Line managers are be critical in ensuring success when making a major organizational change. As we know, they have the greatest influence over employee behavior, and can play a particularly vital role in contextualizing change for their teams.

Both intuition and experience, though, tell us that that line managers aren’t always up to this task. Many simply aren’t strong communicators, and the turbulence of change can disrupt even those who are strong the rest of the time.

How does your organization prepare managers for the additional stress and difficulty brought on by change? Many communicators are so pushed for time that they simply rely upon managers to muddle through. Others provide manager training of varying quality, to help managers cope with the increased demand of navigating the change.

Assessing for change-readiness

Significantly fewer companies, however, formally assess how ready their managers are to lead the change before it all begins. Although everyone knows how important they’ll be, many organizations enter a period of change without a clear view of their managers’ strengths and weaknesses; often, it’s only as the change unfolds, or else retrospectively, that managers’ skill gaps become evident. Of course, by this stage, it’s too late – the damage is done! Read More »

As the world becomes more and more connected by technological innovations, it’s no wonder that communicators have become far less reliant on reactive response strategies. Waiting for a reputational threat to arise before thinking about solutions just won’t cut it. But no matters how fast information spreads, communicators — even those well-armed with response tactics — can only move so quickly.

Communicators are successfully enlisting line manager support in limiting reputational risks by erring on the side of simplicity in developing tools and processes for managers to use. Clear decision rules guiding the frequency, nature and venue of stakeholder interactions — plus making clear when to involve the communications team — line managers can play an essential role in local stakeholder engagement.

Line managers represent a powerful resource in identifying reputational threats as well as mitigating risks through engagement with key stakeholder groups. In companies with widely varying stakeholder groups across many locations, managers are much better suited to handle the basics of local stakeholder relations than a centralized corporate communications team. Leading communicators account for the real challenges in developing line managers as players in stakeholder engagement.

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In my time with CEC, I’ve been involved in a variety of projects.  My latest, looking at what Communications can do to improve workplace safety, has been the one that’s been easiest to get excited about! Members we’ve spoken with have been more passionate about this subject than any other I’ve discussed with them, and I guess it’s kind of rubbed off!

That said, something that was discussed in CEC’s recent webinar, “Avoiding Crises: Building a Preventative Safety Culture”, is that some (but not all!) of this passion, energy, and expertise has been misdirected. Communicators are doing more than ever to raise employee awareness of the need to be safe, but awareness alone may not be sufficient to drive the desired safe behavior.

Conflicting Messages

The safety messages that employees receive telling them to take care of themselves, or reminding them of the risks inherent in their jobs, aren’t the only messages that they’re receiving. What about the pressure they receive from their supervisor to hit production targets? Or the pressure from peers, who insist that “real men don’t wear gloves/helmets/goggles?”

A Better Way Forward Read More »

I can teach you how to swim. It can be any stroke you want. You probably know some freestyle and you’ve heard butterfly is hard, right? Butterfly it is. You probably won’t be as good as Michael Phelps or win any gold medals but you can swim butterfly. Because I’ll tell you a secret; butterfly is easy. Sure, it’s probably the most tiring way to swim from one side of the pool to the other, but there isn’t anything mechanically difficult about it.

As with learning any new skill, it might sound impossibly daunting at first. But then I’ll show you how to kick like your legs are stuck together and use your arms to pull in tandem. We’ll put it together in a full-body rhythm that will probably feel like you’re trying to do the snake in Jell-O — except less graceful. And that will be it. A little practice, some gentle reminders to breathe when it’s most natural to the stroke and you’re done. You can swim butterfly.

Learning most things is a matter of willingness, aptitude, and finding a competent teacher. As we talk about the importance of Communicators as enablers, it’s clear that this coaching function is more of a ‘when’ than an ‘if’.

Breaking down a communications strategy to make it more accessible is the first step in teaching a new communications skill to noncommunicators. The soft skills — a.k.a. interpersonal skills — that communicators deal in can be intimidating because they aren’t often thought of as something that can be taught. More often than not, people have developed a static perception of their own soft skills and will get anxious if they think they are being pushed beyond their comfort zone. If Communicators are going to help them improve, the first step is to convince them that it’s easy.

Professional communicators can help demystify these skills by breaking them down into easily actionable components. Though basic guidelines may seem overly simple to the pros, they can overcome the greatest hurdle for many to unlocking their soft skills — the perception that they can’t improve. Read More »

I’ve been in Comms long enough to remember the good old “spin control” era (for you young’uns…those were the glorious days when we used to believe we could “control the message”).  Ahhhh, them’s was some great times.

Back in the day* we used to think, “It’s not what you say…it’s how you say it!”

TRANSLATION: We communicators are crafty enough to be able to get our stakeholders to swallow just about anything, if we say it in just the right way.

Today, however, as we’ve entered a more stakeholder-centric, “the-people-control-the-message” era: ”It’s not what you say…it’s what people hear.”

