The company 3M, one of the first organizations to fully embrace innovation as the essence of its corporate brand, defines it as “new ideas – plus action or implementation – which result in an improvement, a gain, or a profit.”
Good definition, but it needs another element. People.
Innovation is people using their imagination, experience, curiosity, instincts and relationships to develop and implement ideas that create value.
Innovation is the fuel of our future — new products, new services, new markets. But it is isn’t just the “next big thing.” It’s also a million small things. Innovation is about people working within a philosophy of continuous improvement and change.
If you are looking to communicate this kind of innovation, here are a few thoughts to keep in mind:
1) Let leaders know that whether they lead a team, a work group, or an organization, they can’t innovate alone. They must involve and rely on others.
Isolating leaders as the sole visionaries in the organization simply won’t cut it anymore. Thirty years ago, by the time an idea got to the senior leadership, it had been sifted through several layers of management. Now, savvy executives encourage e-mails and phone calls directly from people on the plant floor to get their opinions and suggestions.
2) Help leaders recognize that the heart of innovation is trial and error. While I’ve never worked with an organization that truly encouraged failure, I have worked with leaders (at all levels) who created environments where failure is acceptable. Where it becomes a learning experience, and not something to be punished.
3) Tell stories that show how mistakes can become successes. One such story: For years Charles Goodyear labored to find a way to make rubber commercially useful. Then one day Goodyear accidentally spilled a mixture of rubber and sulfur he was holding on a hot stove. The chemical reaction of heat applied to this mixture resulted in the discovery of the vulcanization process used to manufacture rubber tires. And with that “mistake,” an industry was born.
4) Help stamp out the Not Invented Here (NIH) mindset. An example of generating motivation to break that mindset came from General Electric in the days when Jack Welch was in charge. Welch made it clear that the sharing of good ideas across the organization was a high management priority. This posed a challenge for GE managers because of the size and diversity of the company. If you did have a good idea, how could you identify the people in other businesses who might benefit from it?
The Chief Learning Officer at GE came up with a simple solution. He created a “hot line” to be manned by his team. This operated similar to a dating service – only instead of matching people to other people, it matched good ideas with business units that might benefit from them.
5) Whenever you communicate this topic, look for ways to broaden the definition of innovation. Go beyond the creation of new products and services to include strategic innovation – new ideas about mission, values, and goals; administrative innovation – changes in internal systems; field level innovation – front line workers inventing solutions to better serve their customers; and incremental change that encompasses everyone in every job thinking about ways to do things differently and ways to do things better.
Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. is the author of nine books including CREATIVITY IN BUSINESS and “THIS ISN’T THE COMPANY I JOINED” — How to Lead in a Business Turned Upside Down. She delivers keynote speeches and seminars to association and business audiences around the world. For more information or to book Carol as a speaker at one of your events, please call: 510-526-1727, email: CGoman@CKG.com, or visit her website: http://www.CKG.com.
Here’s how to get started:
Bring in the customer. Despite the demonstrated benefits of working closely with customers to drive sales, improve product innovation, and better match supply with demand, a recent study by Deloitte found that only 3% to 8% of respondents are actually engaging their customers in this manner. If your company is not already collaborating with customers for innovative product/services development, this is the place to begin.
LEGO Factory has been around for a while, but it remains an inspiring example of how to tap the creativity in a customer base. Children and other building enthusiasts visiting the site are invited to design models (using easy to use, free downloadable software) and take part in competitions for LEGO prizes. A popular contest last year entitled winners to have their model produced and featured in Shop@Home, receiving a 5% royalty on each set sold.
Make suppliers part of the solution. As part of Chrysler’s SCORE (Supplier Cost-Reduction Effort), there is shared responsibility for innovative ideas to get cheaper parts. The goal for each supplier is cost-cutting opportunities that equate to 5% of its annual billings to Chrysler. The collaborative program has generated a flood of more than 100 ideas per week and an estimated savings of $2.5 billion.
Partner with the competition. Collaboration among competitors is the most difficult and delicate form of partnership. But archrivals Procter & Gamble and Clorox have managed to make it work. The two packaged goods companies compete fiercely in the cleaning products and water purification categories, yet both profited when Press’nSeal, a new plastic wrap based on breakthrough P&G technology, went to market under Clorox’s well-established Glad brand. And the collaboration continues with the recent introduction of Glad ForceFlex trash bags, which are made of strong but stretchable plastic developed by P&G.
Choose the right people. The best collaborative projects are often those in which the team members can let go of their own (sometimes entrenched) views and ideas, and apply a more open style of working with others. Because collaboration is built on a foundation of good working relationships and trust between individuals, personal qualities (good communicators, good relationship builders, flexible, culturally and politically savvy, confident without being arrogant) are often more important than subject matter expertise. Experts can be brought in as a resource to the process, whereas key interpersonal skills are what keep the collaborative venture on track.
Here’s what scientists have found: A baby, viewing a videotape of the mother’s face becomes distraught; the baby needs to see the mother’s “real” face before it calms down. Eye contact, it seems, is not just important for conveying messages, it is the means by which two limbic systems come into contact and affect each other.
To me, that reply was brilliant!
Fear of failure is one of the biggest obstacles to success. Yet every major achievement is preceded by many failures. It’s the lessons you learn from your mistakes, how well you apply those lessons to future endeavors, and how quickly you bounce back, that matter in the long run.
Great leaders know this is true. Tom Watson, Sr., the founder of IBM was often quoted as saying, “The way to accelerate your rate of success is to double your failure rate.” One of my clients, a savvy executive in a Fortune 500 company agrees: “I tell my folks to make at least 10 mistakes a day. If they’re not making that many mistakes each day, they’re not trying hard enough.”
But, oh my, how we human beings hate to fail. So sometimes we need a little encouragement to overcome that fear. Here’s where leaders can step in . . .
