Throwing chairs, tossing zingers and misusing the English language are probably not the best tactics to ensure your message is heard
If you want people to hear what you have to say, give them something worth listening to.
Sounds simple, right? If that’s the case, why does effectively communicating a viewpoint seem to be such a lost art these days?
We are living in the age of Jerry Springer, the TV talk-show host who delights in chair-throwing, bleep-inducing confrontations between people who need serious sedation and anger-management training. Not surprisingly, this kind of in-your-face entertainment has spilled over to more “serious” news programs on formerly respectable networks.
Look at what’s happening. There’s the weird rant of Tom Cruise in a “Today” show interview (which really wasn’t news except that Cruise apparently invented a new meaning for the word “glib”). There’s the printed gripe session in my hometown newspaper in which the same five people seem to be bickering endlessly. There are town-hall meetings – both in the public arena and in company auditoriums all over America – in which the greatest applause is reserved for the person who tosses the best zinger. And now there are blogs, online journals where freedom of expression is pushed to the extreme (I can’t wait for the inevitable tests of this freedom in future court cases).
As someone who makes a living out of trying to help people communicate effectively, all of this is frequently disheartening. As the volume increases, it is more difficult to hear what people are really trying to say.
Listening to different viewpoints is fun. I learn a lot from hearing people talk about what is important to them. Businesses can learn and grow, too, by listening to employees, customers, suppliers and other important groups. But good information gets lost when it’s wrapped in anything that detracts from the message.
Here are some ways to make sure your message isn’t lost:
Know how to use the language. For some people, all the rules of grammar and spelling are enough to cause hyperventilation. (I feel the same way about math.) But let’s face it: communication depends on knowing how to use the tools correctly. If you’re writing a letter to the editor, committing a grammatical error like “your an idiot” will detract from your message. There is little excuse for poor grammar and misspelling in these days of dictionaries and computerized spell-check.
Don’t let pure emotion take over. It is OK to be emotional when speaking on a subject about which you feel strongly. But when emotion is so strong that it overpowers the message, your audience will remember the outburst and forget what brought it on.
Keep your message simple. Whether you are speaking or writing, the person on the other end will remember only so much. (Think about how much information overload you have in your own life.) Rather than drift off into a half-dozen tangents, stick to the central message you want your audience to remember.
Keep your sense of humor. Humor is a wonderful weapon for defusing tense situations. Use it carefully, however, and aim it mostly toward yourself. Be willing to recognize when someone else is attempting to use humor and don’t take yourself so seriously.
Kill them with kindness. You can attract more bees with honey than you can with vinegar. My career has included a fair amount of communicating strong opinions, but I learned long ago that you can be opinionated and kind at the same time.
Why do we think of so many great ideas in the shower?
Four conditions are generally in play:
- Our brain is relatively quiet with minimal electrical activity.
- We’re internally focused, letting our mind wander rather than being stimulated by external activity, such as digital screens.
- We’re in a positive mindset.
- We’re not directly working on any problems, especially work challenges.
As Dr. David Rock explained in his book Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long, it’s not the water that helps you get insights. It’s that you break the impasse in the way you’ve been thinking.
You’re lathering up while your subconscious brain works in the background. It taps into your stored memories and experiences and connects neurons in new ways for you.
And all of a sudden—as it seems to your conscious brain that has been taking a break from logical thinking—you have that “aha” moment. You’ve reached a great insight! (This is multi-tasking in a powerful, efficient way!)
Now contrast your experiences like this in the shower with what frequently happens at work.
Your prefrontal cortex—commonly referred to as the “executive function” of your brain—is often on overload. You’re trying to juggle a number of thoughts, you’re keeping an eye on your phone as well as the room you’re in, you’re listening to colleagues talking over one another, you all are on deadline to solve a new problem creatively, and you’re anxious about it and several other topics, especially since your boss just scared you about the consequences of last quarter’s performance on your department’s budget. Oh, and you’re hungry.
No wonder that only 10% say they do their best thinking at work, according to David.
What can you do to improve your focus and your thinking at work?
Short of constructing a shower in your cube, start small with some tiny steps.
First embrace the concept of “will, skill and hill.”
The “will” refers to your motivation to take control of your mind and thoughts. In other words, resolve not to play the victim, letting yourself and your thoughts be hijacked by others. Granted this is easier said than done; however, if you’re willing to become more mindful and more self-aware about what distracts you, you’ve taken a large leap forward.
The “skill” is to learn and adopt new behaviors that will help you clear your mind, improve your focus and think more creatively. Consider starting with Tiny Habits®,the innovative program designed by Dr. BJ Fogg.
This past week, as a certified Tiny Habits® coach I coached people in a pilot program of Tiny Habits for Work. We designed many of these habits to improve mindfulness, productivity and satisfaction with work.
For example, some effective Tiny Habits for Work are taking three deep breaths, affirming what a great day it will be and walking around the office.
“Hill” is all about taking steps in your environment to reduce or remove the barriers so you can get over the hill that’s in your way and be more productive. You may not be able to shrink a mountain into a mole hill, but you should be able to start building a path that’s easier to go across.
How can you set yourself up for success to think more clearly and creatively?
Some ideas that work for others include: Set an alarm so you’ll take breaks every 60 minutes or so to stretch or even better, walk outdoors. Keep a file of cartoons that will make you laugh. Have flowers on your desk. (Or walk to the reception area and smell the flowers.) Spend a few minutes doodling or drawing.
Next, you need to experiment to find out what works best for you.
To help you do so, join me for the webinar Stop Your Stinking Thinking: 7 Ways To Use Neuroscience To Sharpen Your Mind and Be a More Powerful Communicator and Leader on Wednesday, May 21 at 12 noon ET (9 am Central). The webinar sponsor Communitelligence is offering $50 off when you use the code connect50. Many of the ideas I’ll talk about on the webinar will help you improve your focus and your thinking as well as be more influential.
By the way, if you’re interested in diving into some of the research on this topic, check out the work of Dr. Mark Beeman at Northwestern University who’s an expert on the neuroscience of insights. Also look at the research of Dr. Stellan Ohlsson at the University of Illinois who studies the “impasse experience.”
Meanwhile, if you want any help becoming a “showerhead,” contact me. Who says showerheads should be limited to devices that control the spray of water in a shower?
