had varying levels of skill and knowledge. The reason for this seemingly odd outcome has to do with the power of diverse thinking. Group members who think alike or are trained in similar disciplines with similar knowledge bases run the risk of becoming insular in their ideas. Instead of exploring alternatives, a confirmation bias takes over and members tend to reinforce one another’s predisposition. Diversity causes people to consider perspectives and possibilities that would otherwise be ignored.
E. ELIMINATE the barriers to a free flow of ideas. Everyone has knowledge that is important to someone else, and you never know whose input is going to become an essential part of the solution. When insights and opinions are ridiculed, criticized or ignored, people feel threatened and “punished” for contributing. They typically react by withdrawing from the conversation. Conversely, when people are free to ask “dumb” questions, challenge the status quo, and offer novel–even bizarre–suggestions, then sharing knowledge becomes a collaborative process of blending diverse opinion, expertise and perspectives.
F. To enhance collaboration, analyze and learn from FAILURE. Leading innovators like Apple see their failures as being as insightful as their successes. The goal is not to eliminate all errors, but to analyze mistakes in order to create systems that more quickly detect and correct mistakes before they become fatal.
G. Collaboration takes GUIDANCE by managers who know how to harness the energies and talents of others while keeping their own egos in check. Successful organizations require leaders at all levels who manage through positive influence and inclusion rather than by position.
H. Eliminate HOARDING by challenging the “knowledge is power” attitude. Knowledge is no longer a commodity like gold, which holds (or increases) it’s worth over time. It’s more like milk – fluid, evolving, and stamped with an expiration date. And, by the way, there is nothing less powerful than hanging on to knowledge whose time has expired.
I. Focus on INNOVATION. Creativity is triggered by a cross-pollination of ideas. It is in the combination and collision of ideas that creative breakthroughs most often occur. When an organization focuses on innovation, it does so by bringing together people with different backgrounds, perspectives, and expertise – breaking down barriers and silos in the process.
J. JOIN the social media revolution and utilize Web 2.0 technologies – tools and processes that allow people to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives in order to collaborate and to self-organize.
K. Realize that there are two kinds of KNOWLEDGE in your organization: Explicit knowledge can be transferred in a document or entered in a database. Tacit knowledge needs a conversation, a story, a relationship. Make sure you are developing strategies to capture both.
L. LEADERS at all levels of an organization can nurture collaboration within their own work group or staff. And the most successful of these leaders do so by taking the time and effort necessary to make people feel safe and valued. They emphasize people’s strengths while encouraging the sharing of mistakes and lessons learned. They set clear expectations for outcomes and clarify individual roles. They help all members recognize what each of them brings to the team. They model openness, vulnerability and honesty. They tell stories of group successes and personal challenges. And most of all, they encourage and respect everyone’s contribution.
M. MIX it up by rotating personnel in various jobs and departments around the organization, by creating cross-functional teams, and by inviting managers from other areas of the organization to attend (or lead) your team meetings.
N. Employees with multiple NETWORKS throughout the organization facilitate collaboration. You can accelerate the flow of knowledge and information across boundaries by encouraging workplace relationships and communities. Use a tool like Social Network Analysis (SNA) to create a visual model of current networks so you can reinforce the connections and help fill the gaps.
O. Insist on OPEN and transparent communication. In an organization, the way information is handled determines whether it becomes an obstacle to or an enabler of collaboration. Employees today need access to information at any time. From any place.
P. Collaboration is a PARTNERSHIP. As one savvy leader put it, “To make collaboration work, you’ve got to treat people the way you want to be treated. It’s pretty simple, really. Treat all employees as your partners. Because they are.”
Q. Ask the right QUESTIONS. At the beginning of a project, ask: What information/knowledge do we need? Who are the experts? Who in the organization has done this before – do we have this on a database? Who else will need to know what we learn? How do we plan to share/hand off what we learn?
R. The success of any organization or team – its creativity, productivity, and effectiveness – hinges on the strength of the RELATIONSHIPS of its members. Collaboration is enhanced when employees get to know one another as individuals. So when you hold offsite retreats, organization-wide celebrations, or workplace events, be sure to provide opportunities for “social” time and personal relationships. Taking time to build this “social capital” at the beginning of a project will also increase the effectiveness of a team later on.
