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Engaging Communication: A Leader's Lifeline
by Lee J. Colan, Ph.D.
A Gallup poll revealed that only 26% of U.S. employees are fully engaged at any time. On the other end of the spectrum, 19% of employees are actively disengaged, meaning they intentionally act in ways that negatively impact their organizations. The annual cost nationwide to employ this actively disengaged group exceeds $300 billion.
So, what can you do to more fully engage your team?
Communication is a leader's lifeline when is comes to engaging the minds and hearts of employees. In fact, an employee opinion survey conducted by a worldwide accounting firm found that communication was the single best predictor of employee engagement. In other words, the degree and quality of communication with employees, more than another factor, predicted the engagement level of employees. Also, consider Kip Tindell, co-founder of The Container Store, a consistently top-ranked company on Fortune’s list of “100 Best Companies to Work For”. His guiding mantra for his team is leadership is communication. It has led to a highly engaged team of employees and a consistently profitable business.
Engaging leaders view communication as an outcome versus an input. In other words, they focus on the results of their communication from the receiver’s perspective. Engaging communication has two basic objectives:
Improving understanding is an intellectual objective and engages the mind. On the other hand, building support and acceptance is an emotional goal and engages the heart.
The most critical and influential communication occurs between a leader and an employee. As a leader, you can connect hearts and minds by using a simple three-step process in all your interpersonal interactions:
- Explain
- Ask
- Engage
Let’s look at a conversation between a team leader, Cameron, and an employee, Grace. Watch how their dialog evolves through all three steps to foster engagement.
| Cameron: |
“Good morning, Grace. I’m glad I bumped into you. I wanted talk to you about something. We really need to improve our response time on special orders.” (Cameron is explaining his expectations.) |
| Grace: |
“OK, I understand.” (Grace is simply observing.) |
| Cameron: |
“You’re on the front lines with this issue. Why do you think our response time has gone way up lately?” (Cameron is asking for input.) |
| Grace: |
“Well, the new system migration has had its bumps. But I think the bigger issue is that we weren’t prepared for the recent promotional campaign to our VIP customers. Our call volume has increased 200% for special orders over the same time period last year.” (Grace is participating.) |
| Cameron: |
“That’s an interesting insight, Grace. If you have some time available tomorrow, I’d love to discuss your ideas on how we can get back on track, and just as importantly, what we can do to prevent this problem in the future. Our response time has a direct impact on our bottom line, so I’m happy to give you whatever support you need to take care of this.” (Cameron is engaging Grace.) |
| Grace: |
“That sounds great. I’ll definitely need some help. Let me send you some initial recommendations before our meeting. I’m confident we can identify a good solution and get it implemented quickly.” (Now Grace is engaged and motivated to perform.) |
Leaders who follow these three simple steps achieve predictable, positive results including: increased engagement, identifying more and better solutions to work problems, and spending less time reacting to problems and more time preventing them.
Let’s take a closer look at each of the three steps of engaging communication, and see how you can create your own engaging dialogs with your team.
Step 1 – EXPLAIN
Explaining is the most fundamental form of communication. When having any dialogue with an employee, it’s critical that you clearly explain how the issue and his/her performance affects the team and how that ultimately affects his/her job security, promotional opportunities, recognition and raises.
Sometimes it’s hard to decide what to communicate with employees and what to withhold. Leaders often say (usually to themselves), “They don’t really need to know all that” or “My team won’t really understand.” But the truth is that leaders who underestimate the intelligence of their employees generally overestimate their own.
When employees’ questions aren’t answered or situations aren’t fully explained, people tend to fill in the blanks with their own assumptions. And you can bet their assumptions are almost always worst-case scenarios. This starts the silence spiral:
Silence leads to Doubt,
Doubt leads to Fear,
Fear leads to Panic,
Panic leads to Worst Case Thinking.
For example, a large national retailer recently fell into the Silence Spiral when it made costly aesthetic improvements to the grounds of its corporate offices. These improvements were made on the heels of a workforce reduction. Both remaining and terminated employees were extremely disillusioned as they saw the new landscaping being installed. What the company failed to tell employees was that these improvements: were required by a local city ordinance; carried substantial fines for non-compliance to the tune of $300,000; and had been planned for over nine months in order to meet an impending deadline. Without this information, employees assumed the worst and became disengaged. Admittedly, sharing this information may not have completely eliminated employees’ concerns. However, it certainly would have stopped the negative assumptions, ill will and bad PR that was spun off as the Silence Spiral picked up steam.
