The ability to communicate effectively with employees can often be the difference between a CEO’s success and failure. It’s great to have fresh thoughts, solid plans, and legitimate support to boost the acceptance of your ideas, but if these are communicated unsuccessfully, they might as well be nonexistent.
The importance of effective communication can’t be overemphasized, so it’s worth your while to put some time and energy into analyzing and revamping your techniques.
The following are some things to consider when you take a look at your communication and its effects on your employees.
Staying Positive
Inject a little motivation and respect into your communication by letting employees know that you’ve noticed their high achievements and are willing to support and encourage their hard work. Respect is often either a mutual organism or a dead one, so if you want your employees to hold you in high esteem, let them know that you respect them as well.
You can communicate this in person or by announcing high achievers at certain intervals to let employees know that their efforts will be rewarded. Although it’s true that you need to devote time to increasing employee performance, it’s also important to let them know that they’re appreciated from time to time.
Scheduling Staff and Leadership Forums
These events are a powerful way to both remind employees of what the big picture looks like and receive immediate feedback. If there are too many groups of employees for you to address, divide them up among members of your senior management team. Bring along blank cards for employees to fill out during a break in the meeting, then address questions and concerns as needed so that everyone feels heard.
The nature of this process is reciprocal, so be patient and keep in mind that receiving feedback and listening are also components of your communication responsibilities. Don’t forget to rely on your management team for extra support. Conducting leadership forums will help you communicate your needs to your team so that they can help you implement plans of action for employees.
Maintaining a Blog
Even though you’re a busy CEO, it doesn’t have to take much time to maintain a blog, and the posts you write will be on information you need to process. The main idea is to publish what you gather by listening and receiving feedback from employees while letting readers know about your goals and plans for growth and change.
After staff and leadership forums, take the time to publish a post on decisions made and immediate steps to follow. This is no substitute for a briefing, but it’s a supplemental way to make sure that your employees understand new directions.
A blog can also save you some time that might otherwise be spent answering questions. If employees know that your blog is consistently updated, they may rely on it to review basic information instead of knocking on your door or sending you an e-mail. You can enable the comments on your blog if you want to receive feedback from employees or encourage public conversation about your posts.
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Alexis Bonari is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She often can be found blogging about education andscholarships for college. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.
“Why do businesses fail? Given the current state of the economy, I would say it’s a safe bet that many of you have pondered the answer to this question as we watch companies close their doors on a daily basis. The unfortunate reality is that well more than 50% of all new business ventures fail within the first three years, and especially during tough economic times, many mature, even once category dominant companies fail over time. In today’s post I’ll share my thoughts as to the real number one reason why businesses fail – It’s not what you think…
I don’t believe there’s too much debate among “the experts” that the most frequently cited cause of business failure is a lack of capital. While the recent events on Wall St might lead you to believe it’s true, capital while clearly a nice luxury, doesn’t make it a necessity (here I go picking on “the experts” again). You see, I have witnessed well capitalized ventures fail miserably, and severely under-capitalized ventures eventually grow into category dominant brands. A lack of capital can provide a socially acceptable excuse for business failure, but it is not the reason businesses fail.
While it may be every entrepreneur’s fantasy to launch their business with 5 years operating reserves in the bank, the reality is that this very rarely happens. Additionally, it is not really the amount of capital a venture secures, but rather the relationship between the amount of capital raised and identified capital requirements that matters. As we’ve all observed in recent months, the real issue is not how much capital you have, but how effectively the capital is deployed and managed that makes the difference.
I would go so far as to say that well capitalized start-ups may have a higher mortality rate than their thinly capitalized counterparts. When capital is a scarce commodity, each spending or investment decision tends to be made with great care. A lack of capital forces entrepreneurs to prioritize their decisions, and to focus their efforts on high impact areas. Conversely, well capitalized ventures often make ill-advised decisions and frivolous expenditures that result in lower margins and increased commitments to overhead creating unnecessary operational burdens on the enterprise.
