Some Online Store

Organizational leaders expect some natural resistance to change, and their expectations are seldom disappointed. In building a communication strategy to overcome resistance, however, leaders often misconstrue their target. Usually, employees are not so resistant to going in new directions as they are to having the will of others forced upon them, or to being made vulnerable to forces they don’t control.

In general, a message strategy designed to prevent resistance to change would focus not so much on what people fear, but on what they want for themselves:

? Some degree of security and control regarding their jobs and careers
? Connectedness to networks, resources, support systems
? Opportunities to be successful, and to advance their careers
? Recognition for their contributions and their talents

Doing Your Homework
Organizations that have learned through experience about change communication prepare by first doing their homework. Leaders put their ears to the ground to determine how people feel about proposed changes, and what kinds of questions they’re asking. They interview people at all levels of the organization to become better acquainted with special sensitivities, potential pitfalls, and troublesome issues that need to be addressed that may have gone unnoticed otherwise.

Taken from : The Leader As Communicator

Thus, such fears are inevitable. What’s not inevitable, however, is fear fanned by uncertainty due to unclear, delayed, inconsistent, and less than candid leadership communications. Leaders owe their employees:

? As full a disclosure of plans and schedules as is legally possible: We recommend strong pressure on the legal and financial advisers involved to maximize, not minimize, disclosure.
? Minimum speculation: Tell only what you know to be fact.
? Review of career implications brought on by change.
? Discussion of steps people can take now to plan for their future.
? Complete alignment, both in content and timing, between what you tell your employees and what you say to customers.

Countering Resistance to Change
Psychologist Robert Goldberg observes that employees can regard change as a threat to any number of things they value: feelings of control, sense of competence, relationships with other employees, and personal identity within the organization. “We on the outside,” e suggests, “might view the expression of that core as resistance, but on the inside it is experienced as the need to preserve something precious and worthwhile.”3

Taken from : The Leader As Communicator

“Most companies spend far too much time talking about change and not enough listening to how their employees really feel about it.”

Once upon a time (perhaps), leaders of organizations contemplating disruptive transitions usually approached employee communication through any or all of these assumptions:

? In this business, people should be happy to have a job.
? Those who aren’t whining are probably okay; those who are would whine no matter what.
? Employees can wait for information until everything gets sorted out.
? My commitment and enthusiasm as a leader will be contagious.
? Employees take my words at face value.
? Our people will deal with ambiguity and uncertainty in a rational manner.
? They’ll get the picture when we run a story in the monthly employee newsletter.

But that was long ago. We know better now. Today, employees want to know leadership is thinking about them as individuals at the same time that they’re making plans for new organizational moves. Employees have good reason to fear transitions: Historically, organizational change has typically involved loss of jobs, reassignment, and restructuring.

Taken from : The Leader As Communicator

But for many organizations, managing transitions still poses some daunting communication challenges. Another Conference Board report titled Employee Communication During Mergers concluded some five years later that employee (as well as frontline and middle manager) communication needs were still not being met. As a consequence, “inaccurate and incomplete perceptions can form, and employee anxieties may continue to grow and fester.”2

No matter how experienced they might be in orchestrating change, leaders who manage transitions must continually wrestle with a special set of communication tasks. At stake is the need for organizations to accomplish continuous and sometimes rapid change with a minimum of workforce dislocation and dysfunction. Failure to do so can result in a change operation that leaves the patient in worse, and weaker, shape than before.

This chapter focuses on a three-dimensional communications plan for managing transition and change effectively. The plan is drawn from lessons learned in working with more than a hundred organizations, plus some common sense about how to communicate with people. The three plan dimensions are:
1. Empathy and assurance
2. Focus and alignment
3. Ownership and involvement

Taken from : The Leader As Communicator

“Stability through change demands clarity about what you are trying to do.” —William Bridges, Managing Transitions

For most organizations today, change is a constant occurrence, and major transitions—merger, restructuring, rebranding, spin-off—have become commonplace. A generation of American workers has now lived through the turbulence of these new terms and conditions of organizational life. For the next generation, at least, such experiences will be seen more as the norm, and transitions will, in all likelihood, be less traumatic, if only because our work life expectations will have been altered. But transitions will still present navigational problems for leaders as they work to relocate and reorient their people around “true north.”

In 1995, a Conference Board study cited research showing how poorly most managers handled transition-related communication.1 Since then, we have seen some progress in change management communication. Companies like Emerson, GE Capitol, and SBC, for example, which have grown considerably during this period by way of merger and acquisition, have developed transition management as a core competency.

Taken from : The Leader As Communicator

In chapter 7, we continue the discussion of leadership’s navigation role, but in a special context: the challenge of managing change and transitions.

