Leadership Communication

At The Grossman Group, we started the year gearing up to celebrate a big milestone: our 20th Anniversary. And come March, things changed.

We quickly shifted our plans, and our focus, like the rest of the world. In our case, we began providing our clients support for the pandemic, for social unrest, for diversity, inclusion, equity, and belonging, and more. We did this to help organizations connect with their people in new and meaningful ways, and to facilitate the tough conversations on difficult, yet critically important topics people were, and are, grappling with in their personal and work lives.

As the calendar year starts to wind down, and some of the uncertainty settles into place, I’ve found myself pausing to think about all the great work communicators have done this year, despite being up against the most unprecedented personal and professional challenges of our lifetime. I think what’s served communicators and the leaders they support so well during the past months, is they relied on tried and true effective communications strategies to keep employees informed, engaged and focused, listened to, and set up for success.

In February 2020, I accepted an assignment as the Interim CEO of a leading scientific professional society. The Board President and President-elect were looking to me to keep the 130-member staff engaged and calm until the new CEO came on board, ensuring that valued society programs continued to operate effectively.

I knew there would be some challenges in leading the team. Transitions are always unsettling. This one had a number of elements that were raising stress levels – an effective and popular CEO was retiring, and the team was worried about changes I might make as well as changes the new CEO might institute. In addition, the Board was ready to adopt a visionary strategic plan, and employees wondered what their role would be in the society’s future.

Something I often hear from leaders is, “I don’t have time to communicate.” It seems this statement comes from a perception that either there isn’t enough time to draft a plan or that more could be done in the time saved from drafting or sharing a plan. As a communicator, you likely hear this too.

If your leader believes that there’s no time to communicate, you may hear him or her say things like:

Sharing feedback with colleagues is a critical part of working together successfully. Yet many people I talk with feel they could do a better job giving feedback, whether by being more prompt or direct, or simply by ensuring a conversation happens. Giving feedback can feel uncomfortable, maybe even more so when it has to be delivered virtually.

Personal discomfort aside, the truth is that most of us could be significantly more effective at work with regular input on what we’re doing well and what could be better. Timely, frequent and specific feedback helps everyone improve. We can better recognize blind spots, know what to keep doing and when to change course, and benefit from building relationships with those who give us the gift of their advice.

So how can we give feedback that gets results?

Leadership is personal, and in focusing on business goals, leaders can detach themselves from the human element in the workplace. Yet building trust and making a personal connection are key to motivating and engaging employees, which in turn are essential to delivering business results.

A recent study published in Harvard Business Review found three elements necessary for leaders to build trust among employees: positive relationships, good judgment/expertise, and consistency. Positive relationships ranked most important.

The answer here might surprise you.

Both can be effective communicators, if they understand the implications of their preference, and flex their style. The variables to consider are about the quality and quantity of communications.

How to Be a More Effective Introvert

Over the last several months, we’ve all faced discomfort in new ways – from navigating the unknowns of the pandemic and making (and communicating) difficult business decisions, to facing unconscious bias and having important conversations about race – there’s no doubt we’ve gotten out of our comfort zones in new ways. If you’re like me, I’m committed to taking these lessons forward and pushing myself to embrace discomfort even more. If you were to commit to some additional chutzpah in your communications, where might you focus your energies?

Here are 9 ways to build more courageous conversations:

It’s no secret that employees look for – and want – more meaningful communication and interactions with their colleagues, teams and leaders, especially given the recent events. Research shows that better communication leads to higher engagement, which is linked to increased employee motivation, productivity, sales, and – on the flip side – less absenteeism, turnover and injuries in the workplace.

How do development programs, such as the skills of influence, significantly impact participants and business long term, for the benefit of attendees and their organizations? Changed human behavior is hard to measure but people recognize when their own changes have positive results. Many participants, who went on to be senior leaders, have shared the lessons they learned, from courses I had the opportunity to facilitate earlier in their careers. Not only did they value their own personal results, but as leaders, the new approaches they used cascaded down through their organizations for better culture and business results.