The reality is that you can ask 10 different people why businesses fail, and you’ll likely receive 10 different answers. While each answer could well be a contributing factor to the demise of a business venture, there is in my opinion one singular cause for all business failures…a lack of sound leadership. When I refer to leadership in today’s context, I’m pointing specifically to executive leadership as represented by the entrepreneur or CEO. In the 10 points listed below I’ll examine some of the more common reasons attributed to business failure, and I’ll likewise assess the roles and responsibilities of leadership as they pertain to the following reasons:
Lack of Vision: It is the role of the CEO to clearly define and communicate the corporate vision. If there is no vision, a flawed vision, or a poorly communicated vision, the responsibility falls squarely in the lap of executive leadership. Moreover, if the vision is not in alignment with the corporate values there will also be troubled waters ahead. No vision equals no leadership…
Lack of Execution: Everything boils down to execution, and insuring a certainty of execution is job number one for executive leadership. If as an entrepreneur or CEO you don’t focus on deploying the necessary talent and resources to insure that the largest risks are adequately managed, or that the biggest opportunities are exploited, then you have a leadership team destined for failure.
Lack of Capital: Raising, deploying, and managing capital is ultimately the responsibility of leadership. The amount of capital required to run a business is based upon how the business is operated. Therefore if leadership operates the business without consideration for capital constraints, or irrespective of capital formation issues, then the blame should fall squarely on the shoulders of leadership. Morever, if executive leadership squanders capital through irresponsible acts, there will also be severe consequences.
Lack of Management: It is the job of leadership to recruit, mentor, deploy, and retain management talent. If the management team is not getting the job done, it’s not a management problem, it’s the fault of executive leadership.
Lack of Sales: A lack of sales is ultimately attributable to a lack of leadership. Strategy, pricing, positioning, branding, distribution, compensation, or any number of other metrics tied to sales force productivity all rest with executive leadership
There was an interview published in the NY Times this weekend, with Kasper Rorsted, the chief executive of Henkel, the consumer and industrial products company based in Düsseldorf, Germany. It was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.
Here’s how the interview goes …
“Q. Do you remember the first time you were somebody’s boss?
A. That was in 1989, right when I got promoted from being a sales rep in the Digital Equipment Corporation to being a sales manager at the age of 27. I had about 20 people at that point in time. All but two of them were older than I was.
Q. Was that a good experience?
A. When you’re 27, you’re inexperienced, so you don’t know what to fear. I didn’t know what I probably should have known. The first time I realized it was serious was when, after about six months, I had to lay somebody off. And then suddenly you move from the sunny side of the deal to the real deal. I remember I was sleeping very poorly for almost for a week. He had a family.
So one of the lessons I learned from that, which I’ve been very aware of since, is to be friendly, but not a friend. I had grown up in the company and I knew everybody, so I was more a friend. But then I had to start having honest conversations with people about how they performed, and that taught me a lesson. I’ve always been friendly but never been friends anymore. When we have parties, I’m the one who will leave early.
Q. What were some other lessons?
A. Later on in my career, I realized that there is nothing personal in business because most decisions are made for business reasons.
Q.How did you learn that?
A. In 2004, I was dismissed by Hewlett-Packard. My immediate reaction was to take it very personally and say, “What are they doing to me?” I was running a division with 40,000 people and $30 billion in revenue. I learned a lot from that.
Within a month, I had 11 job offers, all in high tech, and I had one that came from a completely different industry. It was from Henkel, a consumer goods and adhesives company. And I decided I would take the job offer from Henkel because there was a clear path I could see to get the C.E.O. job.
But I realized when I came in that I had no clue. I didn’t know the industry. I didn’t know the employees. I didn’t know the customers. I didn’t know the competitors. And when you grow up in an industry, you tend to know more and more, and a lot of people, me included, become a bit complacent or arrogant because you know it all. You’ve seen all the problems before.
Here, I had to start from scratch again. It was like going back to first grade in school and I had three years of questions. It was a reminder of just how important it is to ask questions and listen and listen and listen and just be humble again. It was a great lesson for me, and I think I’ve changed my leadership style, to be much more humble and listen much more and ask questions.
Q.It was your first C.E.O. job. Were you surprised by anything?
A. I was surprised about a couple of things. One was how much conflict actually ends up at the C.E.O.’s desk. All of the problems that nobody else wants or can’t sort out, they end up on your desk. And there’s the immense amount of time you deal with people, and how important it is for you to be there and be visible, not sitting in the office, so people can see you and feel you and ask you things instead of just sending an e-mail.
Q.How would you say your leadership style has evolved over time?
A. I do less e-mail and a lot more of being present. Last year, I just moved my office to the U.S. and traveled around for six weeks without going home. This year, I’ll go to Asia for six weeks and will visit as many sites, employees and customers as I can. So that’s one — just understanding how important it is to be where the business is and understand how it works. The second part is being very clear on what is urgent and what is important and being very selective about the battles I pick.
