Empowering People to Embrace the New
Today, leaders and managers are expected to be agile, set stretch goals, and focus on execution. As part of this drive, three leadership capabilities — strategic vision, supreme confidence, and top-notch communication skills — are considered necessary to become the business world’s next leadership star.
However, do you realize these traits can be toxic for business leaders? When leaders want employees to embrace and adopt a new strategy, those who exaggerate their vision, confidence, and communication skills can erode their people’s commitment.
Leaders increasingly require their people to go beyond the call of duty in implementing new strategies. Initiatives to improve operational efficiency, increase organic growth, and achieve other vital goals are increasingly complex and have extremely short time frames.
When launching a large-scale strategic initiative, the leader must sell their followers on the plan itself, which we call the strategy’s content. There are two fundamental content issues for leaders: demonstrating to employees that the plan is valid (necessary and the right plan) and communicating the plan in language and concepts they understand (in other words, explicit, clear).
Employees who don’t feel the plan is valid or understand it will not commit to implementing it. That doesn’t mean they won’t give the appearance they are committed to, which leaders may often misinterpret. They will often feel uncomfortable communicating with others regarding the changes.
However, employees won’t embrace their commitment even if the plan appears valid and clear when leaders fail to address the context issues. The context issues are the perceptions of those who must implement the strategy. It reflects their views about the leaders themselves.
Four fundamental perceptions set the context:
• Leaders’ credibility and sincerity
• Their courage to raise and address complex problems and make difficult decisions
• Their competence in creating and executing the strategy
• Their care and concern for those who will be affected by it
Many leaders genuinely believe that getting the strategy’s content right is all that is required, leading them to ignore the context issues. However, suppose employees have doubts about their leaders’ integrity or purpose. In that case, they will question anything they say about any new strategy, its need, how it must be done when it must be accomplished, etc.
Employees also won’t get behind leaders whose courage and resolve they question. By this, we mean the leader’s willingness to address the problems that will confront a new strategy and to make tough decisions (like removing people who are roadblocks).
If employees believe their leaders are courageous but not necessarily competent, they won’t get behind the change. That’s because they don’t think management will make the right decisions. Employees who question whether leaders care about them will ask themselves, “Is it worth it?” and “What’s in it for me?”
Leaders with superb visions for their strategies often make the process of developing the strategy an exclusive process, blocking out critical members of the entire company. When the plan is bundled and handed to other team members, they wonder what’s ticking inside.
When convinced that every aspect of the strategy is correct, the leader can send off signals that they aren’t open to feedback or criticism. Employees thus correctly believe that their leaders will dismiss problems when implementing the strategy or fail to adjust it. That brings leaders’ competence into question: Will they make the right decisions? Leaders who wear confidence on their sleeves are not likely to make corrections to their strategy for fear that it will reflect poorly on the original plan.
Finally, leaders who are accomplished communicators can find their rhetoric and writing skills a commitment barrier as well. The more scripted and polished their communication, the more those troops will wonder about what’s not being said, especially the impact on them. Authentic communications, not spin or slick communication, will appeal to and gain the respect of employees.
It’s ludicrous for any CEO to think they have all the answers. Today, great business leaders strive to use the entire company’s knowledge to set a good direction and adjust it as needed.
Takeaways: Grand vision, great confidence, and eloquent communication skills are certainly leadership traits to admire. However, when a company or a business function must change course dramatically, leaders who take those traits to excessive ends will find few employees who will truly get on board.
Letting the management team (and even workers below) help craft the vision, admitting that one doesn’t have all the answers, and speaking genuinely will go much farther in getting employees to embrace and adopt the strategy.
Leadership Questions: How do you empower your people to be open with outsiders, customers, and other internal groups? If you restrict that communication, why?
Keys: |Application: Leaders |Status: Tactical | Duration: DNA Embed |Impact: High
