Expedition to Better Management

Seven Communication Mistakes Managers Make

By Stever Robbins

1. Making controversial announcements without doing groundwork first.
Any controversial decision can engender rumors, anxiety, and resistance. So rather than announcing a controversial decision to an entire group, prep people one-on-one. Learn who will object, and why.

Decisions about change are the most charged — reorganizations, changing goals, and the departure of key employees create uncertainty, and uncertainty generates anxiety.

To forestall anxiety, open a dialogue with the other person. Put a name to the problem: "This reorganization means we'll be doing some things differently, and that makes some people apprehensive." Then address the concerns raised in response to your statement:

* Is the other person uncertain about the future? Share the scenario you expect to unfold.
* Does the reorganization jeopardize a project? Share plans for keeping it afloat.
* Demonstrate that you get it, keeping in mind that you can address emotion better with body language than with words. Make sure yours conveys concern and empathy.

2. Lying
Some lies or partial truths are well-intentioned. Certain topics must remain confidential while they're under discussion. But be careful how you keep secrets. If people know you've lied, you will lose their trust forever. A start-up company's controller watched the CFO lie to members of other departments and subsequently began to doubt the CFO's sincerity. He began looking for a new job with a boss whose intentions he could trust. In that instance, lying cost the company a valuable employee.

Rather than lie, train yourself to respond, "I'm not free to comment" or "I can't answer that fully right now," when asked about confidential or sensitive topics. Consistency is important. Warren Buffett never discusses his investments, even with shareholders. As a result, his silence on a particular deal gives away nothing.

3. Ignoring the realities of power
Surprised that you never hear bad news until it's too late? Don't be. The more power you have, the less you'll hear about problems. It's human nature: problems are filtered and softened as they ascend the corporate hierarchy, with each messenger seeking to soften the blow. If you want an honest assessment of a problem, seek out bad news. Welcome it. And when it comes, show your appreciation.

Conversely, messages are magnified as they travel down the hierarchy. If you look pained during a presentation, everyone will "know" you hated the presentation (or worse — the presenter). No one will think to blame the pastrami sandwich you ate too fast before you came to the meeting. Jokes are especially dangerous. When the managing director of a consulting firm joked, "If you're not here Sunday, don't bother coming in Monday," his project team wasn't sure what to do. One said, "We were pretty sure he was joking, but. . ."

Put a lid on rumors by using plain, simple language. End meetings by reviewing your reactions and next steps. "I value your analysis, Chris. The sales trend is disturbing. Let's follow up on Wednesday."

4. Underestimating your audience's intelligence
It's tempting to gloss over issues because "people won't understand." Why explain a reorganization when you can simply say, "Here's the new org chart"? But that's a cop-out. Front-line employees may not be masters of organizational design, but they deserve to know the rationale behind changes that affect their lives. If you think your people won't understand something, remember it's your job to explain it to them.

Many managers like to gloss over problems when motivating their teams. But if things aren't going well, those teams are probably well aware of the problems. In fact, they've probably known about them longer than you have. Rather than avoiding the situation, enlist their skills in finding solutions.

5. Confusing process with outcome
In goal-setting, compensation, and evaluation, it's easy to confuse process with outcome. You promise your team a 7% raise, but then the board, concerned about the downturn, caps raises at 3%. You fight like mad to raise the number, and you compromise on 4%. But your people don't appreciate it. In fact, they're downright resentful. How could they be so insensitive to all your hard work?

Simple. Your hard work was process, and you promised them an outcome. You want them to appreciate how hard you tried, but they wanted a specific result. Since they didn't get it, they can't see past that fact. You want people to value you for your hard work. But when evaluating others, it's always easier to judge outcomes. Most organizations penalize employees for the wrong outcome, even if they follow the right process. Perversely, others are rewarded for the right outcome, even when they flout the rules about process.

6. Using inappropriate forms of communication
E-mail is great for conveying information, but don't use it for emotional issues; e-mail messages are too easy to misconstrue. If you're squirming while reading an e-mail, leave your computer and deal with the situation in person or by telephone.