Q. You mentioned you’re doing less e-mail.
A. I think e-mail is very often disruptive in corporate cultures. You sit next to people and send e-mail to each other instead of walking over or making a call or just trying to look for the personal interaction. I use e-mail more and more as text messaging — just very, very short messages. It’s very efficient, but I am convinced that e-mail does not replace presence. Also, I never read cc e-mails.”
Phil Harkins is a colleague and long-standing friend. He founded and is CEO of Linkage Inc, one of the world’s leading Leadership Development providers, including the flagship GILD Program (Global Institute for Leadership Development).
“Harkins outlines the processes to follow to eliminate communication barriers to foster learning and growth. He explains why and how powerful conversations are effective tools – and how to use and measure them to know when you’ve had a productive powerful conversation. He also addresses other key topics, including: the five kinds and 10 types of powerful conversations; when and where to have powerful conversations; how to avoid bad conversations that destroy relationships.”
It’s a great book, and recommended as a very practical guide.
In talking with Phil today, he is looking at going a step further with “Meaningful Conversations” – and I said I’d help find practical examples.
So this post is simply an online request for anyone with really meaningful Leadership stories or conversations that may be appropriate to contact me – and I’ll put you in touch with Phil.
I reported on Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen‘s talk at the RSA in July. In conversation with Matthew Taylor, he considers what makes societies unjust and asks: how can this be overcome?
The video is available, and I thought it worth sharing.
“I know my functional skills – but what are the skills and competencies I need to develop to become a General Manager, Divisional President or even CEO?”
That was a question I was asked over dinner yesterday evening.
Interestingly I had just been reading the correspondence section of the latest (September) Harvard Business Review, where there was a debate on whether you can be taught to be a General Manager or whether it is all down to experience – and other comments on being “Jack of all Trades, Master of None”.
Well, here’s my take. You can learn the skills, and learning from your experience is necessary. Some pointers:
1. Core Competency. Every successful organization has a few core competencies – and without mastering those there is no way for a General Manager to succeed. It is no surprise, for example, that marketing is an essential skill for a Procter & Gamble GM.
In my experience, every good GM or CEO has mastered at least one such “functional” competency. They may be responsible for “All Trades”, but they are definitely “Master of Something”.
So, if you want to be a GM, be sure you understand the core competencies of your enterprise as a first step.
2. Contextual Judgment & Creativity. No one can be in charge of everything that is going on today – teams and networks are needed. But a General Manager must continually be learning and internalizing the issues relevant to the enterprise – technology, markets, resources, social trends – and most importantly people.
Warren Bennis and Robert Thomas have written eloquently about how one’s judgment is honed at “crucible moments”. It is the way that the General Manager judges what is important and what is not that defines success. Bennis and Thomas talk of “Adaptive Capacity” being one of the most important traits for successful leaders, by which they mean changing things according to context with applied creativity.
This all begs the question – can you learn how to do this? I’d argue “yes”, provided you spend time learning new things and reflecting on what is happening to you and those around you.
3. Simple & Inspiring Communication It is easy to set out big, hairy goals and grand visions. The GM’s job is to make the complex simple, and to help everyone in the enterprise see how they fit – and feel inspired to do what is needed.
Wherever possible, describe in simple terms how it will feel for members of the organization to be at the end-state versus how things are today. Bring it alive at the individual level.
This is most definitely a teachable process – and there are many tools that help. See the 4E’s Leadership Framework as one such approach.
4. Cascading of Executional Objectives. Much research suggests that, whatever the grand design, it is the detailed execution of plans that define success or failure. Critical to this is that everyone knows they role and why they are doing things.
Consider using tools like the simple strategic cascade tool of OGSM (Objectives-Goals-Strategies-Measures). Objectives are words (e.g. be the most successful fruit juice marketeer in China). Goals are numbers (10% market share). Strategies are choices (Focus on distribution in the top 350 cities). And Measures allow you to track progress and dates.
Importantly, once the over-arching OGSM has been set, you can cascade Strategies to be owned by people in the organization as their Objective – and so on. Everyone knows their place and what they are being asked to do.
5. “What You Stand For”. This is true for leaders of all kinds, and not just GM’s. Leaders must make it clear to those around them what is important to them, what they represent as individuals, and thus allow their followers to decide to follow.
An essential component of this is sharing one’s values, not least as values congruence in an organization is very important. It is not enough to express these values – they must be seen in one’s day to day actions. Remember, trust takes a long time to build, and is broken in an instant – and nothing destroys trust more than shattered values.
Of course, when you are at the top of an organization, the spotlight is always on you, and you have an absolute responsibility to share what you are all about as a human being.
