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The real job of a leader is to inspire the organization to take responsibility for creating a better future. Effective communication is a leader’s most critical tool to make things happen. When leaders fail to communicate and explain what they clearly mean when they talk of financial results, time management, the organizational structure and the corporate culture, they can cause trouble and sometimes chaos to their organizations, making their managers’ jobs more difficult. Talented people lose their focus, precious time is wasted and people work inefficiently.
When a leader defines what he or she really means and sets clear goals according to those definitions, action and performance are more efficient, controlled and on strategy and relationships and feedback improved.
Corporate Culture
It is important to communicate precisely and clearly what corporate culture is. This derives from expectations on winning. A healthy culture is created and maintained by focusing. If you hire the right people and ask them to behave in a way that is consistent with the values of the company and implement processes that will allow the company to win in the market, then you create a culture that encourages performance.
Leaders who fail to define success and communicate it clearly to the employees together with their expectations, produce meaningless cultures.
CEOs should communicate and align effectively the organization’s commitment and energy around a clear, well understood and shared vision of the company’s real goals, priorities and opportunities.
Hierarchy and Organisational Structure
An organisational chart represents individual power of influence. However when the company structure is changing there is cause for fear, work to slow down, motivation to disappear and time to pass unproductively.
When re-organisation of structure is needed, to apply it successfully the following should be taken into consideration:
– Lay out clearly the master plan;
– Make your decisions quickly;
– Communicate explicitly with the employees but keep communications brief and to the point.
This way the employees will have a better understanding of the process, the reasons behind it and their future places within the organization. Endangering fear can be avoided and prevented.
Financial Results
A risk to a company’s long term health is “Results” left unmanaged. A leader should never lose sight of the connection between employees’ behaviour and results and take advantage of every learning opportunity. By using results as a diagnostic tool in improving future performance and by asking employees to participate in the analysis, effective leaders encourage honesty and engage their people in open communication.
Employees can generate good ideas and the company can surpass financial expectations.
The Leader’s Way of Thinking of His Job
Many leaders fall into the trap of believing that their responsibility is to be the only person who has all the answers. This is true of CEO founders of companies, as their identities are closely tied with their companies. They wrongly believe themselves to be the absolute arbiter of conflicts, dilemmas and decisions. This puts them in isolation and information to them becomes unreliable. Though they may hire the best and brightest managers they do not listen to their teams and they behave arrogantly.
This can create problems and frustrated managers, who as soon as they realise that they are not heard or valued flee the company, taking intellectual capital with them.
On the other hand effective leaders realise that their role is to bring out the answers in others. They seek contribution, challenges and collaboration from the people who report to them, by driving the decision-making process instead of being dominant.
Time Management
All executives feel that time is short. They struggle to squeeze, manipulate and control the limited hours to meet deadlines. When a CEO passes the message that time is “the boss”, important goals can easily be subsumed. On the contrary it can be more effective to communicate that time must not be squeezed but must be strategically utilised.
A leader who forcefully tries to get managers to do too much can make the organisation frantic and ultimately ineffective. A leader who communicates that when time is tight, it is better to do less but do them very well, gives managers the confidence to make the best use of precious time.
The power of clear communication is a game of leverage. Whoever communicates precisely aligns effectively the organisation’s commitment and energy around a clear and well understood shared vision of the company’s real goals, priorities and opportunities. It saves the company time, money and resources and allows extraordinary things to happen.