The general manager of an insurance company, concerned that her salespeople were so afraid of failure that they hesitated to take even well calculated risks, took action at a sales meeting. She put two $100 bills on the table and related her most recent failure, along with the lesson she had learned from it, then she challenged anyone else at the meeting to relate a bigger failure and “win” the $200. When no one spoke up, she scooped up he money and said that she would repeat her offer at each monthly sales meeting. From the second month on, the manager never again got to keep the $200, and as people began to discuss their failures, the sales department became more successful, quadrupling their earnings in one year.
“Failure is not a crime. Failure to learn from failure is,” said Walter Wriston, the former chairman of CitiCorp. But it can be difficult for people in an organization to have a genuine discussion about failure that doesn’t include blame or rationalization. To facilitate this kind of productive conversation, the United States Army developed the After Action Reviews. AARs are now used by organizations around the world to help employees learn from their mistakes, prevent future errors, and find new solutions to problems.
Basically, the AAR process assembles people who were involved in a planned project or event and asks them to answer these questions:
1. What was the desired outcome?
2. What was the actual outcome?
3. Why were there differences between what we wanted and what we achieved?
4. What did we learn? (What would we do differently next time?)
Organizations looking to increase innovation are also finding ways to encourage and even reward mistakes. DuPont’s Textile Fibers Division awards a quarterly “failure trophy.” The failed efforts must have been ethically sound, recognized as failures quickly, and learned from thoroughly. DuPont realizes that insight and knowledge come as much from failure as they do from success. Understanding what doesn’t work may be at least as important as understanding what does, especially if these errors are revealed early in a project when few resources have been committed and other approaches can be tested.
The heart of creativity is trial and error. Thomas Edison’s early attempts to come up with the right filament for the light bulb were dismal failures. He tried a thousand different materials – with no success. A colleague asked him if he felt his time had been wasted, since he had discovered nothing. “Hardly,” Edison is said to have retorted. “I have discovered a thousand things that don’t work.”
What about you? Had any good failures lately?
1) Acknowledge weaknesses, but play to people’s strengths.
Todd Mansfield, the executive vice president of Disney Development Company, found that his company had been spending too much time on employee weaknesses. He said, “When we’d sit down to evaluate associates, we’d spend 20 percent of our time talking about the things they did well, and 80 percent on what needed to be improved. That is just not effective. We ought to spend and energy helping people determine what they are gifted at doing and get their responsibilities aligned with those capabilities.” 2) Don’t assume people know how good they are.
I gave a speech for the top management team of a software company in Northern California that was relocating out of state. A few days later the president of the company telephoned me to say, ” I have an administrative assistant who is probably the brightest, most creative person I’ve worked with. The problem is, she’s married and can’t move her family out of the Bay Area. I was wondering if you would see her for a private counseling session, so that when she applies for a new job, she will come across just as terrific as she really is. I’ll even pay for the session.”
Of course, I agreed, and looked forward to meeting this talented woman. When she came into my office I said, “This is a real pleasure. I’ve heard so many nice things about you. Tell me about yourself. What is it that you do exceptionally well? What would you most want a prospective employer to know about you?” The woman was silent for several seconds. Finally she sighed and said, “I really don’t know. I do a lot of things well, but when I do them, I don’t notice.”
3) When people do something very well, acknowledge it immediately.
Timing is everything when it comes to building confidence. Get in the habit of commenting on outstanding employee behavior as soon as you notice it. When managers at El Torito Restaurants in Irvine, Calif., catch a worker doing something exceptional, they immediately give the employee a “Star Buck.” Each restaurant has a monthly drawing from the pool of “stars” for prizes (cash, TV, etc.), and each region has a drawing for $1,000 cash.
4) Encourage people to recognize their own achievements and then to go public.
One manager I know came up with a creative solution to her employees’ lament that, although she did a pretty good job overall, there were many times when she seemed too preoccupied to notice accomplishments. She put a hand-painted sign in her office and jokingly encouraged employees to display it whenever they had a significant achievement. What started out as an office gag is now a favorite employee ritual. The sign reads, “I just did something wonderful. Ask me about it!”
5) Help people identify strengths and then find ways to capitalize on them.
Everyone has unique talents and abilities that are not always used in their present jobs. Paula Banks, a former Human Resources director at Sears, once had a secretary who was doing an adequate, but mediocre job. Paula talked to the woman and found out that, in her spare time, she was a top salesperson for Mary Kay Cosmetics. In Paula’s words: “I found out she had great sales skills, so I changed her duties to include more of what she was really good at – organizing, follow-through, and closing deals. She had this tremendous ability. My job was to figure out how to use it.”
6) Create small victories.
To encourage people on the way to achieving goals of exceptional performance, managers need to design “small wins.” One manager put it this way, “A stretch goal can scare people to death. I always begin with a mini-goal that I know my staff can achieve, and then I use that victory as a confidence-builder for reaching the larger objective.”
Resent advances in brain analysis technology allow researchers to track the energy of a thought moving through the brain in much the same way as they track blood flowing through the body. And, as scientists watch different areas of the brain light up in response to specific thoughts, it becomes clear that we all react pretty much the same way to change. We try to avoid it.
Here’s why . . .
Most of our daily activities, including many of our work habits, are controlled by a part of the brain called the basal ganglia. These habitual, repetitive tasks take much less mental energy to perform because they have become “hardwired” and we no longer have to give them much conscious thought. “The way we’ve always done it” is mentally comfortable. It not only feels right – it feels good.
Change jerks us out of this comfort zone by stimulating the prefrontal cortex, an energy-intensive section of the brain responsible for insight and impulse control. But the prefrontal cortex is also directly linked to the most primitive part of the brain, the amygdala (the brain’s fear circuitry, which in turn controls our “flight or fight” response). And when the prefrontal cortex is overwhelmed with complex and unfamiliar concepts, the amygdala connection gets kicked into high gear. All of us are then subject to the physical and psychological disorientation and pain that can manifest in anxiety, fear, depression, sadness, fatigue or anger.
It’s no wonder that logic and common sense aren’t enough to get people to sign up for the next corporate restructuring.
So what’s a change agent to do?