S. Collaboration is communicated best through STORIES – of successes, failures, opportunities, challenges, and knowledge accumulated through experience. Find those stories throughout your organization. Record them. Share them.
T. TRUST is the foundation for collaboration. It is the conduit through which knowledge flows. Without trust, an organization loses its emotional “glue.” In a culture of suspicion people withhold information, hide behind psychological walls, and withdraw from participation. If you want to create a networked organization, the first and most crucial step is to build a culture of trust.
U. Combating silo mentality requires UNIFYING goals. Business unit leaders must understand the overarching goals of the total organization and the importance of working in concert with other areas to achieve those crucial strategic objectives.
V. The incentive to collaborate is the VALUE of the exchange to both the organization and the individual. When the assets and benefits of productive collaboration are made visible, silos begin to break down.
W. Your WORKPLACE layout encourages or impedes the way the organization communicates. To facilitate knowledge sharing, you need to create environments that stimulate both arranged and chance encounters. Attractive break-out areas, coffee bars, comfortable cafeteria chairs, even wide landings on staircases – all of these increase the likelihood that employees will meet and linger to talk.
X. Take a tip from XEROX. It discovered that real learning doesn’t take place in the classroom – or in any formal setting. In fact, people were found to learn more from comparing experiences in the hallways than from reading the company’s official manuals, going online to a knowledge repository, or attending training sessions.
Y. Collaboration is crucial for YOUR success. We’re witnessing the death of “The Lone Ranger” leadership model, where one person comes in with all the answers to save the day. We now know that no leader, regardless of how brilliant and talented, is smarter than the collective genius of the workforce.
Z. Forget about reaching the ZENITH. Collaborative cultures are learning cultures – and knowledge sharing is an ongoing process, not an end point.
Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. is the author of nine books including CREATIVITY IN BUSINESS and “THIS ISN’T THE COMPANY I JOINED” — How to Lead in a Business Turned Upside Down. She delivers keynote speeches and seminars to association and business audiences around the world. For more information or to book Carol as a speaker at one of your events, please call: 510-526-1727, email: CGoman@CKG.com, or visit her website: http://www.CKG.com.
I once enjoyed a lengthy conversation with the legendary Bill Veeck. Baseball fans will recall Veeck as the colorful, outspoken and innovative owner of several baseball teams, most notably the Chicago White Sox. But as a young man he also planted the ivy that now greens the outfield wall at Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs, and he supervised construction of Wrigley Field’s historic, manually operated scoreboard, still in use today.
A World War II veteran, Veeck had been standing in the wrong place when an artillery piece backfired and crushed his leg. His foot had to be amputated, and then eventually most of his leg was taken, too. Perhaps because of that experience, he always had a special feel for the underdog. And because of that, he was forever going out of his way to spend time talking with Everyman. Bill Veeck was a man who knew the pulse of people.
At the time of our conversation, Veeck owned the White Sox, who had just finished a successful year. Veeck wanted me to know he was grateful for all the fans who supported the South Side team. He promised that the Sox would go all the way next year. They would bring home a pennant, he predicted, and maybe even win the World Series.
But that afternoon he wanted to talk not about baseball, but about something else altogether. Always a maverick, he was preoccupied with a cultural problem. He was worried about bigness, about the loss of identity, about the impersonal distance between individuals and institutions throughout the land.
Ever a mischief-maker, he suggested that people should rebel. He was urging anyone who would listen to protest in ways little and large. Black out account numbers on forms you returned, he recommended. Insist on being known by your name. He even suggested that people should fill out every magazine subscription card with the name of Chris Columbus and the address of his statue in Grant Park, just to force publishers to mail magazines to nowhere.
Most of the work I do is for big companies, whose very bigness is part of the problem they face. It creates distance between customers and the companies, and it creates distance between the executives who run these companies and the workers who actually create value for customers.
That distance erodes the substance and richness of information and insight that one person can transfer to another person and vice versa. Thus people throughout these large companies make and execute policy without the benefit of full knowledge and wisdom of their own circumstances and challenges. As one wit shrewdly observed: “If only we knew what we know!”