Notes
1. Thomas H. Davenport and John C. Beck, “Getting the Attention You Need,” Harvard Business Review (September–October 2000), 124.
2. Ibid.
3. Kathryn Troy, Change Management: Communication’s Pivotal Role, Report No. 1122-95-RR (New York: The Conference Board, 1995), 23.
4. Ronald A. Heifetz and Donald L. Laurie, “TheWork of Leadership,” Harvard Business Review ( January–February 1997), 129.
5. See especially the work of Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, the most well-known proponents of balanced scorecards; for example, The Strategy-Focused Organization: How Balanced Scorecard Companies Thrive in the New Business Environment Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2001).
6. See Robert Mai, “Branding Begins at Home,” Journal of Employee Communication Management (September–October 1999), 31–34.
7. Nicholas Kristof, “Fortune Cookie: Your Ignorance Clouds Asian Joy,” New York Times (August 13, 1995), E5.
8. W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, “Fair Process: Managing in the Knowledge Economy,” Harvard Business Review ( July–August 1997), 69.
9. Jay A. Conger, “The Necessary Art of Persuasion,” Harvard Business Review (May–June 1998), 87.
10. James S. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, The Leadership Challenge: How to Get Extraordinary Things Done in Organizations (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1991), 121.
11. Robert Cialdini, “Harnessing the Science of Persuasion,” Harvard Business Review (October 2001), 78.
12. Glenn Parker, Jerry McAdams, and David Zielinski, Rewarding Teams: Lessons from the Trenches (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000).
13. Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, First, Break All the Rules (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), 28.

Taken from : The Leader As Communicator

Communicating through employee peers can be both effective and powerful. The implications for leadership range from soliciting and using peer testimony to underpin decisions and plans, to understanding and deploying peer reasoning to better communicate how a decision might benefit all. Leaders need to build clear communication channels both to catch what people are saying and to deliver messages to key influencers. The use of employee councils, discussion circles, focus groups, and the like, regularly scheduled or prompted by special developments, can serve this purpose well.

Former CEO Bill Maritz, of Maritz, Inc., for example, held a monthly breakfast meeting with nonmanagement delegates from each operating company and from various corporate divisions. Delegates came with questions, Bill fielded them or promised to refer them to others, and the entire give-and-take was then edited and published for all Maritz employees. When leaders provide forums for people to ask questions, get answers, and offer input, organizational goals are better understood and more widely subscribed to.

Taken from : The Leader As Communicator

Sometimes the best, most trusted conveyors of critical information are influential nonmanagers. When a major office products company launched a new benefits program that involved employees customizing the program to suit individual needs, it realized employees might see the replacement of the old program as a loss. In order to be as clear and persuasive as it could, the company decided to offer two communication resources to employees who wanted information and answers.

The first was a detailed information site, featuring a kind of expert system that people could use as a tutor in building a program that was right for them. But the resource that was in fact most used was a group of employees identified as “key influencers” in the organization, most of them nonmanagers. Trained to give accurate information and some limited advice about the new program, these employees were turned to because they were seen as trustworthy and could empathize more readily with the situations of other employees trying to sort out what was in their best interests.

Taken from : The Leader As Communicator

Figure 6-9. Tactics to support message delivery.

? Establish direct lines of communication with middle and frontline managers: Set up discussion forums, “skip-level” interviews (interviews with the boss’s boss), hotlines, etc.

? Deliver regular briefings to middle and frontline managers: Keep them in the loop and never bypass them.

? Feed them “privileged information”: It reinforces their value and credibility to their direct reports.

? Emphasize their importance as two-way conduits: Clear paths for “upward communication” are critical for capturing the latest field intelligence and for sending up ideas for process improvement.

? Listen to them and tell them that you’re listening: Feedback and positive reinforcement can stimulate continued upward communication that might otherwise be stifled by the perceived indifference of senior leadership.

? Ask them to be interpreters and translators of key message points: Encourage them to paraphrase and to “tell it in their own words.” They’re going to be asked to do it anyway by their direct reports; better that you recognize and endorse their role.

? Use them to test-drive new plans and ideas and to offer feedback: Many a bad move could have been avoided by simply checking with people who know better.

? Give them a platform to speak from: Use guest columns, management hotlines, focus groups, etc.

Taken from : The Leader As Communicator

In a workshop setting, middle and frontline management were asked to think about, then discuss, the following questions:

? What does this core message say to you? How would you paraphrase the message in your own words?
? Do you believe it? Why or why not?
? What examples in your area would back up or validate the message?
? Does this message serve as a foundation for something you are currently stressing in your area, or that you would like to?

Agency leadership acted in concert on this initiative. They respected the importance of having leaders at all levels working to connect and reconnect people to the larger mission of the organization. They also committed to making communication within the organization more of a two-way street, allowing for real dialogue about issues facing the organization and the people in it.

In our experience working with organizations to improve communication flow, those that recognize middle and front line managers as the critical conduits, are likely to be more successful. See Figure 6-9 for ways to support effective two-way message transmission within an organization.

Taken from : The Leader As Communicator