October 2009 - Posts
In my last post, I talked about the erosion of trust in leaders.
The current climate has caused many organisations to re-evaluate their strategic priorities and to change direction as a result. For this to work, employees need to be committed to the new direction. However, the climate in many organisations has also taken a battering in the wake of redundancies, reorganisations and budget cuts. When the need for engagement is at its highest the climate for engagement is at its most vulnerable. HR has a key role to play in enabling leaders to respond effectively.Leaders need to relearn how to create a climate of trust and involvement.
Employees are typically more sceptical and more wary than they were before the crisis. To increase trust, engagement and commitment to new strategic priorities, leaders need to engage with employees and stakeholders.
Here are some ideas on how to do just that:
Engage with the head – help people understand.
- Define a clear goal that provide specific direction and outcomes that people can relate to
- Communicate using stories and personal insights that make it real. Run frequent sessions that remind employees of where you’re going, their role in it and where you are currently
- Focus on symbolic and financial outcomes that show real benefits of the new direction.
Engage with the heart – help people feel connected.
- Build a strong and committed top team that provides a clear role model for change
- Get out and build relationships with people across the organisation through events, meetings and informal discussions. Help people feel connected
- Build a strong network of change agents who can work with you to nurture engagement across the organisation.
Engage with the guts – help people to believe.
- Tell the truth, even when it is inconvenient. The more uncertain the world becomes, the more we want our leaders to be real, so encourage authenticity
- Create a sense mission, a cause in which people can believe, and then encourage a climate where individuals are encouraged to speak up without fear in pursuit of that cause
- Align reward and recognition so that employees believe the organisation is serious.
If our leaders can combine head, heart and guts and become 'whole', we're all onto a winner.
We are now officially in the longest recession since modern records began in the 1950s - with little chance of recovery any time soon. Employees are being told to expect a long hard slog while the economy turns itself around. Yet while everyone else tightens their belt, it seems that City bank bonuses could hit £6bn this year, up by £2bn on 2008.
The current climate has caused many leaders to make decisions and to behave in ways that have caused an enormous erosion of trust among employees. Many people are now afraid to speak up in their organisations. They fear for their jobs and their future.
So how can we trust our leaders to make the right decisions for us?
People today want authentic leaders who are open and honest, who mean what they say and live what they believe. Authenticity will be a prized leadership quality in the coming years. As people in organisations forge multiple relationships with each other and with external sources of information through technology, they will spot fakes faster. Some leaders attempt to get away with ‘smiling generalities’. They tell their people, “We’re all family” or that the company has no plans to sell off a division. Yet through chat rooms and online forums, people can quickly assess if these blandly optimistic statements are accurate.
The ability to engage, inspire and motivate is more important than ever. To survive in uncertain times, leaders need to make brave and bold decisions. Enthusing others to follow and to make strategy a reality is key to success. (In my next post, I’ll suggest some practical steps you can take to make this happen).
From a whole leadership perspective, leaders need to line up their head for strategy with their hearts to understand their people and then have the guts to tell the truth even when it is inconvenient.
The more uncertain the world becomes, the more we want our leaders to be real.
Only then can we begin to trust again.
Recently I co-hosted a seminar for brand strategists and human resources directors from a range of leading organisations whose brands are household names. It was a fascinating event, held in partnership with Lippincott, the brand strategy consultancy. We explored the links between successful branding, leadership, employee engagement, customer experience, and organisational success. Our guests were keen to network, learn and share knowledge. One of them summed up the key theme of the day when she commented, “There is no point having a set of brand values and not living them. Employees are the brand.”
Modern customers distrust many traditional marketing tactics such as TV advertising and direct mail. They increasingly trust word-of-mouth experiences and personal recommendations. What really builds a brand’s reputation today is a combination of authentic stories and inspiring experiences. Usually a positive experience of a brand is based on positive human interaction - the hotel concierge with great local knowledge, or the cabin crew who help keep children happily occupied on a long flight. Equally, stories of poor customer service spread more quickly than ever on internet forums and social networking sites. All our guests agreed: “It’s employee behaviour that makes the difference and makes the experience unique and positive.”
Engaging employees so they live a brand’s values and provide great customer experiences is key to the brand’s success. This requires great leadership. The CEO and the leadership team are well placed to build momentum from the inside and embed the brand in the organisation’s DNA. They can also add value by becoming real advocates, not only for the overall brand, but also for specific aspects of it. As one of our guests commented, “Once a brand engagement programme has CEO endorsement and leadership team sponsorship, it will have real impact. Without that, it won’t.”
This view was reinforced by another: “When we’re launching regional branding workshops for employees, we see real differences in the regions where the regional leader is present at the workshop.”
Another stressed the importance of unambiguous, consistent communication from the top: “Regular, clear and simple messages can really help to engage employees. Honesty and positivity are also important. They inspire confidence.”