Showerheads also can be those of us who think creatively in and out of the shower. What do you think?
By Liz Guthridge, Connect Consulting Group LLC
As anyone who has crammed for an exam can tell you, usually the number of hours we work without interruption is inversely proportionate to how much we accomplish. So how do these entrepreneurs manage to work so many hours without suffering from brain fatigue?
Well, first of all, it is because they truly love being an entrepreneur and are passionate about their enterprise. But, I believe, part of the answer is that they wear so many hats. They never get stuck doing the same kind of work for too long.
Here are some more brain-based tips that can work wonders and could be what helps propel entrepreneurs forward:
1. Buy a good office chair, or get a standing desk.
Focal Upright Furniture has a brand-new chair-and-desk combination on the market. Invented by Martin Keen, of Keen shoes fame, it uses a position between sitting and standing, and allows lots of movement as you work. It also helps those who use it remain attentive.
2. Do not multitask.
John Medina, author of Brain Rules, tells us the brain cannot multitask, period. What it does do is switch back and forth between tasks very quickly. Someone whose attention is interrupted not only takes 50% longer to accomplish a task but also makes up to 50% more errors. A study in The New England Journal of Medicine found that people who talk on the cell phone while driving are four times more likely to have an accident, because it isn’t possible to devote your full attention to both driving and talking at the same time. Hands-free calling offered no advantage. What’s the lesson to take away? Focus on one task at a time, and you’ll accomplish each better and faster–without killing anybody.
3. Use all your senses.
Work is more entertaining for your brain–and therefore makes you more alert–when you engage as many of your senses as possible. Use colored paper and pens. Experiment with peppermint, lemon, or cinnamon aromatherapy. Try playing background music.
4. Don’t make too many decisions in one day.
It sounds farfetched, but if you go shopping in the morning, then negotiate yourself out of eating a cookie at lunch, and finally try to decide between two job offers that afternoon, you might choose the wrong job because you didn’t eat the cookie, according to Scientific American. Making choices depletes your reserves of executive function, or “the mental system involved in abstract thinking, planning, and focusing on one thing instead of another.” This can adversely affect decisions you make later.
5. Take a quick break every 20 minutes.
A study in the journal Cognition reveals that people can maintain their focus or “vigilance” much longer when their brains are given something else to think about every 20 minutes. That’s the time when thinking becomes less efficient. This trick is called momentary deactivation. If your mind isn’t as sharp after a long period of work, it may not be completely fatigued. It just needs to focus on something else to refresh the specific neural network you’ve been using.
6. Work with your own circadian rhythms.
Are you an early bird or a night owl? Do you fade every afternoon, or is that when you are strongest? Don’t schedule an important meeting at a time when you will be operating on one cylinder. And don’t waste your peak work time at a doctor’s appointment.
7. Relax for 10 minutes every 90 minutes.
When you’re awake, your brain cycles from higher alertness (busy beta waves) to lower alertness (alpha waves) every 90 minutes. At that point, you become less able to focus, think clearly, or see the big picture. You know the signals: You feel restless, hungry, and sleepy, and reach for a coffee. Herbert Benson of Harvard, author of The Relaxation Response, recommends working to the point where you stop feeling productive and start feeling stressed. At that moment, disengage. Meditate, do a relaxation exercise, pet a furry animal, go for a quick jog, take a hot shower, pick up your knitting, practice the piano, or look at paintings. Allowing your brain to go into a state of relaxation, daydreaming, and meditating will reset your alertness.
Read full article via Inc.
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.
Michael J. Petrillose, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Hospitality Management, SUNY Delhi
Diane Gayeski – Ithaca College Ph.D., CEO, Gayeski Analytics and Professor, Organizational Communication, Learning & Design, Ithaca College
Abstract
Workplace violence is a worldwide epidemic and is a major financial and performance risk in any organization, especially restaurants and hotels. Synthesizing research on workplace violence and organizational performance engineering, this paper rejects the assumption that aggressive behavior is best prevented by screening, surveillance, and training. Rather, it asserts that many typical management and communication practices actually create an environment that breeds poor service, property destruction, anger, and even violence. A pilot tool for assessing an organization’s management communication infrastructure is presented, accompanied by recommendations for initiatives to advance this stream of research and practice in the hospitality industry.
From desk rage to homicide: threats to the hospitality industry
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the workplace is the most dangerous place to be in America. Violence that leads to serious injury or death is merely the most visible tip of the iceberg of aggressive behaviors. Workplace stress can cause what has been coined “desk rage”, a syndrome that includes pushing, teasing, or yelling at co-workers or customers (Integra Realty Resources, 2001), damaging property or equipment, or purposely “hiding out” and not working up to standards (Girion, 2000). Belligerent behavior – from simple verbal abuse to actual homicide – represents a major financial and performance risk for any organization, especially for restaurants and hotels. These environments typically are characterized by many situations in which it may be difficult to control negative behaviors:
q Large staffs with a high turn-over rate and spotty performance in prior jobs and education
q Lack of ability to carefully monitor employee behavior (e.g. high employee to supervisor ratios, much work done independently such as housekeeping, night shifts done with minimal supervision, etc.)
q Complex work environments that create opportunities for mischief (e.g. kitchens where food can be contaminated, use of knives, etc.)
q Workplaces open to the public with constant mobility of customers (e.g. hotel public spaces)
q Hours of operation and environment that tempts crime perpetrators (e.g. late-night restaurants with minimal staff to protect people, property, and cash).
The hospitality industry has typically taken a person-oriented approach to preventing violence and aggressive behavior. The underlying assumption is that the tendency for negative behavior is situated in individuals: in other words, there are people who are prone to violence or who simply don’t know how to control their anger and be courteous. Thus, the common management interventions to preempt negative behavior have been:
q screening of prospective employees
q surveillance of the workplace through cameras, security guards, etc.
q training employees in customer service and harassment prevention
Although these assumptions and interventions are partially appropriate and effective, research indicates that rude and even injurious behavior is often prompted by factors in the organization itself – specifically policies, culture, and management communication (O’Leary-Kelley, Griffin, & Glew, 1996). The management system itself (rather than employees’ backgrounds, character, or training) may well be the most powerful factor associated with aggressive behavior. Because the hospitality industry is so susceptible to violence (Desk rage is on the rise, 2001) and its success is so intimately tied to safety and courteous customer service, (Petrillose, Shanklin & Downey, 1998; Petrillose. & Brewer, 2000), it is critical to:
q Conduct research about how organizations unwittingly create environments that breed aggressive behavior
q Develop practical assessment methods to screen organizations for management factors that are associated with aggressive and violent behaviors
q Create tools and techniques that hospitality executives can use to preempt aggressive behavior and violence through management interventions that go beyond the common practices of employee screening and surveillance
q Teach and model the management communication techniques that are required for future hospitality supervisors to sustain a courteous and safe environment.