1. Make change familiarIf you show people two picture of themselves – one an accurate representation and the other a reversed image – people will prefer the second. Because that’s the image they see in the mirror every day.
With change comes the need for an ongoing communication strategy. It takes a lot of repetition to move a new or complex concept from the prefrontal cortex to the basil ganglia. Continually talking about change and focusing on key aspects will eventually allow the novel to become more familiar and less threatening.
2. Let people create changeNo one likes change that’s forced on them, yet most people respond favorably to change they create. Brain research shows us why this is so. At the moment when someone chooses change, their brain scan shows a tremendous amount of activity as insight develops and the brain begins building new and complex connections. When people solve a problem by themselves, the brain releases a rush of neurotransmitters like adrenaline, and this natural “high” becomes associated positively with the change experience.
This means that you can’t “sell” change and you can’t lead it with command and control tactics. But you can provide enough background information (about trends, customer demands, competitive pressure, and other key issues) and a forum for people to reflect on and discuss the implications of those forces for the organization. Rather than lecturing and providing all the answers, try asking questions and letting people work out the solutions on their own.
3. KISS your communicationThe prefrontal cortex can deal well with only a few concepts at one time. As tempting as it may be to lump everything you know about the change into one comprehensive chunk – don’t do it. Your job is to help people make sense of complexity by condensing it into two or three critical goals they can understand and absorb. 4. Never underestimate the power of a vision
Human beings are teleological. That is, we are attracted to (or repelled by) images we hold in our minds. If all the mental pictures employees hold are of happier times in the “good old days” or the painful reminders of unsuccessful change efforts of the past, they will naturally resist the next announced change.
Here’s where a vision becomes crucial. And, by using the term vision, I’m not referring to a corporate statement punctuated by bullet points. I’m talking about a clearly articulated, emotionally charged, and broad picture of what the organization is trying to achieve. 5. Don’t “sugar coat” the truth
The prefrontal cortex is always on guard for signals of danger. When overly optimistic outcomes or unrealistic expectations are exposed (and they always are) the prefrontal cortex switches to high alert – looking for other signs of deception and triggering the primitive brain to respond with feelings of heightened anxiety. 6. Help people pay attention
The act of paying attention creates chemical and physical changes in the brain. In fact, attention is continually reshaping brain patterns. Concentrating attention on a thought or an insight or a fear will, over time, keep the relevant circuitry open and dynamically alive. With enough focus, these circuits become stable, physical links in the brain’s structure.
The term “attention density” refers to the amount of attention paid to a particular mental experience over a specific time. The greater the concentration on a specific idea, the higher the attention density. High attention density facilitates long-term behavioral change. One way to encourage people to pay attention to new ideas is to continually repackage them in attention-grabbing ways – in a story, a game, an experience, a humorous skit, a metaphor, an image, or even a song. And the way to focus people on the organization’s optimal future is to get them to pay attention to their own insights and to develop pictures of the needed new behaviors in their own minds.
My friend, Joe, keeps information to himself. In his mind, not telling what he knows gives him a personal competitive advantage. After all, he reasons, “Knowledge is power.”
My other friend, Ken, doesn’t see it that way. His recent promotion came as a result of the exposure he received from sharing his ideas and experiences (in conversations and presentations) throughout the organization.
So who’s right?
According to evolution – maybe both!
Recent research shows that the instinct to hoard can be traced back to early humans hoarding vital supplies, like food, out of fear of not having enough. The more food they put away, the safer they felt. In an evolutionary sense, those who hoarded food and other basic necessities, were better off, healthier, and produced more offspring.
This emotional attachment to our possessions has been hard-wired into our brains to help us survive. And, still today, whenever we feel threatened, fearful, distrustful or insecure, the “hoarding gene” kicks into high gear, urging us to hold on tightly to whatever we possess – including knowledge.
On the other hand . . . humans are also a learning, teaching, knowledge-sharing species. This too has been hard-wired in us. Experiments at Notre Dame support the notion that cooperation helped our ancient ancestors survive. Computer simulations add to real world evidence that teamwork in early humans was critical. For example, the common use of stone tools suggests they shared information on the location of suitable material. These sites are sometimes 30 kilometers away from where the tools are found and would have been difficult for individuals to discover on their own.
This knowledge-sharing instinct is alive and active in little children. They can’t wait to tell what happened in school or on the playground. And when children grow up, they become adults who thrive on collaboration. According to just about every employee survey I’ve seen, hoarding information is identified as a huge barrier to optimal productivity and morale. People prefer to work in a collaborative environment because it is where they feel that their contribution matters. High participation builds high employee engagement.
So, when it comes to knowledge, which survival strategy (hoarding or sharing) is more likely to be effective in today’s fast-paced, information-intensive world?
The answer lies in the shift from the Industrial Era, when knowledge obsolescence took years and when hoarders created leverage and power bases by hanging onto what they knew, to today, when the shelf life of knowledge is much shorter. Knowledge is no longer a commodity like gold, which holds (or increases) its worth over time. It’s more like milk – fluid, evolving, and stamped with an expiration date. And by the way, there is nothing less powerful than hanging on to knowledge whose time has expired.
Want to add real value to your team – your company – your profession? Want to build a reputation as an informed player? Then put your knowledge into action – fast. The new model of power/influence/success is a cycle of learning quickly, sharing what you know while it is still valid, unlearning what no longer works, and relearning.
Now that’s an instinct worth cultivating!
Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. is the author of nine books including CREATIVITY IN BUSINESS and “THIS ISN’T THE COMPANY I JOINED” — How to Lead in a Business Turned Upside Down. She delivers keynote speeches and seminars to association and business audiences around the world. For more information or to book Carol as a speaker at one of your events, please call: 510-526-1727, email: CGoman@CKG.com, or visit her website: http://www.CKG.com.
I love the holiday season! A great time to get together with extended families – and a perfect time to conduct a little informal research on generational differences.
Here’s one example . . .
