Getting the people side right in leadership communication can make all the difference. Cultural transitions are times of heightened emotion where perceptions, feelings and hunches trump logic.
Everyone's decision making is emotional, not rational ... subconsciously under the control of their emotional brain (limbic system), not their analytical (neocortical) brain.
When people make decisions, their decisions are not just about rational data weighing of the pros and cons. Buying a car, choosing a mate, selecting a new home, following a career path, perceiving how the world works is all decided emotionally. Emotion is always operating below the surface and a person doesn't recognize how important his or her feelings are at the time of the decision.
All successful leaders are clear that leadership communication is about inspiring others to achieve great things. The fundamentals of effective leadership communication are:
Learn to be yourself, better---Authenticity in a leader is crucial. Followers will not commit if they don not trust you and believe that you have integrity. Followers must feel your passion, and believe that you believe. When you are clear with yourself about the things you really care about, you cannot help but talk to them with passion. You have to be true to yourself, but you also have to learn to 'perform' yourself better.
Provide a framework for leadership and action, through mission and values---People come to work and want to be inspired by a sense of doing something important, something that makes a difference. A strong sense of mission can help shape decisions to be made throughout the organization, and is even more empowering when coupled with a set of values which your people know to be true. Those intangible values translate into actions on the ground, which translate into hard numbers in the books.
When everyone engaged in the business can agree that their personal beliefs fit well with the company's intangibles (of assumptions/beliefs, vision, values and guiding principles), they understand and will contribute to a meaningful corporate mission statement.
Here are intangible elements defined:
•Assumptions/beliefs: A reality map formed through your collective reinforced experience. This would be a manifesto of the mental models you use and believe in to create your work and personal lives.
•Values/Aspirations: An attitude or world-view depicted by one word or one single concept observed through one's behavior. Values often influence people's choices about where to invest their energies. Please recognize that values change over time. Being "fair" means something different for a person at 44 than at 4 years old.
•Vision: A word picture of the future leading from now through near to far reality. You energize people to support your purpose or life signature with an overarching description of what you see.
•Guiding Principles: A universal operating standard that guides decision-making both personally and organizationally. Use guiding principles to align, create trust and walk the talk by putting everybody on the same playing field. Energy isn’t wasted in the politics of the team, organization or community because there aren't different rules for everybody.
Communicate the future to drive the present---Every question you ask has to do with how people are progressing to the goals, and keep describing the future in both rational terms (the numbers) and emotive terms (how it would feel for all concerned). This bringing together of the rational and the emotional is key to inspiring people.
Bring the outside in and focus on relationships and trust---Leaders live outside their organizations, constantly bringing stories of success and failure in external relationships into the organization to keep everyone fixed on what needs to improve. Successful leaders know that relationships are the engines of success and keep their enterprise focused on those relationships. Leaders are increasingly looking to make trust a strategic goal, measured and managed as preciously as any other key asset.
Engage and align through potent conversations---Employee engagement is a strategic tool to keep people motivated and committed to the cause. Companies with high levels of engagement among employees outperform their competitors. Engagement is achieved through conversations that are structured and potent that allow employees to fully understand the big objective, and work out with their leaders what they have to do to help achieve the goals. It is these conversations that the rubber hits the road, where the plan gets traction.