This paper presents a foundation for these initiatives.
Review of workplace violence research
Persons in service–related fields are more likely to be victims of workplace violence, according to the Insurance Information Institute. Violence is most likely to occur in public and government facilities (17.2%) followed by restaurants and bars (14.6%) and hotel and motels (1.4%) (Desk rage is on the rise, 2001). One in four workers are attacked, threatened, or harassed each year, with instances of verbal violence being about three times that of physical violence. The cost of this is estimated to be as high as $36 billion in the United States alone, reflecting lost productivity (500,000 employees missing 1,750,000 days of work per year), diminished company image and customer retention, more than $13 billion in medical costs, and increased security and insurance payments. When there are aggressors in the workplace, employees and customers are repelled, causing tardiness, absenteeism, turnover, and lost sales (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2003; Johnson & Indvik, 2001; Reisenauer, 2002). In telephone surveys, employees across various industries admit that stress and anger at their employers is causing them to pick fights with and yell at co-workers or customers, cry on the job, purposely damage equipment or property, and intentionally work slowly or look busy while doing nothing (Girion, 2000). The personal and societal cost of poor work environments is also significant: many unhealthy patterns such as lack of sleep, abuse of alcohol and drugs, and overeating are common reactions to stress, and family and community relationships suffer.
What factors are associated with workplace aggression? Although most violent crimes are perpetrated by individuals who have some history of psychological and /or social problems, much belligerence is caused by factors in the work environment. Thus, it is important to avoid a “blame the victim” approach when instituting measures to reduce bad behavior. Based on a synthesis of the research on workplace violence, the following factors have been found to be indicators of the kind of problematic workplace environment that is associated with aggressive behavior:
q Highly authoritarian workplace
q Employees overloaded by work and stress
q Long hours and inadequate breaks
q Supervision is changeable and unpredictable
q Employees get mixed messages
q Management methods are invasive of privacy
q Extreme secrecy; management not open about goals, strategies, or current business data
q Employees are devalued; their unique contributions not solicited or recognized
q Short-term benefits are pursued at expense of long-term effectiveness
q Tolerance of moderate levels of aggressive conduct or rude behavior of peers or customers
q Recent downsizing, poor business performance, or other major changes in jobs
q Uncomfortable workplace (poor temperature, seating, etc.)
q Long, stressful commute
q Use of new technologies that cause information overload, require continual learning, and cause stress when they are unreliable (e.g. e-mail, new POS systems)
A communication and performance engineering approach
As indicated above, an emerging body of research finds that much violence and uncivil behavior in the workplace is caused by managerial and environmental factors rather than individual traits. O’Leary-Kelley and Griffin (1996) defined the term Organization-Motivated Aggression (OMA) which is based on social learning theory. Their exploratory study found that a major factor associated with workplace violence and aggression is modeling of peers’ or supervisors’ behavior, despite training or executive assertions that rudeness, harassment and violence are not tolerated. In other words, many supervisors operate according to the old saying, “do what I say, not what I do”. This study and others found that rude, patronizing, and punishing behavior by supervisors is common, especially in service industries, and thus a focus on managerial communication is essential because employees model the behavior they experience. Put simply, employees treat others as they are treated. Research specifically in hotel management has reinforced this assertion, finding that service behaviors and an orientation towards quality must emanate from top management actions (Withiam, 1996).
Another approach to reducing workplace aggression is provided by the field of human performance technology, a professional model for organizational improvement that focuses on assessing root causes of performance gaps and developing interventions that address both the workplace environment and the worker’s repertory of behavior (Van Tiem, Moseley & Dessinger, 2000). Thomas Gilbert (1978), one of the founders of this approach, developed the Behavior Engineering Model as a way to categorize the management approaches and personal factors that impact performance (see Figure 1).
Figure 1 Behavior Engineering Model based on Gilbert (1978).
Information | Instrumentation | Motivation | |
Environmental Supports
|
Data: (feedback, performance goals) | Instruments: (tools, materials, and work environment) | Incentives: (bonuses, non-monetary rewards, career development) |
Person’s Repertory of Behavior
|
Knowledge: (person’s background and experience, coaching, training, job placement) | Capacity: (capability of person to perform the job intellectually, physically, emotionally) | Motives (personal goals and preferences) |
Rummler (1999) asserts that the most influential factors in workplace performance are the organizational and job systems: policies, procedures, communication climate, information, and management incentives: “If you pit a good performer against a bad system, the system will win every time.” (p. 55). Even when organizations do focus on their management systems, decision-makers often inadvertently institute performance interventions that generate exactly what they wish to avoid. For example, rigid managerial control and surveillance develops a suspicious culture in which employees do not feel valued and trusted. This is precisely the climate that research shows is associated with destructive and violent behavior.
Sending employees to training on customer relations or harassment prevention can also lead to unexpected results. Employees may feel punished or insulted by being “sent” to training rather than having a say in this decision themselves. For example, one major study in the training industry reported that workers have a significant voice in the decision about whether they will receive training less than 10 percent of the time. More than seven times out of 10, that decision is made by a supervisor, manager, or higher executive (Schaaf, 1998). Patronizing content or approaches or exercises that bring up sensitive cultural or personal issues can be direct antecedents to violence. A workplace shooting in August 2003 occurred directly after the perpetrator attended a required ethics training course during which he apparently became agitated (Seven Dead in Chicago Workplace Shooting, 2003). Other studies find that sometimes front line employees actually perform more poorly after training: they are so overwhelmed with information that they return to the job and freeze. This information overload causes stress, which is associated with absenteeism, turnover, and hostile behavior – exactly what the training is trying to prevent.