I recently attended a family gathering where 17 year-old Alexandra, announced that she was quitting her weekend waitress job because the manager wouldn’t give her time off to attend a party. Her statement and the responses she got from various family members were classic:
“It’s no big deal,” Alex said. “I’ll just get another job somewhere else.”
“Never quit one job until you have another,” counseled her 28-year-old cousin.
“Maybe you should consider staying there a little longer. It will look better on your resume,” added her 49-year old mother.
And Alex’s septuagenarian grandfather grumbled, “Where is your work ethic young lady? That restaurant is counting on you!”
When I address business audiences, I’m often asked whether or not it’s fair to generalize when talking about individuals. And in many ways, it isn’t. Everyone is unique – with personal motivations, desires, and goals.
No one likes being lumped into a generational category that encompasses 18 years – and then stamped with a single label. But, like it or not, there are shared circumstances that help shape expectations and attitudes. And these circumstances differ with times in which people were born and raised.
In today’s work force, four generations are currently represented:
o The Silent Generation, born between 1927-1945, are the children of world wars and the Great Depression. Because economic times were tough when they were looking for jobs, this generation tends to be hard working, loyal, and thrifty.
o Baby Boomers (1946-1964) were raised in an era of opportunity, progress, and optimism. Growing up in a radically changing society marked by rebellion, shifting social norms, and outward challenge of authority, they created the need for organizational “vision, values, and mission.”
o Gen Xers were born between 1965-1983. They are technologically savvy and were raised in the age of dual-career families. Watching their parents “bleed company colors” only to be found “redundant,” this generation hit the job market looking for career development, flexibility and work-life balance.
o The Millennials (1984-2002) are the newest members of the work force. A “plugged-in” generation, they have been around technology since birth. Navigating the world of blogs, wikis, podcasting, and instant messaging is as natural to them as breathing.
Each of these distinct groups of people views life differently. And it isn’t just technology that divides the generations. Their differences include perspectives on authority and respect, hierarchy and collaboration, balancing the demands of work and home, aspirations for leadership, and the definition of workplace loyalty.
Just consider the friction that is bound to exist in financial attitudes between those who grew up with economic scarcity, frugality and rationing during the Depression era and those who were raised in an “instant gratification, no payment until next year,” society. And there’s sure to be a clash between members of the Silent Generation, whose definition of leadership reflects the military structure with its command and control philosophy, and their Millennial counterparts who are distrustful of leaders in general – and who expect a collaborative/inclusive work environment.
So what can organizations do to engage and motivate employees across generational boundaries? Here are a few ideas:
o Expect and accommodate differences. Career growth and development opportunities are crucial to the retention of younger employees – as is exciting, challenging work. Silents and Boomers may be looking for a way to leave a legacy or to have their contributions acknowledged and shared.
o Create choices and let the workplace organize itself around the job to be done. Call it empowerment or autonomy or flextime or “doing their own thing.” The reality is that different work styles/hours/locations can attain the same results. And results are what count!
o Focus on commonalities. Regardless of generational category, all employees have two things in common: They want to be successful and want to do meaningful work. When you build your management and communication strategies around these universal motivators, you appeal to the most senior as well as the newest members of the organization.
Each generation has much to offer an organization – and much to offer other generations. The more we know about generational differences and similarities, the easier it is to create workplace environments based on complementary talents, mutual respect, and unified purpose.
Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. is the author of nine books including CREATIVITY IN BUSINESS and “THIS ISN’T THE COMPANY I JOINED” — How to Lead in a Business Turned Upside Down. She delivers keynote speeches and seminars to association and business audiences around the world. For more information or to book Carol as a speaker at one of your events, please call: 510-526-1727, email: CGoman@CKG.com, or visit her website: http://www.CKG.com.
If you put a microphone in every hallway, stairwell and coffee station in your organization, what would you overhear?
Well, according to a variety of studies, the breakdown would look something like this:
Gossip (14%). People talk about office intrigue: Who’s sleeping with whom? Did so-and-so really quit “to pursue other options” or was he fired? How did that jerk get promoted? Who does the boss currently loathe or love?
They also compare childcare facilities, restaurants, television programs and sporting events. And in doing so they bond and build relationships that will become the foundation for trust and knowledge sharing. But all of this is only a fraction of what’s being discussed when employees get together.
Business (86%). Most of the conversations in your organization have a work-related focus: Who’s reliable – trustworthy – informed? How am I supposed to behave in this situation? Have you ever dealt with this customer – problem – manager before? What does it take to succeed in this culture?
People share information about their projects, collaborate to develop innovative products and services, and have real-world discussions about “how things get done around here.”
And that’s how “office buzz” becomes money in the bank for an enterprise.
An organization’s cumulative knowledge is contained in the heads of individuals and disseminated through the information and stories they exchange within the networks they access. People learn more from comparing experiences in the hallways than from reading the company’s official manuals, going online to a knowledge repository, or attending training classes. And, as a result of these informal conversations, the organization builds its worth.
Which is not to deny the importance of classes, databases and books, but only to point out the (often overlooked) value of simply getting people together and encouraging them to talk.
Xerox Corporation learned this lesson when it was looking for a way to boost the productivity of its field service staff. A cultural anthropologist traveled with a group of tech reps to observe how they actually did their jobs – as opposed to how they described what they did, or what their managers assumed they did. The anthropologist discovered that the reps spent more time with each other than with customers. They’d gather in common areas like the local parts warehouse or around the coffee pot and swap stories from the field. And it was here that the reps asked each other questions, identified problems, and shared new solutions as they devised them.
Impressed by the potential of these employee gatherings, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) added a technological element, and wired the coffeepot to computer monitors. Any time that someone brewed a fresh pot of coffee, an icon flashed on employees’ screens. People would come out of their offices from various parts of the building for a cup, and they would collect in front of the coffeepot. As the ensuing conversations became more complex, PARC installed huge white boards around the coffee area, so that people could draw diagrams and write out key points. This, in turn, allowed others who were in the area to see where the discussion was heading, and to also join in.
To encourage employees to linger and chat with one another, some companies have designed wide stairwells with large landings, many organizations have created attractive employee “commons” areas, and meeting planners have been asked to designate more time for informal interaction at business conferences.
