 The Achilles Heal of Management: Employee Communication By Michael Willard |
Over the years, I have sent sufficient morning Willard Notes to my employees to fill the pages of Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind" approximately three times.
The missives land on their desks in English before the some 90 employees in Kiev and Moscow come to work, and they are translated into Russian usually by 10 a.m. They transmit my schedule, my thoughts, my cheerleading, my nagging, and my mood. It is, in essence, a daily employee newsletter.
Does this make me a great manager? Not really, but I believe it is the minimum I can do to create a sense of community within The Willard Group Companies.
But if communication were merely about a note sent out in the morning, then any nincompoop who could string a few words together would be a decent manager.
It isn't. Communication is about face-to-face time, not in the touchy feely way, but in the truly interested manner of a concerned manager. Communications takes work, often-effortless work, but work nonetheless. It is a concentrated effort to connect each and every day with employees with whom you spend nearly half your waking life.
You need to be a sociologist and a psychologist, a psychiatrist and a psychic. You have to be the good-humor man and the cheerleader. You need to know how to deliver bad news without saying the sky is falling. And when the sky is falling, you're the one who has to show such determination and confidence that your team will believe it is merely a summer thunderstorm. It helps also to have been a fairgrounds carnie and to have run with the bulls in Pamplona. For the record, I was once the former, but my gravity challenged body with bouncing basketball tummy has ruled out the latter.
I sense a question from the audience. You sir, you in the first row. Oh, you say this works in a tiny organization of less than 100 people, but you manage several thousand in several cities. Good question. Easy answer. Think of the Internet as your personal handshake with every employee, and use it liberally. You just cast a little wider net with your Barnum & Bailey Inc. Notes, but dumb it down such that it doesn't read like a company's internal newsletter. Make it as personal as feasible.
Is walk-around management with those 2,000 people in five offices, really possible? Don't get your undies in a bunch. Of course it is, and it's not that big a deal.
What would you do if you were a senator from West Virginia, a rather small state but still with 1.8 million people? Be a politician. Follow closely the activities in each office, and look for opportunities to write a note to an employee about his or her work, maybe handwritten, maybe through the Internet. On occasion, pick up the telephone and call. It will startle the bejesus out of Mike From Middle Management, but Mike will be impressed you noticed his work, and your loyalty barometer will rise accordingly. More important, he will tell everyone in the office about the call he received from the boss out of the blue yonder. Look for the opportunity to surprise.
I didn't pick West Virginia by accident. For nearly eight years I worked as a top aide to the U.S. Senate Democratic Leader, the man who much of that time controlled everything from the flow of legislation to the temperature in the Senate side of the Capitol Building. Sen. Robert Byrd was one of the busiest people I have ever met, with national and home state responsibilities and constituencies.
Each night he took a list home of people he should touch base with, whether a newspaper editor, a strong supporter in a county, or perhaps just a constituent, whose problem had been brought to his attention. His constituent relations were considered legendary and he treated his employees fairly, as well.
It also helped him get re-elected with generally 70 plus per cent of the vote.
On the other hand, if you are a distant boss, seemingly and haughtily above the sausage-makers, you will wander forever in the land of the doomed. Even a king stands a good chance of losing his head if he tries to assume leadership. Leadership must be given, never assumed.
On occasion, I have heard people in leadership brag about how sparingly they give out praise, or even words of appreciation. They utter phrases like "it's not my job to be liked." That, my friend, perhaps worked in some sweatshop at the beginning of the industrial revolution. These are the people who are constantly saying, "I'll have my girl call your girl."
Speaking of the company's internal newsletter, take personal charge of it. This doesn't mean you write the stories, layout the pages and oversee the production. It does mean that you not only know what goes in it, but you set the tone of it. All should know you are the publisher, and that what goes into publication has been cooked up by the chief chef.
If your efforts at motivation only extends to slogans that adorn the walls of many corporations, you've got problems. You know, the ones that look as if they were purchased at the same trading post that sells velvet Elvis blankets and paintings with dogs in costume playing cards. Lose them. Do you really want your employees laughing behind your back?
The other day I read on the bottom of someone's email: "I Will Meet My Daily Objective Set By the ABC Standard."
I changed the wording slightly so as not to embarrass a friend and a client, but doesn't this sound like an old Soviet boss urging the proletariat to meet a five-year plan.
There were 120 employees in the Washington, D.C. office of a previous agency at which I worked. Less than 10 remained a dozen years later, though a few have moved on to other cities within the system. In the advertising and public relations businesses, the employer and the employees generally have about the same amount of loyalty, which is about the same as Elizabeth Taylor had to most of her husbands. It shouldn't be this way.
In my view, good communication will go a long way toward shoring employee loyalty - though, of course, a big bonus doesn't hurt either.
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More in the section:
Ukraine Gets Image Makeover
Read also previous issue' articles:
"ASK THE LAWYER!"
Lateness, and Other Crimes
Hookers, Cotton Gin Workers and Other Professionals
The Invisible Bond
Dial M for Mobile
The 24-Hour Workday
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