Communication technologies such as voicemail, e-mail, the Internet and corporate intranets, cell phones, and instant messaging are also stressors. In a consulting engagement with a major restaurant chain, it was found that store managers were typically rising at 5 AM and beginning to listen to their voicemails as they dressed because they could expect to receive several hours worth of voicemails from various corporate sources throughout a typical day (Gayeski, 1999). Similar research has found that workers are typically interrupted by email or phone messages every few minutes. This overload of data, as well as the popular and unquestioned assumption that “more communication is better” have made these problems even worse. Communication and training activities take time away from one’s “real” work, further adding to stress because employees then have to somehow catch up on the work that accumulated while they were in meetings or courses. Too often, corporate messages come from different sources and are not coordinated; in fact, they may be contradictory and seemingly arbitrary. This dis-integration of the communication system is causing stress, an erosion of credibility, an attitude of cynicism, and poor performance focus (Gayeski, 1998).
Clearly, new approaches for not only interpersonal communication but also for selecting and managing formal communication and training are needed. Often the most powerful messages are embedded in the communication and training policies themselves rather than in the content of instruction or meetings. For example, employees may be required to attend “empowerment training” and to wear silly empowerment buttons – clearly sending the message that they are not, in fact, empowered. However, uncovering these unintentionally destructive patterns is not as easy as it may appear.
Prototype screening tool
To bridge the gap between theory and practice, the hospitality management field needs tools to screen operations for the typical management and business environment factors that have been shown to be antecedents to organizational-motivated aggression. Building on established models for organizational communication audits (Gayeski, 2000), and the review of literature on workplace aggression, a survey has been developed and is being piloted at selected hospitality operations. Each item will be rated by an individual employee on a 1-5 Likert scale, from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The statements noted here with asterisks indicate problematic factors; the rest of the statements represent conditions or policies that are considered “best practice” in avoiding aggressive behavior. (see Table 2).
Table 2 Hospitality communication analytics survey
Copyright Gayeski Analytics 2004 all rights reserved
1 Company strategies and performance information (such as sales figures and budgets) are made widely available and discussed with employees openly | ||
2 Training and communication materials, courses, and meetings regularly feature employees’ ideas, opinions, and their contributions to the organization’s success | ||
* 3 There is frequent turnover of management and first-level supervisors | ||
4 The company has policies and practices that protect employee privacy (e.g. personal information, salary and performance data, content and use of email and Web access) and employees are made clearly aware of these protections | ||
5 The organization values long-term performance and corporate values over short-term gains | ||
6 Professionals in communications (such as advertising, employee communications, HR) and training work together to clearly communicate strategic plans and messages to reduce any mixed messages sent to employees | ||
7 We have standards to ensure that everybody in the organization understands the culture and brand communicates in a way that supports the culture and the brand | ||
8 Employees are given frequent feedback on company goals and how their performance contributes to them | ||
9 Training, feedback, and other developmental opportunities, are made available to all employees, regardless of their position | ||
10 The organization is using methods (such as bulletin boards, print newsletters, or handheld computers to provide training and job aids to ensure that employees who don’t have computers are well informed and connected | ||
-* 11 Standards, policies, and performance expectations are set by upper management with little input of front-line employees | ||
12 Managers, in general, employ an “open door” style of management | ||
* 13 Managers tolerate a certain amount of teasing, arguing and “horseplay” among employees and typically let them settle their differences on their own | ||
14 Communication systems are in place that allow all levels of employees to contribute ideas and ask questions of upper management | ||
15 The company does not tolerate any level of aggressive behavior on the part of employees or customers | ||
16 We have training in place for all employees on workplace security including what to look for and how to react if there is any suspicion of danger | ||
17 The company has methods in place to reduce information overload and stress (such as initiatives to reduce e-mails, paperwork, or meetings) | ||
18 Most employees would say that our company treats its employees better than the competition (similar hotels, restaurants, etc.) | ||
* 19 Employees do not contribute to company materials like brochures and newsletters | ||
20 We have a strict set of selection and interviewing guidelines to screen out potentially violent employees while remaining compliant with the law. | ||
21 All employees feel free to deal assertively if a co-worker or customer appears to become abusive or violent or poses some other security risk | ||
* 22 We monitor employee emails and their use of the Internet | ||
* 23 We use cameras or other devices to monitor employee whereabouts and behavior |
Last year, a friend who works in corporate communication for a major local company advised me to keep my ears open to the topic of “offshoring” — the latest cost-reduction trend of sending service jobs to other countries. “This is going to be a big issue for communicators,” she warned.
I was aware that some companies already were exporting jobs, but sure enough, I began to hear more and more about it. More stories about “offshoring” appeared in business publications, more talking heads with creased brows lamented it, and I even saw more discussion in the public-relations industry press.
I have paid close attention to the topic, but two things keep bothering me. One is that the only thing new about “offshoring” is that it primarily affects white-collar and service-industry jobs. Exporting jobs as a cost-cutting measure is nothing new. It has been going on for years in the manufacturing sector, but white-collar managers essentially told their blue-collar employees to suck it up and get used to the global economy. Now that those white-collar managers are seeing their jobs disappear, the practice has a new euphemistic name and urgency assigned to it.
One of these days — and I hope I live long enough to see it, but I doubt it — business managers everywhere will realize just how condescending they often appear to the people they manage. This is a communication issue because an inappropriate attitude and tone can create huge barriers to open communication between bosses and employees.
The other thing that keeps bothering me is that “offshoring” would be considered a big issue. This is not to downplay the significance of exporting jobs as a workplace issue, but it is only a communication problem when business leaders try to dance around it. Telling people that some of them might lose their jobs is not fun. It’s not easy. The discussion won’t make managers the object of employees’ affections. However, people deserve to know why jobs are being sent to other countries and they deserve the opportunity to express their anger, fear and disappointment.
I was talking recently with an employee of a local company who described a new manager in her department. She contrasted the former manager’s style of keeping everyone in the dark with the new manager’s style of frequent and open communication. The former manager’s approach led to mistrust and dissension. The new manager’s talk of the reasons for upcoming layoffs was not easy to hear, but employees appreciated the honesty and candor.
One of my favorite newsletters for communication executives, The Ragan Report, recently published comments from an unnamed computer programmer for a high-tech firm that was planning to export jobs. She wondered about the degree of employee backlash to “offshoring” and then described why she believes it is not the best solution to her company’s problems. She described the amount of time it will take her to train workers in other countries, to overcome time and language barriers, and to adjust to the cultural differences.