Did you ever think you’d see the day? In a complete reversal from the old “stop wasting time – and get back to work” mentality, the most progressive companies today are helping employees find ways to stop “working” and start talking!
Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. is the author of nine books including CREATIVITY IN BUSINESS and “THIS ISN’T THE COMPANY I JOINED” — How to Lead in a Business Turned Upside Down. She delivers keynote speeches and seminars to association and business audiences around the world. For more information or to book Carol as a speaker at one of your events, please call: 510-526-1727, email: CGoman@CKG.com, or visit her website: http://www.CKG.com.
Management and leadership are two different things. They’re both essential to the success and growth of an organization, and they complement each other in ways little and large. But often the differences between them are lost amid the hustle and bustle of running a company.
You can think of management as the hard work of ensuring performance to a certain standard. That standard may involve money (such as a budget or a revenue target), or time (in the case of a deadline), or quality (as tolerance for defects), or production (a quota, say, or a truck waiting at the loading dock).
By contrast, you can think of leadership as the hard work of bringing about change—cultural, operational, structural—that depends on the discretionary but critical participation of people, who essentially choose the pace if not the direction of change.
Management and leadership both require their own energy, as well. But the energy for each comes from different sources.
Management takes its energy from the power of an organization’s hierarchy, and its thrust is accountability. Persons in a position of authority have the duty and power to enforce a standard.
Stylistically, communication for management is typically directive, authoritative, even implicitly threatening, because it reflects the imposition of accountability.
Leadership, on the other hand, takes its energy from its nobility, its quest for something big, and its empathy and connection with people. Influential leaders often emerge from relative obscurity or from institutional positions of dependency, not power. They get more from people by asking for and expecting more.
Stylistically, communication for leadership is ennobling, inspiring, and purposeful. It recognizes the de facto democratic nature of organizational change, and it reaches for a live-wire connection between leader and led. The thrust is opportunity to achieve and become something more than we are today or were yesterday.
To the extent that these differences are overlooked, most organizations default to the accountability of management. That’s not surprising, since the people in charge were schooled, selected, and rewarded for their ability to control results. But it misses the glorious potential for change that looms in opportunity, in the connectivity of real leadership.
Ask yourself:
- Does your organization value management over leadership?
- Does it appreciate the differences between management and leadership—not so much the differences in their position on your organizational chart, but the differences in their work?
- Does it recognize that the work of management and the work of leadership each has its own kind of energy?
- Does it see the profound stylistic differences between communication for the sake of management and communication for the sake of leadership?
- What could your organization accomplish with a greater appreciation of leadership?
- What should change?
- How can you change to embody the importance of leadership as a force for change?
Thomas Lee has been benchmarking best-practice companies in organizational communication for almost 15 years. To date he has personally benchmarked almost 30 leading American corporations, including 3M, Motorola, Hewlett-Packard, DuPont, Weyerhaeuser, Levi-Strauss, McDonald’s, Shell Exploration, Duke Energy, and many others.
You’ve heard the old saying that you are what you eat. That’s certainly true. But it is also true that you are what you speak. What you choose to say or not to say, and how you choose to say it, accounts for much of your presence in the world.
For all intents and purposes your words are you. That is true for organizations and individuals alike, and it is true unless and until behavior and actions contradict the words.
At least initially, people will rightly presume you are speaking the truth as you know it. Their presumption of truth carries an institutional sledgehammer of accountability. The accountability is at the heart of our laws on libel, advertising, perjury, contracts, marriage, criminal assault, and commerce. All those laws reflect the need for truth to be stated. They all impose accountability, too, so as to insist on it.
In large organizations, words routinely convey official declarations, intention, and information. We label these words collectively (along with numbers and images in their service) as the organization’s formal voice. The formal voice is foundational to the perceptions and to the regard that people have of any organization. The formal voice also lies at the core of any organization’s capacity to change and grow. It must be managed effectively, for it is absolutely key to the future.
Yet all too often, organizations mismanage the formal voice. They render it as sweet talk, scare talk, and happy talk–in other words, spin. They deliberately mislead, or they inadvertently mislead others by misleading themselves. In doing so, they compromise their own effectiveness as managers and leaders, and they undermine the future of the organization they’re entrusted to lead. They do so for many reasons, some of them enticingly real and worthy. Whatever the reason, mismanagement it is.
What exactly does the formal voice look like and sound like? In a nutshell, it’s the talk of what eventually should be walking the talk.
On the outisde, the formal voice takes the form of advertising, news releases, branding, web sites, government filings, product information, slogans, and the like. On the inside, the formal voice may consist of all-employee announcements, town-hall meetings, intranet sites, newsletters, level-by-level cascading, closed-circuit television, laminated wallet cards, old-fashioned bulletin boards, and much more.
Often the external and internal sides of the formal voice cross paths, as in the case of a major quality certification, or a new commitment to customer service, or a product recall, or a merger or an IPO, or a yearly marketing blitz or retail sale. In those instances and many others, there is a need for coordinated internal and external communication. In any and all cases, though, the formal voice should be cohesive, and it should integrate with its cousins, the semi-formal and informal voices. (More on those voices in subsequent issues.)
For external stakeholders such as customers or investors, and for internal stakeholders such as employees, the formal voice is a window on the company’s thinking.
Ideally it is the verbal representation of reality. It should serve as a reference bank for factual information. When it is deliberately abused, its reliability plummets. The credibility of the company and of its leadership also dwindles. Better to jealously guard the credibility of the formal voice.
In the interest of managing the formal voice effectively, here are important things to keep in mind. Some will strike professionals as commonplace, but for executives and senior line managers, they may be revelatory. Let’s take a look:
- Insist on having and sharing a strategic focus. Much of the power of the formal voice is its ability to train everyone’s sight on a very few priorities. Without a strategic focus, you cannot point people in the same direction.
- Create an industry-specific, unique vision that can productively be drilled down deep into the organization. (We will share more ideas on good vision statements in a future bulletin.)