Are you in favour of centralized control, or distributed leadership? How important are social concerns? Profit or revenue? Dedication to the Company or work-life-balance? Change or the status quo? etc etc.
And, to repeat, you are what you do. There is no point saying what you stand for if you don’t actually practice it.
6. Personal Leadership model. We all carry in our head a view of what Leadership is, and that guides the way we do things. Sometimes we have it well-articulated, but rarely do we take the time to explain to others what it is. This is of course part of what we each stand for.
But, once more, the spotlight is always on the GM or CEO. Everyone watches how we lead, and what we believe about leadership. They will choose to respond positively or negatively – and they will choose to imitate or reject.
Many enterprises see leadership development as a pre-requisite for effective talent planning, team effectiveness and other core organizational activities. Nothing helps move this along better than senior people teaching leadership - by explaining what they are doing as events unfold or in more formal settings.
Teaching your personal leadership model is a powerful part of a General Manager’s team-building tool kit.
7. Energy For Change. Perhaps it goes without saying, but if the Boss lacks the energy to make things happen, to drive change, to continually reinforce the key messages, to make course corrections and so forth – then the job will just not get done.
I was once asked what I thought the hardest thing to deal with was for a new General Manager. Well, from my own experience, it is the loneliness that comes from knowing that you have to keep going no matter what happens, and no matter how supportive your team is.
General Managers make a personal commitment to take responsibility even if others can’t quite take it on themselves.
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I am sure that there are many other ways to address these questions, and I would be interested to hear critique or additions. But I hope this has been helpful.
In my continuing wandering around the web, and reflecting (pardon the pun) something I am dealing with at a client right now, I came across this article on “Narcissistic Employees” from the LeaderLab.
It was written by Bret Simmons, who is an Associate Professor of Management in the College of Business at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), where he teaches courses in organizational behavior, leadership, and personal branding to both undergraduate and MBA students.
Here’s Bret’s post:
“The narcissistic personality trait describes individuals that believe they are special, have a sense of entitlement, require excessive admiration, lack empathy, are interpersonally exploitive, and are arrogant and haughty. As defined by one of its most frequently used measures, the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI, Raskin & Hall, 1981), there are four dimensions to the narcissistic personality (Emmons, 1984):
Exploitivenss/Entitlement: The belief that one is adept at manipulating people and is entitled to do so
Leadership/Authority: The belief that one possesses an extraordinary ability to influence others and thus prefers positions of leadership and authority
Superiority/Arrogance: The belief that one is just better than others and is a born leader
Self-absorption/Self-admiration: An elevated sense of vanity and the belief that one is special.
Surprisingly, there is very little research on narcissism published in the top management and industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology journals (e.g. Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Journal of Organizational Behavior). One of the field’s best researchers, Timothy Judge, along with Jeffery LePine and Bruce Rich, published a study in the Journal of Applied Psychology in 2006 entitled “Loving Yourself Abundantly: Relationship of the Narcissistic Personality to Self- and Other Perceptions of Workplace Deviance, Leadership, and Task and Contextual Performance.”
Based on their findings, here are seven things you should expect to see from a narcissistic employee:
Narcissists are likely to also be extraverted and agreeable, but unlikely to be open to experience, conscientious, and emotionally stable.
Narcissists may be detrimental in team contexts that require cooperation and a positive climate. Because they are interpersonally abrasive and dismissive, narcissists don’t make good team players.
I have always had a rather contrarian view on “High Potentials”. On the one hand, I realise that every organization must identify and develop its best talent as the leadership pipeline of the future. Yet, on the other hand, I have long believed that the real skill of the leader is to help everyone develop – not to be stars but to be “a little bit better”. In that way, the entire organization grows and improves.
Maybe the truth is that we must do both. Yet there seems to be a lot written which implies that development of high-potentials is the critical step.
As I was thinking about this issue today, I came across a very recent post by longstanding colleague and leadership expert Jim Clemmer. His analysis of whether we should actually tell people they are “high potential” adds to the debate. Here it is, in full:
“My last blog post discussed Dan Tobin’s new book on building a leadership development program. His first chapter deals with identifying your organization’s high-potential talent. Once high potential people are identified, the next question often is whether to tell those rising stars that they’ve been flagged as such and will be developed further.
In their June 2010 Harvard Business Review article “Are You a High Potential?” Douglas A. Ready, Jay A. Conger, and Linda A. Hill report on their 15 – 20 years of experience and recent survey of high-potential programs in 45 companies. They’ve found “a growing trend toward transparency… Executives are tired of exit interviews in which promising employees say, ‘If I had known you had plans for me and were serious about following through, I would have stayed.’”