I found the programmer’s points to be interesting, but I couldn’t help wonder how much more useful her ideas would have been if she had the opportunity to express them to the leaders of her business.
Our organization has been planning this summer. I want to be able to anticipate and prepare to build our business. To do that I need a forecast of where organizations are going rather than where they have been.
One of our crystal balls is an interview the Conference Board of Canada conducted with University of Michigan’s management guru, Dave Ulrich. He identified eight issues to plan for. Four have a special relevance to our work and we thought it would be useful for our readers to know where we will be skating as we go for the puck.
Leadership – Ulrich forecasts a redefinition of leadership to one that focuses on role rather than function. Individuals will be called upon to exercise leadership within their spheres of influence. Leadership will be exercised at many levels of an organization and the culture will encourage and demand leadership of all employees.
Engagement – Talent is increasingly more mobile with fully 58% of Canadian employees open to moving employment. Corporate strategies to engage employees are woefully inadequate and must be beefed up to succeed. Engaged employees are those who can find meaning in their working lives. Successful organizations are those that focus on instilling a high sense of organizational purpose in the minds of their employees.
Managers communicate – The major weakness in most organizations is the ability of line managers to effectively communicate. Employee motivation depends upon how well the line manager communicates face-to-face. Effective internal communication will be redefined in terms of the abilities of line managers to communicate and the degree of accountability the organization places on them to do so.
Measurement – The trend to accountability based upon returns on investment will continue. Measuring performance by the outcomes of work is replacing measures of work by outputs of activities. We will be required to measure success of our work by the contribution it makes to innovation, change and achievement of the organizations strategic goals.
As Ulrich points out that, for the first time in the history of management, it is the human mind that is the primary creator of value. Our priorities will be developing the quality of the workforce and its engagement in the business. These will be the critical success factors in corporate vitality and survival. – for us and our clients.
By Tudor Williams, ABC
Play at your work and work at your play. Do the right thing for the right reason in the right way. Anonymous
X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut. Albert Einstein
The Master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both. Chinese proverb
You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of discussion. Plato
…when it comes to learning (play), play (learning) is not an accessory, but a partner. Bernie DeKoven
The creative mind plays with the objects it loves. Carl Jung
If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play. John Cleese
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
Communities of Practice Definitions
by Richard McDermott*
SHORT VERSION
A community of practice is a group of people who share information, ideas,
insights and advice about a topic or domain. In the course of doing so they
develop a common practice (a shared body of knowledge, process, rituals,
approaches, thinking. Over time they build a common history and develop a
shared identity.
LONG VERSION
A community of practice is a group of people who share knowledge, learns
together, and creates common practices. Communities of practice share
information, insight, experience, and tools about an area of common
interest. This could be a professional discipline–like reservoir
engineering or biology–a skill–like machine repair–or a topic–like a
technology, an industry, or a segment of a production process. Consulting
companies, for example, usually organize communities of practice around both
disciplines, such as organizational change, and industries like banking,
petroleum or insurance. Community members frequently help each other solve
problems, give each other advice, and develop new approaches or tools for
their field. Regularly helping each other makes it easier for community
members to show their weak spots and learn together in the “public space” of
the community. As they share ideas and experiences, people develop a shared
way of doing things, a set of common practices. Sometimes they formalize
these in guidelines and standards, but often they simply remain “what
everybody knows” about good practice. Since communities of practice focus on
topics that people often feel passionately interested in, they can become
important sources of individual identity.
You can find more in Etienne Wenger’s book Communities of Practice (Cambridge
Press 1988) or my Learning Across Teams (Knowledge Management Review Summer
1999).
*Richard McDermott McDermott, McDermott & Co., Phone: 303-545-6030, eMail: Richard@RMcDermott.com Fax: 303-545-6031.
A woman from the audience followed me into the hallway. “I think we’re married to the same man,” she said. Successfully fighting the urge to fire off the snappy reply, “Could be. I travel a lot,” I simply smiled back. I’d heard this before.
I’m introduced as a change-management expert – married to a man who refuses to change anything. So, during my speech, I tell humorous stories about the resistance my husband puts up – and how I learned, from managers I’d interviewed, different ways to handle his protests.
After every speech, audience members come up to me to comment on my husband. Many people recognize their co-workers or loved ones (or themselves!) in him, and some (like the woman who’s own spouse’s behavior so resembled mine) jokingly commiserate with me. The thing I find most intriguing about this phenomenon is that in my twenty years of professional speaking, no one has ever approached me after a program to say they most appreciated my fifth point. That’s because they don’t remember what my fifth point was. But they do remember my husband and the lessons about handling change resistance that they learned through my stories.
As a communicator, stories can be your most potent allies.
Social scientists note that there are two different modes of cognition: the paradigmatic mode and the narrative mode. The former is rooted in rational analysis; the latter is represented in fairy tales, myth, legends, metaphors, and good stories. Good stories are more powerful than plain facts!
That is not to reject the value in facts, of course, but simply to recognize their limits in influencing people. Stories supplement analysis. Facts are neutral. People make decisions based on what facts mean to them, not on the facts themselves. Facts aren’t influential until they mean something to someone. Stories give facts meaning.
Here is the difference: Trying to influence people through scientific analysis is a “push” strategy. It requires the speaker to convince the listener through cold, factual evidence. Storytelling is a “pull” strategy, in which the listener is invited to join the experience a participant, and to imagine herself acting on the mental stage the storyteller creates. Stories resonate with adults in ways that can bring them back to a childlike open-mindedness – and make them less resistant to experimentation and change.
Compared to facts, stories are better for building community, capturing the imagination, and exerting influence. Stories about the past help employees understand the rich heritage of an organization, stories about early adopters offer successful examples of dealing with change, personal stories are powerful leadership tools for building trust, humorous stories can ease tension and, if you interview key staff, stories can capture their wisdom.
Stories can address universal human themes
Michael LeBoeuf, author of How to Win Customers and Keep Them for Life, illustrates the power of making people feel important with the following story:
Jane, recently married, was having lunch with a friend, explaining why she married Bill instead of Bob.
“Bob is Mr. Everything,” Jane said. “He’s intelligent, clever and has a very successful career. In fact, when I was with Bob, I felt like he was the most wonderful person in the world.”
