Channels Networks Blog

Most organizations use tools such as the intranet, emails from the CEO, Town Hall meetings and blogs as a means for the CEO to communicate with employees. However this focus on information tools whilst necessary in letting employees know the details of what is happening do little to engage employees with the reason for change. This is especially true when those changes relate to a merger or acquisition, a restructure of the organization, the announcement of financial results or other complex change messages. In these instances an engagement strategy needs to be designed to ensure that employees truly embrace the reason for change.

Transformational leadership is about engaging employees in changing behaviours to support the new business objectives. However whilst information is important, as part of leadership communication it only serves to provide information on what is changing and when, it is not an engagement tool.

Here are 5 tips that will ensure that your leadership communication methods do achieve those outcomes.

1. Step one is reviewing all the current tools and methods you use to communicate with employees. You need to scrutinize the content of that communication and determine whether it is one way information or whether some could be adapted as an engagement tool.

2. The second tip is important because your ultimate aim as a leader has to be to create the “Aha Moment” for employees. The “Aha Moment” is based on information that challenges the employee’s belief about an aspect of the business. The information that suddenly helps employees say, “Now it makes sense”, “Now I understand”, “Now I can do something about it”. Once you know what the “Aha Moment” is this will form your key message and the basis of your design of your employee communication strategy.

3. This third step is about conducting focus group research to find out what employees actually think about a particular topic and then what information you have to counter their views and to create a change in how they think. The objective is to find out what information will make employees stop and say, “Aha! now I get it”. Once you have the answer to this it is easy to design engagement strategies that will focus employees on the change to the organization and the work that they do.

Focus groups are a good format as they allow issues to be explored further and sometimes will uncover issues or ideas which hadn’t been considered prior to the session. Focus groups generally are held for one and a half hours duration and in groups of 8 – 10 participants. The facilitator’s role is to lead the discussion but leave the actual dialogue to the participants, bringing them back to the main issue if they have gone off on a tangent or to ensure that all the topics that you wanted to cover within the allocated timeframe are covered. A well facilitated focus group will identify the key messages for your communication strategies as they relate to a particular business issue.

4. The fourth tip is that once you have the focus group outcomes, you can then begin designing leadership communication strategies that engage employees. You should have a clear understanding about what employees know and what the facts are, and the gap between the business facts and staff perceptions. This forms your key message to create the “Aha Moment”.

5. The fifth step is to take the key information that you have gathered from the focus groups and then identify a business issue that you feel certain your transformational leadership strategies can impact. The advantage is that by making use of that information you are then able to create a personalized leadership communication approach that will be measured against business results.

When you have gathered all the outcomes of the focus groups you will then be in a position to identify the key messages and data to bring about change in your organizaiton. Transformational leadership is about understanding what is of concern to your employees and what they need to know to support your business objectives. Development of an employee engagement strategy that focuses on “Aha!” moments and information is the essence of transformational leadership.

For more information make sure you obtain our excellent free report on how to design transformational leadership strategies.