This new reality requires us to make adaptations in our value proposition.  It’s not hard to do, and it’s SO well worth the mental effort.  Because once you shift your self-image as a communicator — away from thinking of yourself as a world-class wordsmith, to becoming an increasingly excellent interpreter of how things sound to people who don’t always “get” what we’re trying to accomplish — it’s amazing what kinds of results you can create. Read More »

What does the word empower mean to you? As an individual it might conjure up feelings of freedom, control, authority, ownership. To be empowered means to be an agent, a person who has the power to act. Empowerment, or autonomy, is one of author Daniel Pink’s three key ingredients to intrinsic motivation. When each of us feels a sense of autonomy, mastery, and purpose at work, we bring our best selves everyday and thrive.

But, as a manager, the word empower can be much more ferocious. From a manager’s perspective, empower means one thing—chaos. It means losing control, taking on risk, exposing the ego, relying on others but being accountable for results. Dilbert accurately describes what empowerment typically means to a manager:

(click to enlarge)

Leaders and managers don’t publicly fear empowerment; like in Dilbert, they often advocate for the right and authority for employees to make decisions and feel ownership. The word empower is easy to say, hard to act on, and easy to misinterpret. We in Communications can help make this fluffy word translate into concrete actions.

Here are 10 of the 20 tips for empowerment that GlaxoSmithKline’s CPSE group provides its managers to help them get into new habits that empower their teams. Use them in your day-to-day, share them with your managers, take a look around the organization and ask yourself if you see leaders and managers behaving in this way. For the full set of 20, visit the CEC website.

10 Ways to Empower Your Team Read More »

You’ve made it to the end of Q2—congrats! Was the journey a bit bumpy? Did you ever sigh aloud, “If only there were a template for that, it would make my life so much easier!”?

Alas, you can’t change the past or recapture time lost, but you can do something about the rest of your 2011. You can make a commitment to spend more time being proactive and thoughtful in your role instead of feeling reactive and at the mercy of change—change in your team dynamics, your industry’s environment, your business partner’s expectations, or even your office coffee! And, we at CEC can help.

We took a look at the top tools and templates downloaded and used by your CEC Communications peers. These tools have helped your peers get their jobs done faster and more effectively, and they can help you do the same!

Download a tool, give it a try, and share your feedback (right here on this blog post) on how we can improve certain tools. See below the jump for the Top 5 Tools for Communicators. Read More »

As an internal communicator, chances are you’ve been asked to support leaders and managers at your organization in the following ways:

• Provide strategy talking points and FAQs
• Create scripts and decks for presentations
• Maintain an online portal with news and information
• Facilitate presentation and storytelling training

What if I told you that this effort and energy were all for naught?

Read More »

Despite the “DO NOT RUN” sign on the pool deck, every kid at the pool ran until being whistled at by the lifeguard, being yelled at by Mom, or experiencing their first good scrape from the cement. And how many times were we reminded to put on a helmet, wear our seat belts, make sure our laces were tied tightly, or stop running with scissors? While we often test the limits, safety has been instilled in us all from a young age.

That said, safety often comes at the cost of efficiency (and sometimes a little bit of fun). In parts of our lives there is still someone there to demand a certain level of safety from us—be it a traffic cop, a TSA security guard, or a Mom (yep–she’s still around!). But at work, even if it is a small part of a manager’s role description, no one can be a full-time “safety cop.”

Many companies, particularly those in the energy/utility, manufacturing, and other heavy industries have been asking us about how to increase awareness of safety goals within their organizations. What is most critical for communicators, however, is to understand our role in helping employees align their everyday behavior to these safety goals—independent of a manager being there to remind them to use the handrail, drive more carefully, wear a helmet, etc. Read More »

We all know that Comms and HR folks have a lot in common (e.g., effective HR is often reliant upon strong communication). How far do you sit from your HR counterpart – 10m across the office? 20m? Separated by one or two stops in the elevator / lift?

Although they may sit near us, we probably don’t talk as much as we should.  With that in mind, I thought it would be valuable to take a look at the joint objectives that we share with our partners in HR.  Each quarter, our sister program, CLC Human Resources announces the latest trends from the HR world.  As we just begin to step forth from the recession, it’s perhaps unsurprising that the latest insights (from Q4 2010) made for some pretty depressing reading.  I’ve pulled out some of the key HR challenges facing businesses below:

• Decline in Engagement / Increased Retention Risk: As the job market begins to pick up, disengaged employees who had been ‘sitting tight’ have begun to look for new pastures.  Levels of intent to stay have fallen every quarter since Q4-2009 (from 26% – 22%). Crucially, line managers are identified as key to influencing engagement, and to customizing retention strategies to manage turnover risk…
• Performance Management & Productivity: Managers’ effectiveness at stewarding the performance of their employees continues to decline.  While productivity increased slightly in Q3, the overall downward trend in productivity across the year indicates that managers are struggling to provide effective performance feedback (18% decline in manager effectiveness), and to articulate clear objectives to their direct reports (7% decline in manager effectiveness)… Read More »