“Then why did you marry Bill?” her friend asked. Jane replied, “Because when I’m with Bill, I feel like I’m the most wonderful person in the world.”
Stories can show how to approach your work
I once asked Sanjiv Sidhu, the CEO of i2 Technologies, what kind of attitudes he encouraged in his work force. Although his is a high-tech company, he told me a story about cleaning houses. It’s the same story he tells employees.
“Most people would think that cleaning houses for a living was a pretty boring job. But I believe that if you had the right attitude, cleaning houses could be intellectually stimulating. Let’s say it takes you four hours to clean a house, and you’re doing three houses a day, six days a week. That’s 72 hours of really boring work and a pretty sure recipe for burnout somewhere down the line. But if you redefined the job, said to yourself that you were going to do each house in two hours, there’d be an innovative component in the work suddenly. You’d need to do a study that asked, for example: ‘Am I going to vacuum the whole house first and then go back and polish the furniture, or am I going to do everything in one room before moving on to the next?’ And if you added to that goal the goal of being the best house-cleaner ever, then you really would be stretching your mind, the job wouldn’t feel boring anymore and you probably wouldn’t burn out because your own innovative thinking would keep you interested.
But then suppose you shifted gears again and said, ‘Okay, now I’m going to clean each house in ten minutes!’ That’s where the real fun would begin for someone like me because I’d know I couldn’t hit that target by merely tinkering with spatial tasking. I’d have to start thinking about new kinds of house-cleaning equipment–or maybe even new kinds of houses that cleaned themselves. That’s the kind of thinking we’re encouraging in our employees all of the time.”
Stories can make values come alive
Nordstrom is one organization that does a remarkable job of using anecdotes about its sales force to communicate its value of impeccable customer service. There is, for example, the often-repeated tale about the saleswoman who took her lunch hour to drive from downtown Seattle to the airport to make sure that her customer received his new business suit. The customer had purchased the suit that morning to wear at a meeting in another city the next day — and then discovered the garment needed alterations. The Nordstrom saleswoman had promised to have the suite altered and delivered to him before he left town. She kept her promise.
Stories can become the symbol of change
There is a story I tell in the book, “This Isn’t the Company I Joined” – How to Lead in a Business Turned Upside Down: Buckman Laboratories has been in the specialty chemical business since 1945. Under the leadership of Robert H. (Bob) Buckman, it also became a world-class, knowledge-sharing organization. Bob would tell you that converting a command-and-control organization into a networked one was not without its challenges and setbacks. Still, by 1994, Buckman Labs had jumped into full-bore knowledge sharing: new software and connectivity had been installed, most of the associates were equipped with laptops, and online Forums were up and running. To honor and reward the top 150 people from around the world who had done the best job of sharing knowledge with the new technologies, a “Fourth Wave Meeting” was held in Scottsdale, Arizona. The meeting was three days of fun, celebration and work – specifically, critical discussions about business trends and strategies. It was also the setting for the following story:
Through the entire conference, a man wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and sandals sat at the back of the room, chronicling the meeting on his laptop and sending live messages onto the Forum for the rest of the company to read. His name was Mark Koskiniemi. About midway through the meeting, one of the organizers (a manager) approached Mark and asked him to stop sending out notes on the meeting. Mark refused by saying he didn’t feel that was appropriate. When the organizer suggested that the request to cease came from the top, Mark countered by saying he’d appreciate hearing it personally.
A few minutes later, a break was called, and Mark found himself face-to-face with Bob Buckman. Here is how Mark recalls the conversation:
Mark: Hello, sir.
Bob: Mark, I understand that you have been posting notes from the meeting on the Forum. I have to say that I have not read them, but are you sure that is such a good idea?
Mark: Do you trust me?
Bob broke into a big smile, nodded slightly, and nothing further was said about Mark’s continued reporting of the events.
As Mark later said: “If knowledge sharing is built on trust, then to me this moment over any other demonstrated that Bob Buckman really trusted the associates of Buckman Laboratories to take the company forward.”
There were two results from Koskiniemi’s reporting:
1. In all, he sent more than 50 Forum or e-mail messages related to the reports coming from the meeting.
2. Koskiniemi (who is now head of Buckman’s operation in Australia and New Zealand) told others the story – and it came to symbolize the desired culture change.
In addition to keeping on the right side of the law, it’s important to realize that simply writing a policy does not protect the organization. The policy needs to be augmented with communication, training and monitoring. The policy is a living document which will need revision as the organization learns about social media. It will also need revision when missteps on social media occur – as they inevitably will. But with experience comes learning and that is a good thing.
The problem with many policies is that while they are often quite clear on what the company’s employees should not do, they leave some unanswered questions about what they should do. We believe a more useful approach for social media policy writing is to focus on the dos, rather than the don’ts.
Just telling someone what they should not do doesn’t automatically help them understand what they should do. In cut and dry situations – the ones we’ve all been through a dozen times before – it is easy to infer that if the sign says “stay off the grass” it means we should use the paved path instead. With social media, inferring the positive action that is desired from the negative action that is forbidden is not always so easy. Will every employee know how they can avoid violating applicable copyright laws and statutory requirements? Can they list the five signs that indicate when they are not appropriately safeguarding company assets?
It’s easy to play up the adversarial relationship between “Hacks” and “Flacks,” but the truth of this perennial love/hate relationship is that that we really do need one other. Although the value of PR professionals to journalists is often called into question, as this article points out, “the popularity of services like HARO and ProfNet should be proof enough that journalists have a need for PR professionals.”
That said, as PR professionals, our jobs are two-fold: Not only are we advocates for our clients, but we’re also here to make life easier on our journalist comrades. Between a non-stop news cycle, scary budget cuts and mounting competition for clicks, there’s a good chance they’re working in a pressure cooker environment, so the best thing we can do is to think from their perspective and assist rather than annoy. After all, it comes down to relationships, and there’s nothing worse than trying to work with someone who makes your job harder.
So, without further ado, here are our “Top 10 Yeas and Nays” for better PR practices. Although some may seem pretty obvious, those are often the ones that are first forgotten.
DON’T even think about…
- Not doing your research/reading a journalist’s articles before pitching. Know who you’re targeting, and only send something to them that you think would be of interest.
- Sending a pitch via email blast. The shotgun-spray approach is not appreciated; rather, think like a sniper.