This same Silence Spiral occurs in teams every day at every level. Fill in the silence with your team to help prevent negative assumptions. If you learn about a new project in another department that won’t affect your team for a few months, tell them about it anyway. They can start preparing, or at minimum, they won’t be caught off guard or hear rumors. You’re not protecting your employees by not communicating with them. That’s a common leadership fallacy. Your employees will either find out on their own, or they will make assumptions that are far worse than reality.
Your employees can handle it. Talk to them – explain what’s going on.
Step 2 – ASK
Explaining is fundamental to engaging communication, but it’s a one-way process. To build upon that, ask employees what they think. When you do, they will be participating in two-way communication. I know, revolutionary, isn’t it? This is a classic example of the knowing-doing gap, an area where leaders know what they should do, but don’t do it. Asking employees questions is a long-established principle for building engagement. However, leaders tend to stumble on this step. One reason may be the myth that a leader has to implement every employee suggestion. The truth is that it’s sufficient and reasonable to let employees know they’ve been heard and what action you will, or will not take, as a result.
The key to asking is listening. Don’t ask if you won’t listen. Asking without listening only builds cynicism, and ultimately, disengagement – it will destroy the soul of your team. And if you don’t listen, you don’t learn. The test for effective listening is learning. Are you learning about your employees’ needs, how they view their contributions to the team’s purpose, how appreciated they feel, how much autonomy they want? Remember what Mark Twain said, “If we were supposed to talk more than we listen, we would have two mouths and one ear.”
If you’re not listening to your employees, you will gradually create larger and larger “blind spots” for yourself. Blind spots are weaknesses that are apparent to others, but not to you. As a leader, you have to make a concerted effort to keep in touch with the realities of your employees. Keep in mind that the higher you are in an organization, the more filtered the information you receive. It’s a natural and predictable phenomenon. But it’s a precarious position for any leader!
You can combat this phenomenon by asking questions. Ask them in groups, in one-on-one meetings, in surveys, in emails, in the lunchroom. Ask your team members questions such as:
What can I do to support your success? What are your time killers? What makes it hard to get your job done? What is the best part of your job?
Ask your employees what they think, listen to their answers, and you will be one step closer to engaging them.
Step 3 – ENGAGE
By asking your employees questions, you encourage them to participate in a two-way conversation. But to have truly productive communication, there’s one final step to take: you must engage your employees in ongoing, meaningful dialogue. Engage them in the process of developing solutions to problems, identifying areas for improvement and finding opportunities for growth. Engage them in seeking new ways to reduce expenses, expedite customer service or improve coordination with other departments.
Some leaders feel threatened at the idea of involving their employees involving problems. Perhaps they feel they’re giving up control over how they and their team will achieve their goals. If you’ve ever felt this way, remember this: your team is closer to the actual work and to your customers than you are. And keep in mind there is more than one way to effectively solve a problem. Even though an employee’s approach might be different than yours, the benefits of building engagement that come from employees “owning” the solution or process far outweigh any loss of control you might experience.
Another major benefit of engaging communication is that it requires employees to become responsible and accountable for results. When employees are involved, the buck doesn’t stop with you – it stops with each employee on the team. Consider the following conversation between two employees:
| Joe: |
Boy, I sure would like to ask the boss why he let things get so out of control with our team. Seems like we’re being really inefficient, we’re not sure what to do, and no one is having much fun.” |
| Lynn: |
Yea, I’d like to hear his answer too. So what’s stopping you from asking him?” |
| Joe: |
Oh, uh, well…I’m afraid he might ask me the same question!” |
By engaging employees, you challenge them to be accountable for tackling new issues and solving problems. Require team members to bring you solutions instead of problems. There’s no hiding from problems on an engaged team!
Toyota does a great job of engaging their employees. Toyota employees are required to submit two suggestions per month that they can implement themselves or with a teammate. As a result, Toyota receives about 1.5 million employee suggestions for improvement each year. More impressively, 80% of these actually get implemented! Even though many of Toyota’s employees perform repetitive manufacturing jobs, this approach fully engages employees in improves their work processes. What kind of impact would this approach have in your organization?
Engaging Minds and Hearts
Engaging communication is the leader’s lifeline - your primary tool to fulfill employees’ needs. Engaged minds build your employees’ performance and engaged hearts build their passion – they go hand in hand.
Passionate Performance: Engaging Minds and Hearts to Conquer the Competition
offers practical strategies for engaging the minds and hearts of your team.
Embrace your lifeline and engage your team!
Copyright © 2004 by The L Group, Inc.
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