- Limit the proliferation of messages. Three or four strategic messages are the maximum; any other message should be subordinate to those at the core.
- Maintain those core messages over the long haul. People need a stake in the sand. The inevitability of change is no excuse for here-today, gone-tomorrow strategy.
- Build your mission around your customer’s interest. Making money is not sufficient. Think in terms of why your customers patronize your organization in the first place.
- Minimize and clarify jargon, acronyms, and neologisms. Use jargon only to the extent that everyone in your company understands it. Even then, favor plain language. It has the advantage of actually working.
- Convey a consistent core message through as many of the formal-voice channels as you can. Just as aircraft have built-in redundancy, so should your formal voice. Say the same thing out of both sides of your mouth.
- Let the formal voice be the mouthpiece of leadership, and think of the role of leadership as akin to that of a teacher. Constantly educate the workforce on the changing reality of the industry, its markets, its customers and their expectations.
- Maintain a healthy skepticism toward “cascading” strategic information down through the organization one layer at a time. Cascading alone doesn’t work, and it teases you into thinking that it does. Electronic, mass communication is essential.
- Paradoxically, think of the formal voice ultimate as dialogue, not mere monologue. Ultimately it must move through managers and supervisors, who must initiate and sustain a conversation with ground-level employees about the implications of the strategic messages. Without that conversation, the formal voice is effectively mute.
- Speed counts. Do not wait to “cross all the T’s and dot all the I’s.” Nothing is ever final. Convey information promptly. Otherwise the rumor mill or the news media will rush in to fill the void. Don’t let that happen. Any rumor or news dispatch may or may not be true, but rumors always and news reports usually represent a missed opportunity to convey the context and rationale for a decision.
- Use numbers. Establish clear-cut metrics for performance (and consider developing a “balanced scorecard” if you don’t already have one). Then convey the relevant data in a longitudinal perspective, with historical trends. Represent the data in metaphorical terms, in the way that the late Ronald Reagan did so effectively.
- Be creative. So-called dashboards are efficient, colorful ways to illustrate progress. Strategic maps are likewise effective. Messages need not be verbal. In fact, in most instances, verbal messages are noticed and remembered at significantly lower rates than visual messages are.
- Tell stories. If a picture is worth 1,000 words, a story is worth 1,000 pictures. That’s what a good story is, after all: a motion picture in the mind’s eye. Leaders throughout human history have told relevant, brief stories to illustrate their points. People will always digest and remember a story in ways they can never digest and remember a report or a chart.
- View the formal voice in the context of metamessages. No message stands alone. All messages rely for their whole meaning on their environment, expectations, and ultimately their related experience. It’s the metamessage that people receive and remember.
- Strike a balance between simplicity and complexity. Don’t be so reductionist as to ignore important facts and ideas. On the other hand, don’t resort to data dumping just to impress others with your command of detail.
- Periodically audit the content of your formal voice, so that you have assurance it reflects your core strategic messages. If it doesn’t, it is just more ambient noise diluting the impact of your messages.
- Recognize that serious and complete information and ideas rarely move rapidly through an organization. Rumors move fast, but they are simple, anecdotal, and speculative.
- Do not speculate about the future. Discuss alternatives and their implications, but don’t lay odds. Things change too quickly and unpredictably.
- Be prepared to translate the general to the specific. Explain in simple, memorable detail what you hope and expect people in your organization will do with new information as it becomes available.
- Leave the spin cycle to your washing machine. Avoid scare talk, sweet talk, and happy talk. Just tell it like it is. Say what you think, and believe what you have said. When you no longer do, say so.
Above all, proceed to integrate your formal voice with your semi-formal and informal voices. Left to itself, the formal voice will usually fail even at creating simple awareness, let alone the understanding, acceptance and commitment you need to realize your vision for the future. Only through the full integration of all three voices can leadership speak with compelling clarity and credibility.
Thomas Lee has been benchmarking best-practice companies in organizational communication for almost 15 years. To date he has personally benchmarked almost 30 leading American corporations, including 3M, Motorola, Hewlett-Packard, DuPont, Weyerhaeuser, Levi-Strauss, McDonald’s, Shell Exploration, Duke Energy, and many others.
A reporter once asked Dale Berra, son of baseball great Yogi Berra, and a major leaguer himself, if he was similar to his father. To which Dale replied, taking a page from his oft-quoted father, “No, our similarities are different.”
I thought of this comment the other day when a client I had worked with several years ago contacted me about speaking at an upcoming leadership event.
“Sure!” I said, “I’d love to work with your organization again. But tell me, are you facing the same problems with organizational change as when I last addressed this audience?” He quickly replied, “Oh no, it’s nothing like before. Sure, we are still trying to get people to embrace change, but the change is completely different!”
Over 20 years ago, I began researching, writing and speaking about managing the “human side” of organizational change. At that time I thought it was a topic that would be a top priority — for a few years (until we’d all mastered the strategies and techniques of change management) — and then the focus would shift to more current organizational challenges.
I was wrong.
Two decades later, dealing with change remains the crucial organizational challenge.
In a recent survey by the Conference Board, 539 global CEOs were asked to list their top concerns. In Europe and Asia as well as in North America, organizational flexibility and adaptability to change consistently ranked at the top of the list. Only revenue growth received a higher ranking.
What I overlooked in my assumption of change mastery is the radical way change would, well . . . change. Many leaders did become proficient in managing incremental change (continuous improvement) and the occasional (or annual) large-scale transformation. But managers today are facing a flood of continuous, overlapping, and accelerating change that has turned their organizations upside down. And managing people through that kind of change requires all the communication and leadership strategies we learned in the past – and then some.
The shift from “a change” to “constant change” is more than just semantics. The increased difficulty lies in the fact that most people and processes are set up for continuity, not chaos. We’re built to defend the status quo, not annihilate it. But the world is throwing change at us with such intensity that there is hardly enough time to regain our equilibrium or catch our breath. Nor is there much hope that the rate of change will ease in the future.