Of course, there are solutions, and they can save many times the cost of their implementation. But identifying the situations and bringing the resources to bear on those situations requires a little leap of faith. Especially in times like these, that leap may be the difference between growth and stagnation, perhaps even between survival and collapse.
Bill Veeck took many such leaps during his long and glorious career, and they paid off magnificently. He was able to take those leaps precisely because he refused to wile away his days in an office. He was always out and about, walking on one leg and talking with the people who could and would support his teams. Because he was constantly reaching out to people, he knew their dreams and frustrations, and he had a pretty good sense for what would work in the end.
The moral to this story, apropos to every leader, is that an open door is never enough. You can never count on others to take the first step toward dynamic, candid communication. You must get out there and do it yourself. And once you find someone who will muster the moxie to speak truth to you, have the wisdom and the courage to be quiet and listen.
The bigger your organization, the more difficult that is. And the bigger your organization, the more important it is, too.
Thomas Lee has been benchmarking best-practice companies in organizational communication for almost 15 years. To date he has personally benchmarked almost 30 leading American corporations, including 3M, Motorola, Hewlett-Packard, DuPont, Weyerhaeuser, Levi-Strauss, McDonald’s, Shell Exploration, Duke Energy, and many others.
Supreme Court Justice David Souter is retiring and President Obama is looking for a nominee who has, among other qualifications, “empathy for ordinary Americans.” I assume that the president has his own definition of empathy, but in my programs on “The Nonverbal Advantage,” I use the term to describe the human ability to internalize the emotional state of others by simply observing or mirroring their body language.
We are hard-wired to connect with others. The brain’s mirror neuron system gives us the ability to create an image of the internal state of another person’s mind. The moment you see an emotion expressed on someone’s face – or read it in her gestures or posture – you subconsciously place yourself in the other person’s “mental shoes,” and begin to sense that same emotion within yourself.
And notice what happens naturally the next time you are talking with someone you like or are interested in. You’ll find that you and your partner have subconsciously switched body postures to match one another – mirroring nonverbal behavior and thereby signaling that you are connected and engaged. A recent research study observed two different teachers as they taught students. One used mirroring, the other did not. The students’ reactions were substantially more positive toward the teacher using mirroring techniques. They believed that teacher was much more successful, friendly, and appealing.
There are other forms of behavioral congruence in which people imitate each other without realizing it. Interactional synchronizing occurs when people move at the same time in the same way, simultaneously picking up coffee cups or starting to speak at the same time. This often occurs when we are getting along well with another person, and it can feel as though we are “on the same wavelength.” In fact, synchronizing is once again the result of our subliminal monitoring of, and responding to, each other’s nonverbal cues.
One executive told me that in a negotiation session he often mirrors the posture of the person he’s dealing with. He noticed that doing so gives him a better sense of what the other person is experiencing. I’ve noticed this as well. Our bodies and emotions are so closely linked that by assuming another person’s posture, you are not only gaining rapport, but are actually able to “get a feel” for his or her frame of mind.
In his book, On Becoming a Person, psychologist Carl Rogers wrote, “Real communication occurs when we listen with understanding – to see the idea and attitude from the other person’s point of view, to sense how it feels to them, to achieve their frame of reference in regard to the thing they are talking about.”
Reaching that goal of real communication — of understanding, of empathy — this is why nonverbal literacy is so crucial to our profession relationships.
Thomas Lee has been benchmarking best-practice companies in organizational communication for almost 15 years. To date he has personally benchmarked almost 30 leading American corporations, including 3M, Motorola, Hewlett-Packard, DuPont, Weyerhaeuser, Levi-Strauss, McDonald’s, Shell Exploration, Duke Energy, and many others.
Have you read The Authentic Enterprise, the 2007 Arthur W. Page Society white paper? (Well at least skimmed its 60 pages, although there is now an executive summary.) In my book, this report is required reading for communication pros and leaders.
Even though the report’s substantive research is more than two years old now, the report packs a punch. This was evident at the CCM (Council of Communication Management) Conference the end of April when Maril MacDonald of the consulting firm Gagen MacDonald and the president of the Arthur W. Page Society spoke to an attentive audience. Her topic was “The New Public Relations Agenda and Architects of Change” using the report as a foundation.
