Last week's SCM Summit gave me the perfect opportunity to catch up with a number of practitioners. Talking about their top challenges currently, it's fair to say that just about all of them think manager and leadership communication is a very difficult part of their remit to get right.    

Internal communication guru, Jim Shaffer believes successful organizational performance starts with leaders and their verbal and non-verbal communication. So, how can internal communicators work with leaders to sharpen their skills in this area?

"When leaders aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing, it's because the leadership communication system isn't being well managed. To change the leader's behavior, you have to change the system," says Shaffer.

Here, Shaffer explains how he improved leadership communication at a US manufacturing plant.

It was agreed to expect leaders to enable people to create a safety, quality and cost-focused culture by fostering an environment that:

• communicates openly and intensely;
• involves people in managing change and continuous improvement;
• builds the skills and knowledge needed to improve results and build careers;
• fosters collaboration among people, departments and disciplines; and
• holds people accountable for results.

But there needed to be actions backing this up. The team identified specific implications of these words – essentially the walk behind the talk – as follows:

Establish clear leadership expectations
The team identified specific actions (the "do") that matched the written expectations (the "say").

Conduct a baseline assessment
Expectations have little effect if no one thinks anything's really going to be done with them. The plant leader conducted an assessment of the leadership team – including himself. Leaders were assessed using a simple, straightforward survey questionnaire. They assessed their peers and the people who reported to them assessed them, as did the plant leader.

Set new goals
Improvement plans based on the assessment score were folded into the company's regular performance improvement process. New leadership goals were integrated with traditional financial and operating performance goals.

Get the selection procedure right
Once the leadership expectations have been agreed, all future leaders need to be evaluated and selected based on those expectations. Communication announcing the appointment of a new leader should also make it clear that the person was selected for the position based on the new criteria. Both the actual selection and the announcement of that selection reinforce the fact that the organization is serious about its quest to build a leadership engine.

Accountability
Plant leaders agreed to hold each other accountable for assuming the new leadership roles. They decided to let each other know when they saw one or more of their members slipping back to old way leadership behavior.
Pay systems were adjusted to include a percentage tied to leadership assessment scores. In this project, we invited the performance management and compensation experts from HR to join us in these undertakings.

The full article can be found in the latest issue of Strategic Communication Management.

Until next time,

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