A Taligens Case Study on Business Transformation
When done well, with follow-up to ensure that the actions desired of listeners are under way or completed, communication with employees and colleagues have power to build trust. Leaders inform, inspire, and can even improve performance when trust is nurtured. Leaders who score high on both trust and communication skills ranked in the top quartile for employee engagement, according to research among 400,000 employees who reported to 75,000 leaders. [1] This research also showed that leaders who scored high in trust but low in communication skills ranked in the 45th percentile on engagement and leaders who scored high in communication skills but low in trust ranked in the 52nd percentile on employee engagement. It’s evident that, when it comes to employee engagement, which is a strongly correlated with organizational performance, it is not enough for leaders just to be trusted or simply to be strong communicators if they want to have a measurable impact on performance. All communication, however, contains risk. As much as strong communication skills can build trust, poor communication can undermine trust. In business, what matters is to produce results. Business professionals must be very good –– not just competent –– at designing, preparing, managing, and closing effective communications that generate the right actions by employees.
Leaders spend most of their communication in one of four activities with employees and colleagues: managing relationships, acting on past promises or commitments, directing teams how to execute strategy, or supporting team members in dealing with others (customers, vendors, colleagues). Leaders who possess strong communication skills commit themselves to action when they speak. These commitments can take the form of requests, promises, offers, declarations, assessments (interpretations), or assertions (statements of fact). A seventh action, and the one that obviously creates distrust, is obfuscation – lies, half-truths, distractions, excuses, and the like. Commitments can take one of two forms: tactical (following up on requests and promises by coordinating resources and activities to produce specific results) or existential (responding to moods and emotions by communicating and motivating people the strive for greatness). The strongest communicators solicit and listen to and act on feedback and concerns from their teams and colleagues. They reflect on those concerns by examining their own. They commit themselves and their time to help others resolve those concerns, some of which may interfere with their ability to do their jobs. This produces or enhances trust.
Distrust that emerges because of poor communication practices in an organization can be the consequence of one of several missteps in communication:
Commitments fundamentally create a partnership where all the partners agree to bring about some mutually beneficial new future.
That commitment may be existential such as to quality of care for patients in a hospital or it may be more mundane such as to agree to daily check-ins on progress toward a team goal. Distrust happens because a blindness to how existing communication practices or habits is failing to produce behaviors. Trust can be rebuilt by paying attention to how leaders communicate. In every interaction, every promise, every moment to build something with someone, leaders can be producing uncertainty for the listener or reducing it. Simple examination of communication patterns and practices can pinpoint whether listeners are misperceiving the message because of their previous experience with leaders who failed to fulfill commitments, failed to clearly explain their expectations, or perhaps used imprecise language in their communication.
Leaders have a responsibility to observe unspoken moods, moments of distrust, and to see them as demands for examining their communication skills. Ask colleagues for honest assessments of their communications. Query employees on what they heard and compare their responses to what the leader has said or written. Leverage the communication skills and capacities of others in their network to improve the relationship with listeners. This kind of deep self-observation takes time and also takes commitment. By cultivating new skills and persevering at improving them, leaders can learn how to make achievable commitments. This does not mean lowering the bar to action; it means configuring the plan to fulfill commitments before making the promises in the first place. That, too, requires reflection and practice.
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[1] “Understanding Trust: The Salt of Leadership,” Joseph Folkman, Forbes, July 28, 2020