While I had read the report when it first came out, I was interested in hearing Maril talk about it in context of our current “reset” environment. (Yes, this is another way to say our work world has changed dramatically.) Her call to action for communication professionals is even more compelling now, especially since stakeholders are demanding proof of authenticity rather than authority.
Maril said we should consider ourselves “architects of change.” In this role, we should “drive the business, galvanize the organization, and embed new thinking and behaviors.”
In a more concrete manner, Maril identified four areas in which we must assert leadership: 1) defining and activating values; 2) building and managing multi-stakeholder relationships; 3) enabling the enterprise with “new media” skills and tools; and 4) building and managing trust.
These new areas of concentration combined with our new role require us to shift our mindset (and actions) from “informing and reporting to influencing and leading.” Or as Mary Boone likes to say, we must move from “tell and sell” to “ask and engage.”
To do well though, we need to operate with a common understanding of authenticity. From the report’s perspective, the authentic enterprise “is grounded in a sure sense of what defines it (mission, values, principles and beliefs.” Those definitions must dictate consistent behaviors and actions.
Seth Godin takes this one step further for individuals. He says authenticity is “doing what you promise, not being who you are. And since individuals make up organizations, this is sage advice.
So how can authentic communication pros best serve leaders and their organizations to be authentic? Here are five steps for starters:
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Help leaders live up to their commitments.
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Advise them against making promises that may be hard to keep. To paraphrase the incoming IABC Chairman Mark Schumann, “thinking (and talking big) while acting small” poses problems for credibility.
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Role model authenticity yourself, including speaking, writing and acting with concreteness, simplicity and candor.
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Gather feedback to ensure stakeholders perceive you and your leaders as talking your walk and fulfilling your commitments.
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Reflect regularly on how you’re doing and make adjustments.
Remember, it’s hard to be good in a bad world so aim for progress not perfection. But the payoff for being authentic can be priceless, especially from piece of mind and worthy achievements.
What are you doing these days to be authentic?
Liz Guthridge is a consultant, author, and trainer specializing in strategic change communications. Department leaders of Fortune 1000 companies hire Liz and her firm Connect Consulting Group LLC when they need their people—who are confused, angry or in denial—to adopt complex new initiatives so they can quickly change the way they work. For more information, contact Liz, liz.guthridge@connectconsultinggroup.com or 510-527-1213. Follow Liz on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/lizguthridge.
2. Help them find their voice. Leaders tend to be action-oriented rather than comtemplative. Yet, when a leader takes on a new role, you should take time with him or her to consider both the “what” and “how” of communications. What should the first actions be? And how does he or she want to be perceived? When talking? When listening? When working with others?
3. Find forums that fit their style and the times. Discover your leader’s comfort zone and plan settings and events around that. For instance, a high-tech company recently overhauled its town halls when its Rock Star CEO retired. The new CEO would be more comfortable in a library or lab than on stage. So the Town Halls have turned into Q&A sessions with the CEO sharing the platform with his leadership team.
What tips and tricks do you use that you can share?
Ever have the feeling things are moving so fast you don’t have time to even make a proper introduction?
That has certainly been the case with the new Communications Leadership Community. Carol Kinsey Goman, who has been a leader on the community since it was formed, has now been joined by three new leaders, each coming to the topic from different vantage points, and with a wealth of career experience.
The distinguished leaders of Communication Leadership are:
- Carol Kinsey Goman, President, Kinsey Consulting Services
- Liz Guthridge, founder and managing consultant of Connect Consulting Group LLC
- Sharon Wamble-King, VP, Corporate Communication, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida
- Tom Lee, founder and president of Arceil Leadership Ltd
The four leaders will serve as the eyes and ears for the topic of communication leadership, and will be blogging on trends and issues they see as critical to success. They are also willing to answer any questions you might have, so post your comments or questions on the blog.
As one more way of getting to know each, we’ve asked them to answer this timely question:
What advice do you have for corporate communicators charged with helping their upper management stay on the same sheet when conveying difficult financial outlook to stakeholders?
Here are their answers. Can you add to their thoughts?
