I saw this quote for the first time early last year when designing a development programme for a team of senior executives and it really resonated with me. Then the other day I was flicking through the pages of one of my books, “The Leaders Voice” by Boyd Clarke and Ron Crossland (ISBN 1-59079-016-2) and I came across a section about the leadership communication gap. It details a report titled “Strategic Vision” and Lou Harris and Associates and the Los Angeles Times Mirror shared the results of detailed interviews with 246 senior executives from America’s largest companies. Each executive was asked to evaluate how effective he or she was at communicating the vision to the organisation…. and the results were….

Very Effective                 47%

Somewhat Effective        46%

Not too effective               4%

Not effective at all            1%

Not sure                         2%

 

The research was continued by asking frontline managers and supervisors from many of the same companies, and the question they were asked was “How effective are your senior executives at communicating the company’s vision?”….. and the results were…

Very Effective                  8%

Somewhat Effective        21%

Not too effective             32%

Not effective at all           38%

Not sure                          1%

 

Quite a mis-match!  Now this survey was done in America and was done way back in 1986. That was then… it can’t be like that nowadays…can it?

 

The fabulous thing about people is that we are all deliciously different and unique and take in information in different ways and to varying degrees! For example - as leaders we may have in our minds the “What?”… What we want our people to do?; we then open our mouths and express that “What?” in words…. Our people translate our words into what they hear (not always the same thing!) and then give our request their own interpretation before they translate it into actions. Very often this works well (or we presume it has!) …. when it hasn’t… the first we know is when an error occurs, the customer (internal or external) complains, etc. etc.

 

So how do we engage people? How do we ensure clarity between our vision and the resulting actions of our people? To engage and motivate you can stimulate and transfer meaning through emotions as well as facts, symbols as well as stark reality, and by using metaphors and stories told with passion. We follow leaders because of how we feel. As for achieving clarity, ask your people for feedback …..you’ll then know how you measure up and what you need to do – if you are not getting the response you want - then consider who needs to change.

 

 

You challenge.... as a leader or a manager...

• How effective are you at getting your message across?
• Go and get some feedback from your team, either formally through a questionnaire or 360-degree feedback or informally by having a chat. Who are you most comfortable about asking for feedback? Consider asking those who you are least comfortable about asking!
• What are the practical steps you could take to increase the effectiveness of your communication?
• When are you going to take them?