At the same time, phone calls and face-to-face meetings are inefficient ways to disseminate information, but great for discussing nuanced issues. You can respond directly to the listener's reaction, and you can use your tone of voice and facial expressions to control your message. "I'm sure you did a great job" could be read sarcastically in an e-mail, but the same words can be delivered sincerely in person with the right tone of voice.

Furthermore, some people are listeners, while others are readers. Listeners won't focus on written memos but are great in conversation. Readers write great memos and are also glad to read them, but conversation sometimes fails to fully engage them. If you talk to a reader or write to a listener, your message might not get through. Don't be afraid to ask people how they prefer to receive information; most people know the answer. If they don't, a little attention on your part will reveal what works best. (And for some people, it's a combination of the two.)

7. Ignoring acts of omission
What you don't say may be sending as loud a message as what you do say. If you don't give praise, people get the message they're unappreciated. If you don't explain the rationale behind decisions, the message is that you don't trust them. And if you don't tell people where the company wants to go, they don't know how to help it get there.

When fundraising became the CEO's priority at a distance learning company, he stopped communicating his vision to employees. Since money was constantly on his mind, he did mention financial goals. Eventually, the company culture became money-focused, and the vision was lost. But when the CEO delivered a vision-oriented presentation at a conference, one of his employees approached him afterward to say that she had never felt so inspired. As a result, he changed his internal communication strategy to emphasize vision once more, and saw morale soar.

By their very nature, mistakes of omission are hard to uncover. Review your major goals and the communication that's needed to support those goals. Ask what message may have been sent by your silence so far. And be willing to ask people, "What messages are you getting from me?"

Stever Robbins is president of VentureCoach.com, a Cambridge, Mass. entrepreneurial coaching service.

How to Lead When You're Not the Boss

By Christina Bielaszka-DuVernay

Real leadership is never a matter of mere formal authority. Leaders are effective when other people acknowledge them as such--by listening seriously to their ideas, valuing and following their suggestions for action, and turning to them for advice.

Opportunities to lead aren't limited to times when you have formal authority over a particular team or venture. When you step forward and demonstrate leadership, you will contribute value to the project or enterprise--and strengthen your leadership skills.

In their book Lateral Leadership: Getting Things Done When You're Not the Boss (2nd ed., Profile Books, 2004), Harvard negotiation specialist Roger Fisher and coauthor Alan Sharp lay out a useful five-step method for leading when you are not formally in charge. Its steps can be applied to virtually any project you're involved in or team or meeting you participate in.

1. Establish goals
People accomplish the most when they have a clear set of objectives. It follows that any group's first order of business is to write down exactly what it hopes to achieve. The person who asks the question "Can we start by clarifying our goals here?"--and who then assumes the lead in discussing and drafting those goals--is automatically taking a leadership role, whatever his or her position.

2. Think systematically
Observe your next meeting: people typically plunge right into the topic at hand and start arguing over what to do. Effective leaders, by contrast, learn to think systematically--that is, they gather and lay out the necessary data, analyze the causes of the situation, and propose actions based on this analysis. In a group, leaders help keep participants focused by asking appropriate questions. Do we have the information we need to analyze this situation? Can we focus on figuring out the causes of the problem we're trying to solve?

3. Learn from experience--while it's happening
Teams often plow ahead on a project, then conduct a review at the end to
figure out what they learned. But it's more effective for teams (or individuals) to learn as they go along.

Anyone who prompts the group to engage in regular minireviews and learn from them is playing a de facto leadership role. Why is this ongoing process more effective than an after-action review? The events are fresh in everyone's mind. And the team can use what they learn from each minireview to make needed adjustments to their work processes or their goals.

4. Engage others
A high-performing team engages the efforts of every member, and effective team leaders seek out the best fit possible between members' interests and the tasks that need doing. Suggest writing down a list of chores and matching them up with individuals or subgroups. If no one wants a particular task, brainstorm ways to make that task more interesting or challenging. Help draw out the group's quieter members so that everyone feels a part of the overall project.