- Asking if you can see and/or edit an article before it’s published. This is a huge no-no!
- Making up a response if you don’t know the answer. It’s perfectly acceptable to say, “I’m not sure. Let me check and get back to you.”
- Disregarding deadlines. Your journalist friend has theirs, so make sure you meet yours.
If you want to develop good working relationships, DO try…
- Respecting the journalist’s preferences. If they’re an email person, and you’re more comfortable on the phone, adapt. Work their way.
- Keeping pitches and releases short and to-the-point (and as buzz-free as possible). Repeat after me: Less is more.
- Thinking about how to streamline the process. Have assets and answers ready, and be available when the reporter is writing and may have a question. (Package the story beforehand as much as possible: angle, visual content, facts, references, spokespersons, etc.)
- Proofread, proofread, proofread. And when in doubt, hit spell check again before sending that pitch – perhaps even send to a colleague to review with fresh eyes before contacting the reporter.
- Focusing on relationships. I said it above, and I’ll say it again – it’s all about relationships. They make the job easier and a whole lot more fun! For example, interact with, read, comment on, share and praise a reporter’s work that you find of interest – not just when it’s a story about your company or client.
Thanks to the onslaught of technology and our need to constantly rush through everything, our grammar has gotten worse. Emails, text messages and other corporate communications are being sent without a thorough and professional proofreading, and using poor grammar in the workplace can have some negative impacts on your business.
It causes confusion.
If you use poor grammar in the workplace, you could end up confusing those people who need to read what you write or listen to what you say. Causing confusion will negatively impact your company’s productivity and require additional communications to clear up the confusion.
It makes you look unprofessional.
Poor grammar makes you look unprofessional. Nobody wants to do business with the company that has spelling and grammatical errors in their marketing materials, and no client wants to do business with the representative who doesn’t know the difference between their, there and they’re.
It hinders productivity.
Read full article on Every Marketing Thing
If employees are so connected, why is it so hard to communicate with them?
Some companies out there will charge you thousands of dollars to look after the SEO on your ecommerce website. In this article we’re going to look at some top tips and “quick wins” for ecommerce business owners in order to get websites as high up the rankings as possible with very little work.
Use lots of unique content: Don’t be tempted to use bog-standard manufacturer product descriptions. It might save time but your website won’t rank at all well.
Commission someone to write you a solid set of unique product descriptions of at least 300 words each. Unique content is the lifeblood of SEO so don’t go without it!
Use pictures: Buyers will buy with their eyes in a lot of cases – they won’t read your product description – instead they’ll look at the picture when making a decision.
Use pictures and lots of them on your website – don’t forget to fill in the alt tag section of the picture though – this helps greatly with SEO.
Pictures are great for search engines and visitors alike – throw in some other media like embedding related YouTube videos if you have time.
Fill in META info on every page: Make sure you fill in the META title and description on every single page on your website.
A crazy amount of sites out there are missing META data which means that they don’t sit as well as they should in the search engines.
Writing a short META description takes seconds – as does putting in an appropriate title. If you don’t have time to do it all, outsource it!
Video has become an essential marketing tool. It’s a great way to tell your story, show the human side of your business and communicate highly complex ideas in an easy to digest manner. But while video has the power to deeply engage, it also has the power to bore the viewer to tears—and creating compelling video is different than writing, say, a compelling blog post.
Starting a camera and spouting out a thousand words of brilliant prose does not make a compelling video. There are proven techniques and tools that can help make your videos engage, hold attention and wow the viewer. Here are 10 tools that can help you get started.
1. Prezi. This is a interesting take on the slide presentation as it allows you to create one giant and more easily connected idea and then use the tool to zoom, pan and fly all around the presentation to create a really dynamic feel. It’s not the easiest tool to master, but check out some of the incredible examples on the site to get inspiration.
2. YouTube Editor. I like this tool because it’s free, and because you’re using YouTube to host and stream your videos anyway, it gives you some nice editing capability right in YouTube. You can also add annotations and transcripts to your videos making them more SEO friendly.
3. Camtasia. This PC and Mac desktop software is the market leader in the screencapture video world. Screencast videos are a great way to demonstrate how something online works. Camtasia has some nice features that allow you to add focus to areas on your screen as well as annotations and URLs.
This question, “Why don’t they get the strategy?” drives straight to the heart of what internal branding and change communications is all about.
As a senior executive, what would you do? What would you do if you discovered that different business units of your company were essentially working against each other to support their own business and political agendas, rather than the objectives of the entire company? Or, what would you do if you had just found out that, after spending five years in IT planning, deploying 65 full time staff and exceeding $55 million on an ERP implementation, that you were only achieving 40% utilization across your enterprise? Scenarios like these are real and are happening every day, and CEOs and their boards continue, sadly, to ignore and tolerate them.
These matters are urgent and important. But management doesn’t know what to do about them, or how to deal with them. So, all too often, they do nothing.
Why am I drawing your attention to this? I was recently talking to the CEO of a major Fortune 100 company about change management and the importance of communicating with his employees. I was pointing out how companies, who embrace change effectively, making wise use of internal branding and team alignment, perform better, grow faster, and produce higher revenue. His answer has been haunting me ever since. “What you’re selling me on is soft stuff”, he said. “I need to make tangible investments that have a direct impact on results. If I can’t touch it, feel it or talk to it, it doesn’t seem like an imperative investment.”
I tried my hardest to explain, “Most companies who fail,” I said, “do so because they can’t execute. Employees receive mixed messages. They don’t really recognize the consequences of doing things in new ways and changing old behavior. Your employees are tangible assets – in fact they are your greatest assets.”
It didn’t matter. I failed to convince him that effective change management is urgent and critical in today’s business world. CEO’s confide to their direct subordinates, “Why don’t they get the strategy? I’ve only told them about it a thousand times”. But what these CEOs fail to appreciate is that hearing something and really understanding it are quite different animals. Employees need to understand an idea deeply for it to become relevant and important enough to change their behavior. If they don’t get it change will not occur.
This question, “Why don’t they get the strategy?” drives straight to the heart of what internal branding and change communications is all about.
I have a passion for helping companies become high performance businesses. High performance comes from aligning your people, your process and your resources with your company’s strategic vision and its mission. In other words, if you have the right people in the right jobs, working with efficient and effective processes that are repeatable, trainable and coachable, your company can indeed attain a higher level of performance, as measured in throughput, productivity and revenue growth.