But telling people they’re seen as rising leaders with high potential raises their expectations. If organizations don’t follow through with training and developmental opportunities there’s a high risk these key people will feel they’re being manipulated as a retention ploy. “Either approach has risks: If you don’t make the list public, you might lose your best performers; if you opt for transparency, you’ll heighten the expectation of action.”
In her HBR blog post, Are “High-Potential” Programs an Anachronism, Tammy Erickson provides a contrary point of view that today’s fast changing organizations require a rethinking of our approaches to succession planning and leadership development. “We need to recognize that individuals have the potential to grow in multiple dimensions — and not all paths do or should lead ‘up’ … all this competitive ranking and rating falls flat with many X’ers and Y’s. It’s not even that they don’t like it — they don’t get it. It doesn’t seem relevant. For many, it assumes a set of career goals and a path to get there that they don’t necessarily share.”
We find that effective succession planning and leadership development is tightly interwoven with an organization’s culture and executive team development. Earlier this year, I gave a presentation to HR executives on this. You can view my slides on Integrating Succession Planning, Culture Change, and Executive Team Development.
If you’re not responsible for succession planning or leadership development across your organization, a more related issue is whether you’re considered high potential talent. Here’s what the authors of “Are You a High Potential?” discovered are the core characteristics of high potentials:
Deliver Strong Results – Credibly – making your numbers must be balanced with building trust and confidence among your colleagues and influencing a wide array of stakeholders.
Master New Types of Expertise – this often means transitioning from technical expertise to leading teams, developing others, and strengthening your persuasion skills and ability to influence.
Recognize That Behavior Counts – your performance and results first get you noticed but whether you’re now becoming a role model and teacher becomes vital to whether you’re seen as a rising future leader.
The authors go on to explain that four “X Factors of High Potentials” are drive to excel, catalytic learning ability, enterprising spirit, and dynamic sensors.
What path are you on? Whether you aspire to rise to higher levels of leadership in your organization or just keep yourself growing, these characteristics and factors are excellent checkpoints for personal development.”
This is an oldie but goldie – still funny, still appropriate. Try as I might, I could not find the original source, so please let me know if you do …
A man in a hot air balloon, realizing he was lost, reduced altitude and spotted a woman below. He descended further and shouted to the lady “Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am”
The woman below replied, “You’re in a hot air balloon, hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You’re between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude.”
“You must be in I.T.,” said the balloonist.
“Actually I am,” replied the woman, “How did you know?”
“Well,” answered the balloonist, “Everything you have told me is technically correct, but I’ve no idea what to make of your information and the fact is I’m still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help at all. If anything, you’ve delayed my trip.”
The woman below responded, “You must be in Management.”
“I am,” replied the balloonist, “but how did you know?”
“Well,” said the woman, “you don’t know where you are or where you’re going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise, which you’ve no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems.
The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it’s my f***ing fault…”
Some years ago I was pleased to take part in some workshops on Leadership with a mixture of soldiers and civilians at the Royal Military College, Duntroon, the main Officer Training centre for the Australian Army.
General Peter Cosgrove was the Commandant and a gracious host. Peter rose to international fame as the commander of the International Peace Keeping Force in East Timor (1999) and then was Chief of the Australian Defence Force (2002-2005). Before all of that happened, and soon after receiving his commission, 22-year-old Peter Cosgrove won the Military Cross, leading his platoon in a protracted assault on enemy positions in Vietnam.
In any event, Peter was kind enough to give me a copy of the Australian Army Leadership Manual, a fascinating volume ranging from practical tactical advice to strategic philosophy.
One of the quotes from the volume has always stuck with me – and I commend it to any leader, military or otherwise, who is thinking about his or her team. Here’s the quote:
“Never underestimate the enemy. Respect him, but equally always remember, regardless of the odds, team to team, yours is better.
If there is any doubt in your mind in regard to this previous sentence you had better start training harder, or hand over your command.”
Australian Army Leadership Manual, 1994. Junior Leadership on the Battlefield
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A guest article from Alexis Bonari.
A blog can also save you some time that might otherwise be spent answering questions. If employees know that your blog is consistently updated, they may rely on it to review basic information instead of knocking on your door or sending you an e-mail. You can enable the comments on your blog if you want to receive feedback from employees or encourage public conversation about your posts.
There was an 