Liz Guthridge, founder and managing consultant of Connect Consulting Group LLC:
Follow the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDMA) cycle by W. Edwards Deming. Although the model’s origins are in fixing problems, especially process improvements, it’s well suited for this situation. Why? The leaders—and you as their guide—need to be disciplined in deciding what to say and do, and then being consistent as individuals and as a group. Also, how you say and do things is almost as important as the what.
Without this disciplined approach, you could contribute to the chaos. Keep in mind that you’ve got multiple leaders who have their own point-of-views, varied experiences, and different levels of financial expertise. You’re working in unchartered territory in terms of the volatile world economy. And add to the mix: you’ve got anxious, fearful and hesitant stakeholders.
Your leaders must be on the same page working in concert. They also must collaborate to help restore the confidence of employees, customers, investors, and other key stakeholders. Even if the financial news continues to be bad, they have to keep our hopes alive. Everyone’s hard—and smart work—will turn things around in the future. We all need to be looking up at the stars and dreaming realistically while we’re feeling down in the dumps.
Carol Kinsey Goman, President, Kinsey Consulting Services
Make sure that leaders communicate with their audiences face-go-face. Here’s why . . .In face-to-face meetings, our brains process the continual cascade of nonverbal cues that we use as the basis for building trust and professional intimacy. We interpret what people say to us only partially from the words they use. We get most of the message (and all of the emotional nuance behind the words) from vocal tone, pacing, facial expressions and body language.We may have spent years learning to read and write with various levels of mastery, but no one had to teach us to send and respond to nonverbal signals. In fact our brains need and expect these more primitive and significant channels of information. According to Dr. Thomas Lewis, an expert on the psychobiology of emotions, when we are denied these interpersonal cues and are forced to rely on the printed word alone, the brain struggles and real communication suffers.
Think of it this way: Technology may be a great facilitator for factual information, but when your communication has any emotional charge, a face-to-face meeting is still your best choice. It’s the only way that others can note the alignment of your verbal and nonverbal messages and be convinced that your motives match your rhetoric.
Comment:
Liz and Carol make solid points. Because I deal with CEOs and CFOs of public companies who more often are faced with the issue of sharing bad financial news, here are three strategies that have worked with them: 1. Limit the number of spokespeople. While you can create talking points and Q&As and distribute them to everyone, you still can’t control what an executive says when an equity analyst or reporter calls out of the blue. It helps to have a policy in place for people to send the caller back to Corporate Communications, Investor Relations, or the CEO’s of CFO’s office. And if possible–when the spokesperson isn’t you–ensure that the information shared on those calls also is shared with you, so you know what’s now in the public domain (and if you need to take any action as a result). 2. Rehearse your spokespeople. We all know the perils of “winging it.” Unfortunately, some executives are very facile and don’t think they need to practice–or say they don’t have the time to do this. Be persistent–or insistent. And know when you can’t carry the message yourself (because a CEO doesn’t want to be critiqued by someone who reports to him, for example). Suggest speaker training or a consultant who can help, so he doesn’t feel uncomfortable. Do whatever works. 3. Share the results. When executives see that the coverage the company is receiving is fair and the messages that appear are consistent, they will support the approach you’re advocating. On the flip side, if your organization has a scattered approach now, use the less than stellar results as a lever to change behavior. There’s no motivator like a falling stock price or a bad article or TV interview to get people to take a new (better!) tack.
Lynn Franklin
Human beings are genetically programmed to look for facial and behavioral cues and to quickly understand their meaning. We see someone gesture and automatically make a judgment about the intention of that gesture.
And we’ve been doing this for a long, long time. As a species we knew how to win friends and influence people – or avoid/placate/confront those we couldn’t befriend – long before we knew how to use words.
But our ancient ancestors faced threats and challenges very different from those we confront in today’s modern society. Life is more complex now, with layers of social restrictions and nuanced meanings adding to the intricacies of our interpersonal dealings. This is especially true in workplace settings, where corporate culture adds it own complexities and unique guidelines for correct behavior.
No matter what the culture at your workplace, the ability to “read” nonverbal signals can provide some significant advantages in the way you deal with people. You can start to gain those advantages by avoiding these five common mistakes people often make when reading body language:
1) They forget to consider the context.