5. Provide feedback
If you're not the boss, what kind of feedback can you provide? One thing that's always valued is simple appreciation--"I thought you did a great job in there." Sometimes, too, you'll be in a position to help people improve their performance through coaching. Effective coaches ask a lot of questions: "How did you feel you did on this part of the project?" They recognize that people may try hard and fail anyway: "What made it hard to accomplish your part of the task?" They offer thoughtful suggestions for improvement, being careful to explain the observation and reasoning that lie behind them.

Source: Harvard Blog

Why Small Companies Will Win in This Economy

By Peter Bregman

I just heard a story from a client that's hard to believe but true.

In the worst economy we've seen in decades, Passlogix, a privately owned 100-person software development company, just received over a million dollars in prepaid commitments for the next three to five years of service. And they beat out several much larger more established companies, like CA (14,000 employees) and IBM (400,000 employees), to win those customers.

Now, how do you explain that? The bigger companies aren't getting similar deals. It's not standard in this industry to prepay contracts of that size and duration. And the clients received only a small reduction for their upfront payment, less than the cost of capital.

I think it's a trend. And understanding it might just be the difference between failing and thriving in this economy.

Yesterday morning I had breakfast with a good friend of mine, a mentor in the consulting industry. He's a senior partner in a large consulting company and has worked in one large company or another for the past 35 years. Really smart, really talented.

And now really depressed. He hasn't been having fun for some time but it's gotten worse. He's survived several rounds of layoffs but who knows, he tells me, he might be hit by the next one. And if he isn't, he might leave anyway because it's so miserable. He doesn't understand how his company is making decisions, including how they decide whom to let go. He is one of the most senior leaders in this company and even he doesn't trust it anymore.

This is not an isolated case. I've been hearing this from many of my large clients. People in senior positions don't trust the decisions being handed to them. And if you go one layer down, to middle managers, the distrust is palpable. I don't know a single person who works for a large company who feels confident they'll have a job in 6 months. Not one.

Now, imagine you're a client wanting to buy from one of these companies. You call up your client contact to talk about the sale. One of two things will happen:

You have a relationship with her and so you talk and get a sense of her insecurity, fear, and distrust.
You have no relationship with her because the company is so big and you talk to a different person each time you call.

Either way, you'll probably get the sense that your contact may not be there in the future to fulfill her commitments to you. And that won't make you comfortable committing long-term dollars (or any dollars) to the company?

Now compare that to Passlogix, whose clients know they can pick up the phone and speak with Marc Boroditsky, the CEO. He tells clients about his commitment to the company and to them, and they know exactly who to call if the work isn't done to their expectations. That personal relationship, that trust, is important to them. They're willing to invest in it long term — to the tune of millions of dollars, up front.

And it's not just the CEO. If clients speak with other employees in the company, they'll get the same feeling of trust. A small company gives its employees a sense of security and employees pass that feeling on to clients. Not that small companies don't go out of business. They do all the time. But each employee has much greater control over his own destiny. In a company of 30 employees, if you do a great job, there is a good chance you'll be recognized. But in a company of thousands? It's easy to be missed. And easy to be laid off.

The gap of confidence between small companies and big ones is growing. We used to rely on the security of big companies. That's why we worked for them. And hired them. And put our money in them.

But with the virtual collapse of AIG, Lehman, Citibank, GM, Chrysler, and many more — now even GE is in trouble — all that's changed. Now it's a risk to do business with the big ones.

We simply don't trust companies anymore. We trust people. And in big companies, it's hard to even find a person to trust as we scream "operator" into our telephones only to get transferred to another menu whose options have changed.

That gives small companies a huge advantage.

Just ask John Drummond, who started Unicycle.com after getting laid off from IBM during the last downturn. Once he got the hang of it, he started Banjo.com, his other childhood passion. Both are doing well and he's about to launch more sites.

Source Harvard Blog