Technology enhances process improvement, speed, communications and productivity, ultimately saving money and improving productivity. But CEO’s and boards often make one huge mistake, believing that people management issues will take care of themselves naturally. After all, employees are hired to do the job they are instructed to do. Right? Absolutely not!
High performance actually comes as a direct result of people doing their jobs in the ways they feel are most effective. Success has always been about people, and about their will to set their own priorities – not about technology, policy or strategic initiatives. The job may be reducing internal slippage at Best Buy, or recognizing the importance of keeping prices low and margins high at Wal-Mart or understanding the importance of co-marketing to serve Campbell’s Soup’s retail clients better. But it all comes down to people understanding what is expected of them, being motivated and inspired by that knowledge, and signing on to change their behavior to support the company’s goals.
Metrics & measurements show clearly that this is so…. Here are a few factual illustrations of the value and necessity of investing in the soft stuff.
- Last year Pitney Bowes launched a major external branding effort. They were redefining the scope of their business from a mail meter firm to “Engineering the Flow of Communication”. In addition to an outstanding advertising campaign, they sought to educate each and every employee as to what “Engineering the Flow of Communications” would mean to the company’s bottom line and business success. Results show that the internal brand immersion program was a big success. Where only 29% of Pitney Bowes employees had understood the brand, soon over 70% said they did (40% among customer facing employees). Among the sales force, the understanding rose from initially 11%, to a whopping 65% who claimed to use the new brand to open doors with C-suite customers rather than as was usual in the past, going through the mailroom.
- With Sam Walton as a mentor, Wal-Mart learned early that it was critical to enroll employees to care about the customers. From its research, Wal-Mart found that if it took the time to educate employees about how the company worked, and to communicate basic instructions to them about how to perform their jobs, the company would not have to nag them constantly. Eventually, they would figure out what to do on their own, and customer-caring behavior would become the operational standard across the company. This would save billions of dollars worth of time and energy. The results are obvious – Wal-Mart has become the largest retailer in the world, with gross revenues and profits higher than many countries’ GNP.
- After HP acquired Compaq the company sought to create a unified brand that embodied the cultures, employees and products/services of the two companies. Their efforts culminated in the launch of a new marketing campaign and tag line: “Invent”. They added additional attributes (such as brand equity, employee commitment and understanding to the traditionally non-financial, creative elements of the brand (such as corporate reputation, brand perceptions, customer experience and messaging). HP created a brand model that would compute and correlate their contribution to growth and shareholder value. By pushing the right buttons and doing these analytics, HP was able to compute how internal & external brand attributes contribute to performance and shareholder value. Wow – powerful stuff!
Your people and their customer facing experiences and behavior are indeed assets. As with all your assets, you must manage them so they become drivers of employee commitment and customer satisfaction. These in turn ultimately drive shareholder value. It’s time to start managing the “soft stuff” as if it were a financial asset-because it is. The result of doing so will contribute to above average share growth in strong markets and protect you against market downturns. It will build the kind of employee commitment that helps to justify premium price protection and customer loyalty.
So–is this soft stuff when all is said and done? Clearly, NO. But a lot more education will have to happen before CEOs understand its impact, and before they can stop wondering why their people just don’t get it.
High levels of job satisfaction don’t necessarily translate into an engaged workforce.
That’s the key finding from research by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), which found U.S. employees are generally satisfied with their jobs, but only moderately engaged.
The results show that, overall, employees are fairly satisfied with key attributes of their jobs, including:
- Relationships with co-workers (76 per cent).
- The work itself (76 per cent).
- Opportunities to use skills and abilities (74 per cent).
- Relationship with immediate supervisor (73 per cent).
But other aspects of the work experience were seen as falling short, and had considerably fewer respondents reporting satisfaction. These included:
- Career advancement opportunities (42 per cent).
- Career development opportunities (48 per cent).
- Communication between employees and senior management (54 per cent).
- Job-specific training (55 per cent).
- Management recognition of employee job performance (57 per cent).
Here are four ideas that will help you become a more inclusive leader:
1. Let Them Build It. To construct and convey key messages, smart leaders don’t always rely on professional communicators or on elaborate messaging campaigns. Instead, they recognize that often it’s front-line employees who know best how to tell a given company story. (For an example of a grassroots project that resulted in an employee-generated book, see our earlier post on that topic.)
2. Lead by Following. The notion that senior executives might maintain a blog or a Twitter feed — one that employees, along with other company stakeholders, can follow — is fairly commonplace. In some instances, though, leaders reverse that equation: In a bid to share the digital limelight, they invite rank-and-file employees to become company-sponsored bloggers.
3. Send a Messenger (Not Just a Message). People today are skeptical of slickly produced brand messages. They’re skeptical of slick official spokespeople, too. Leaders who want to build public trust in their company brand, therefore, often recruit employees to serve as brand ambassadors. Training people who work for a company to speak for that company is a marketing practice that doubles as an engagement-building practice.
4. Lose Control. It’s hard to break free of the mindset that treats communication as a control function. But many leaders find that ceding control over what employees say on company channels — on an intranet discussion forum, for example — means gaining a new way to tap into the talent, the insight, and the passion of their people. They also find that self-policing by employees works to keep such discussion from going off-track.
For an inclusive leader, the term “employee communication” takes on a provocative new meaning. For generations, that term has referred to communication aimed at employees. Today, by contrast, more and more leaders are seeking ways to leverage the value of communication performed by employees.
Based on interactions with recruiters, friends who have worked there, and Amazon employees in the working world, a couple of things stand out, and I’ll contrast with eBay where I worked:
- It’s a very customer driven company; everything they do is with the goal of improving the experience for the customer (we were more revenue focused in the short term).
- It’s an anti-PowerPoint culture—all of their products are ideated and communicated through written stories/long memos. I recall their recruiters saying every product starts with you writing the press release for the final product, because if you can’t articulate that well, then the user won’t be able to understand it either.
- It’s a very innovative culture, where people are encouraged to do things differently from how others are doing things—note this is different from Facebook (move fast and break things) or Google (most elegant, scalable way of doing something)—in that different may not fit either of these criteria, but if it’s better for the customer, it’s okay.