For some, awareness of the importance of branding and employee engagement has grown in recent times: “In a marketplace that has become increasingly commoditised, customer experience is a key differentiator.”
“Since the economic crisis, there has been a reawakening of the importance of genuine branding that is lived by employees.”
So overall, there is an increased awareness not only of the power of branding, but of the importance of engaging employees to live a brand’s values – and the vital role leaders play in making that happen.
“Brands are just logos.” I still meet leaders who believe this, but the vast majority recognise the intrinsic value of their brand (or brands) to the organisations they lead, and their personal responsibility as stewards of the brand. Powerful brands represent the organisation’s ethos, its priorities and ways of working, and therefore why we as consumers should trust it, as well as the promise of value behind its products and services.
As leaders, we need to look after the brand at two levels: as an asset whose value we need to enhance and as something we embody (whether we like it or not) while we are in office. Strong brands represent significant commercial value which needs investment and nurture to protect and build. This is well understood. But leaders of organisations also represent the brand every day, through our action and inaction, through what we say and what we stand for. Brands should be bigger than any individual, but it is helpful to recognise that leaders are both stewards and role models for the corporate brand they lead. Our behaviour speaks volumes.
Last week, I co-hosted a seminar for brand strategists and human resources directors from a range of leading organisations. We explored the links between successful branding, customer experience, employee engagement and organisational success. I look forward to sharing some of the fascinating insights from this event in my next post.
Once upon a time, leaders didn’t have to worry too much about satisfying the requirements of different groups of individuals. Employees shared common expectations – usually focused on pay and job security. And most managers shared a traditionalist, autocratic management style. Bosses told employees what to do and employees did it. Studies have shown that this type of leadership results in low levels of employee engagement and motivation.
Today we have increasingly diverse workforces. Age, gender, sexual orientation, personal philosophy and many other factors influence what people want. It’s no longer all about money and security. There was a time when many employees wanted a ‘job for life’. Today, even when many people feel lucky to have a job at all, they still find the idea of working in the same organisation for their entire working lives completely abhorrent. Employees today want more than security and a salary. Most want a job that is rewarding in other ways. They also want a job which meets their needs – needs which may change throughout their working lives. Individuals may take on caring responsibilities, want to live in another country, or decide to embark on a different career. If one organisation cannot provide a job which both provides a sense of purpose and meets personal needs, they will not hesitate to look elsewhere.
According to the authors of the book, Leading in Times of Crisis: Navigating through complexity, diversity and uncertainty to save your business (Wiley, 2009), the gap between an organisation’s focus on profit and all the factors that make work purposeful is getting bigger. The authors call this ‘The Money-Meaning Gap’.
Employees have an increasing need to work for meaning, as well as money. Money is still important, but employees today want leaders who have a vision and values for their company that places shareholder return within a broader global context. In the middle of a financial crisis, it’s too easy to forget that there’s more to life than money. However, leaders everywhere need to remember that money alone does not motivate.
When we emerge from recession and there is some space created by growth again, we are likely to see the return of the growing interest among leaders in engaging with people at a spiritual level as well as at the emotional and cognitive levels. Spiritual in this context means the connection between our work, i.e. what we do, and a wider pattern of meaning. Some consumers are, according to brand research, increasingly looking for products and services that are in tune with their ethical point of view and with what they see as fundamentally important, beyond the vagaries of day to day living. In the same way some employees seek work which is in itself ethically satisfying and within an organisation or industry that serves a purpose to which they are aligned. Of course money matters, but there is an increasing need to work for meaning, as well as money. I’m going to talk about this ‘money-meaning gap’ a bit more in my next post. As leaders we can help make these connections for our colleagues, helping them make explicit the purpose and ethical value of their work and that of our organisation. We can help to articulate the role our work has in the wider collective health of our society, and therefore the contribution we each as individuals are making. This is often referred to as providing meaning, meaning that feeds our intrinsic human need to feel we are in some way of value, and that our working lives have purpose beyond the pursuit of financial security. Once the immediate threats to personal financial security diminish we will be able to take a longer term view again, including answering the question, “Why am I doing this?”
One of my colleagues died recently. He was a great character, a true professional with an easy smile and a penchant for mischief. He was the sort of person you like as well as respect, someone who brought energy into the room when he entered. We miss him enormously.
My colleague’s death throws into stark perspective all of the challenges of day to day living for me and for others who knew him. If one of our roles as leaders is to help others to see meaning in what they do, at moments like this we can also place that meaning into perspective. Yes, the vision for change we have been communicating is key to our future success. Yes, the focus on creating a differentiated customer experience will be a vital differentiator in the future. Yes, our business priorities are important.
But at the end of the day, we are all human beings with an underlying sense of mortality and a similar mix of personal and professional priorities that sometimes seem to be competing. And as leaders it is helpful to be reminded by events such as an early death that our role is to help align these conflicting commitments, these paradoxical priorities, for our colleagues.