Imagine this scene: It’s a freezing-cold winter evening with a light snow falling and a north wind blowing. You see a woman sitting on a bench at a bus stop. Her head is down, her eyes are tightly closed and she’s hunched over, shivering slightly, and hugging herself.
Now the scene changes . . .
It’s the same woman in the same physical position. But instead of sitting outdoors on a bench, she’s seated behind her desk in the office next to yours. Her body language is identical – head down, eyes closed, hunched over, shivering, hugging herself. The nonverbal signals are the same but the new setting has altered your perception of those signals. In a flash she’s gone from telling you, “I’m really cold!” to “I’m in distress.”
Obviously, then, the meaning of nonverbal communication changes as the context changes. We can’t begin to understand someone’s behavior without considering the circumstances under which the behavior occurred.
2) They try to find meaning in a single gesture.
Nonverbal cues occur in what is called a “gesture cluster” – a group of movements, postures and actions that reinforce a common point. A single gesture can have several meanings or mean nothing at all (sometimes a cigar is just a cigar), but when you couple that single gesture with other nonverbal signals, the meaning becomes clearer.
For example, a person may cross her arms for any number of reasons. But when that action is coupled with a scowl, a headshake, and legs turned away from you, you now have a composite picture and reinforcement to conclude that she is resistant to whatever you just proposed.
3) They are too focused on what’s being said.
If you only hear what people are saying, you’ll miss what they really mean.
A manager I was coaching appeared calm and reasonable as she listed the reasons why she should delegate more responsibility to her staff. But every time she expressed these opinions, she also (almost imperceptibly) shuddered. While her words declared her intention of empowering employees, the quick, involuntary shudder was saying loud and clear, “I really don’t want to do this!”
4) They don’t know a person’s baseline.
You need to know how a person normally behaves so that you can spot meaningful deviations.
Here’s what can happen when you don’t: A few years ago, I was giving a presentation to the CEO of a financial services company, outlining a speech I was scheduled to deliver to his leadership team the next day. And it wasn’t going well.
Our meeting lasted almost an hour, and through that entire time the CEO sat at the conference table with his arms tightly crossed. He didn’t once smile, lean forward or nod encouragement. When I finished, he said thank you (without making eye contact) and left the room.
As I’m a body language expert, I was sure that his nonverbal communication was telling me that my speaking engagement would be canceled. But when I walked to the elevator, the executive’s assistant came to tell me how impressed her boss had been with my presentation. I was shocked and asked how he would have reacted had he not liked it. “Oh,” said the assistant, her smile acknowledging that she had previously seen that reaction as well. “He would have gotten up in the middle of your presentation and walked out!”
The only nonverbal signals that I had received from that CEO were ones I judged to be negative. What I didn’t realize was that, for this individual, this was normal behavior.
5) They judge body language through the bias of their own culture:
When we talk about culture, we’re generally talking about a set of shared values that a group of people holds. And while some of a culture’s values are taught explicitly, most of them are absorbed subconsciously – at a very early age. Such values affect how members of the group think and act and, more importantly, the kind of criteria by which they judge others. Cultural meanings render some nonverbal behaviors as normal and right and others as strange or wrong. From greetings to hand gestures to the use of space and touch, what’s proper and correct in one culture may be ineffective – or even offensive – in another.
For example, in North America, the correct way to wave hello and good-bye is palm out, fingers extended, with the hand moving side to side. That same gesture means “no” throughout Mediterranean Europe and Latin America. In Peru it means “come here,” and in Greece, where it’s called the moutza, the gesture is a serious insult. The closer the hand to the other person’s face, in fact, the more threatening it is considered to be.
So just remember: Body language cues are undeniable. But to accurately decode them, they need to be understood in context, viewed in clusters, evaluated in relation to what is being said, assessed for consistency, and filtered for cultural influences. If you do so, you’ll be well on your way to gaining the nonverbal advantage!
Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. is the author of nine books including CREATIVITY IN BUSINESS and “THIS ISN’T THE COMPANY I JOINED” — How to Lead in a Business Turned Upside Down. She delivers keynote speeches and seminars to association and business audiences around the world. For more information or to book Carol as a speaker at one of your events, please call: 510-526-1727, email: CGoman@CKG.com, or visit her website: http://www.CKG.com.