So, what does it take to manage people through continuous change? Here are some suggestions:
Realize that resistance to change is inevitable – and highly emotional. This may not really surprise you, but understand that it is a very real result of our neurological makeup. Change jerks us out of our comfort zone by stimulating the prefrontal cortex, an energy-intensive section of the brain responsible for insight and impulse control. But the prefrontal cortex is also directly linked to the most primitive part of the brain, the amygdala (the brain’s fear circuitry, which in turn controls our “flight or fight” response). And when the prefrontal cortex is overwhelmed with complex and unfamiliar concepts, the amygdala connection gets kicked into high gear. All of us are then subject to the psychological disorientation and pain that can manifest in anxiety, fear, depression, sadness, fatigue or anger.
Didn’t think you were hired to manage emotional turmoil? Think again.
Being aware of and responsive to the emotional component of change is now a prerequisite for effective leadership. This task is complicated by the fact that the emotional cycle of transition (denial, resistance, choice, acceptance, engagement) overlaps – as one change begins while others are in various stages.
Give people a stabilizing foundation. In a constantly changing organization, where instability must be embraced as positive, a sense of stability can still be maintained through corporate identity and collective focus of purpose. The leader’s role here is to create stability through a constant reinterpretation of the company’s history, present activities, and vision for the future. And, by using the term vision, I’m not referring to a corporate statement punctuated by bullet points. I’m talking about a clearly articulated, emotionally charged, and encompassing picture of what the organization is trying to achieve.
Encourage employees to mingle. The new change-management fundamentals include an increasing focus on relationships and collaboration. Social networks – those ties among individuals that are based on mutual trust, shared work experiences, and common physical and virtual spaces are in many senses the true structure of today’s organizations. Anything you as a leader can do to nurture these mutually rewarding, complex and shifting relationships will enhance the creativity and change readiness within your team or throughout your organization.
Give up the illusion of control. The biggest obstacle to the organizational flexibility that executives say they want may be their unwillingness to give up control. Rather than tighten the reins, leaders need to loosen their grip in order to align the energies and talents of their teams and organizations around change initiatives. No one likes change that is mandated – but most of us react favorably to change we are part of creating.
Leaders need to loosen their hold on information, as well. Transparent communication means disclosing market realities and the company’s inner workings to everyone — not just to the upper echelon. It requires an unprecedented openness: a proactive, even aggressive, sharing of financials, strategy, business opportunities, risks, successes and failures. People need pertinent information about demographic, global, economic, technological, consumer and competitive trends. They need to understand the economic reality of the business and why that reality is the driving force behind change. Most of all, people need to understand how their actions impact the success of change initiatives – and how those initiatives impact the overall success of the corporation.
I often tell audiences that “organizations don’t change. People do . . . or they don’t.” The similarities in today’s continuous change may indeed be different from change in the past. But here’s one thing that has hasn’t changed. People are still the key.
Or, as Yogi Berra might have explained it: When it comes to the importance of the human element in change, “It’s déjà vu all over again.”
I was speaking to employees of a utility company in Southern California and, because they wanted the entire work force to attend, I spoke once in the morning and repeated the program in the afternoon. At the first session I had just finished talking about uncertainty and the changing nature of change when an audience member asked, “If everything is uncertain, what happens to strategic planning? How can you make any plans for an unknown future?”
It was a good question, and I answered it by using the two sessions as an example:
“I was hired to put on two identical programs today, but you and I both know that it is impossible for them to be identical even though I will use the same set of Power Point slides for both presentations. The differences will be determined by the makeup of the two audiences — how many attend, what their energy level is, what questions they ask, maybe even what they had for lunch. And, of course, I too will be slightly different depending on my energy level and what I had for lunch, etc. I don’t know how the afternoon session will be different, but I’m certain that the unexpected will happen.”
What this means to me as I prepare for a program – and, more importantly, what it means to all of us as we prepare for the future – is that we have to set goals and make plans while taking into account a multitude of contingencies in a volatile environment. And then we have to understand that, despite our best efforts, the future may not play out the way we planned. We need to keep reorienting as conditions change — frequently in ways we never anticipated.
Some people are naturally better at coping with and adapting to a complex, fast-changing reality than others. These individuals take charge of change by remaining flexible and open to the unexpected.
A few years ago, at a management meeting in Canada for the Saskatchewan Government Insurance Company, an audience member approached me and said, “What I liked best about your speech was the part about the importance of personal flexibility to deal with change. That’s because my father was the head of the Canadian prison system, and he developed a test that was the mark of the criminal mind. Would you like to hear about it?”
I said that I was very interested, so he continued, “It was really simple. My father would bring each prisoner into his office and sit across from him at a table that had two colored lights — a red one and a green one. My father operated the lights from switches that were hidden under the table. The prisoners’ task was simple — when the red light flashed, they were to touch the red light, and when the green light went on, they were to touch the green. All the prisoners could do that just fine, but what none of them could do — so predictably that my father referred to the trait as ‘the mark of the criminal mind’ — was to see the red light flash and begin to move their hands in that direction, and then see the green light go on and alter course in time to touch the green light. “
The man waited for my reaction. “You see?” he said. “No flexibility. They couldn’t commit to one action and then change course when appropriate. But of course, these were the criminals who’d been caught — the ones who couldn’t deviate from set plans even when things weren’t working out.”
The lesson this story highlights is that a constantly changing business environment requires organizations to create the capacity for rapid decision-making. It’s also crucial that decisions are made in a way that keeps options open. A critical element in the health of any organism is robustness: the ability of a system to absorb small jolts. To create a robust organization, you must build flexibility and resilience into its foundation.
In your organization, strategies will be planned, announced, implemented, and then — right in the middle of execution — they will all too often have to be altered or aborted because of external changes. And you will be asked to commit to a course of action and, at the same time, stay flexible enough to alter behavior and attitude quickly to support a new direction.
Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. is the author of nine books including CREATIVITY IN BUSINESS and “THIS ISN’T THE COMPANY I JOINED” — How to Lead in a Business Turned Upside Down. She delivers keynote speeches and seminars to association and business audiences around the world. For more information or to book Carol as a speaker at one of your events, please call: 510-526-1727, email: CGoman@CKG.com, or visit her website: http://www.CKG.com.
There, in a nutshell, lies the key to success in a constantly changing world. The amateur chess player wasn’t talking about rigidity when he used the word “right.” He was talking about flexible, creative reaction; about assessing each position as it developed on the board and then making the move that needed to be made at the moment. He did have an overall game plan, but he didn’t frustrate himself trying to anticipate everything his opponent might do five or 20 moves in the future. He knew he couldn’t out-think the master. So keeping his basic plan in mind, he tailored his own moves to the immediate possibilities inherent in each position as it arose. And by sticking to that strategy he won a famous victory.
Which is exactly what the most successful leaders do today in response to the constantly shifting and always uncertain facts of life in the modern business world. They work out a general plan for the future, pin it up in the corners of their minds and then focus on what’s happening right now. They assess the possibilities inherent in each developing situation, decide what needs to be done and then make the move that they think will be most advantageous to their company’s prosperity and on-going strength. Sometimes the move will be an offensive, attacking one. Sometimes it will be a tactical side step. Sometimes it will be an unexpected counter-thrust. But whatever its character and consequence, it will be based on the best analysis of immediate circumstances.
In a world of technological advances, competitive maneuvers, economic fluctuations, customer demands and global markets, every business strategy (like every chess game) is filled with moves you don’t anticipate. No one can assess all the possibilities.
Flexibility, open-mindedness, the capacity to roll with changing circumstances, the ability to absorb and assess new information and to apply it creatively to new situations — those are the strengths of the winning, change-adept leader today. And when those strengths are missing, leaders are bound to lose. As Grandmaster Fred Reinfeld said in Why You Lose At Chess, (a book every aspiring business leader would do well to study): “You lose because you’re stubborn. You have prejudices and preconceived notions — and you refuse to give them up.” That’s unforgivable, Reinfeld concludes. And doubly so in business where there is a good deal more to be lost than just a game.
In a chess match, each position has its own unique possibilities and each opponent has his or her own ideas about how to capitalize on them. But as a leader of a team or an organization, you have one enormous advantage over the chess player sitting alone at the board. All of your chess pieces can think, too. The pieces on a chessboard are ranked according to their power. But as all good chess players know, any piece on the board can deliver a great win if its potential is fully unleashed. The same holds for each and every member of the team you lead.
The Communitelligence RETHINKING COMMUNICATIONS Senior Management Summit September 17-18, 2008 in New York City brought together thought leaders in corporate communications, PR, & marketing to share and brainstorm new strategies to meet New Media challenges and opportunities.
The summit, hosted at Pfizer headquarters inNew York City included a refreshing mix of stimulating and challenging keynotes, panels and roundtable brainstorming.
Here are some of the chords that struck me (my comments in blue below):
THE PR WARS: WHY YOU ARE LOSING, by William J. Holstein
Sunday business columnist, New York Times, and author, Manage the Media (Don’t Let the Media Manage You)
William Holstein led off the day. He is an award-winning editor, author and journalist on subjects affecting CEOs and boards of directors. It was a striking coincidence that he spoke about the public pounding that companies receive, often over the issue of CEO compensation, the same week that the U.S. financial companies and Wall Street were in turmoil.
“Where’s the voice of reason in the current financial debacle?” Holstein asked the audience, and no one had an answer. He made a strong case that CEOs need to be screened (and trained) so they are good communicators. “CEOs need to spend time in communications dept. in their career.”
Next a panel of senior communications professionals presented on the topic: SHEDDING OLD SKIN: HOW OUR PROFESSION NEEDS TO CHANGE YESTERDAY. (download slides) The panelists were:
- Sharon Wamble King, VP, Corporate Communication at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida
“Let’s start saying we’re the connection people, not the communication people. We must think of ourselves as strategic connectors driving the business.
“My department goes through a business acumen class, 6 days. We work on how to build skills on driving business success using connection. It is a different set of tactics when performance is the goal.
“We must be the courage of our business leaders. The amount of resistance we as a profession have to change is astounding.”
- Kit Stinson, Vice President, Internal Communications, Avaya
Do not let yourself get too specialized. Establish your dept as a true center of excellence, train & tutor.
- Krista Ruhe, Vice President, Edelman Change and Employee Engagement, New York
Adopt a consultative mindset within your organization. We must move from reactive to proactive.
WHY TRADITIONAL LEADERSHIP COMMUNICATION IS BROKEN (AND HOW TO FIX IT), by Stephen Denning, author, The Secret Language of Leadership
Stephen Denning, luncheon keynote, proved to be an entertaining and very informative business storyteller, with a masterful command of PowerPoint slides. He made a compelling case that facts do not win the day for business these days, stories do.
The afternoon panel focused on: WHAT’S NEXT? PREDICTIONS, CHALLENGES & TO-Dos. Panelists included:
- · Andrew L. Shapiro, Founder and CEO, GreenOrder, and author, The Control Revolution: How the Internet is Putting Individuals in Charge and Changing the World We Know
Communication people are becoming the driving forces behind the sustainability and green movements.
- · Michael Rudnick, Global Practice Leader, Intranets & Portals, Watson Wyatt Worldwide
Online communications demands transparency. Leaks become floods.
- · Michael Cherenson APR, Executive Vice President, Success Communications Group and Chair-elect, Public Relations Society of America (PRSA)
We have to be the long-term thinkers for our organizations.
After the morning and afternoon panels, attendees chose among three “research roundtables” to discuss trends and issues facing professional communicators today. Introducing the research roundtables was Dr. Michael B. Goodman, Professor and Director, CCI Corporate Communication International; and Director, MA in Corporate Communication, Baruch College, The City University of New York. The six roundtables were:
1: Transparency and “The Authentic Enterprise” (download discussion summary)
2: New Skills & Professionalism
3: Measurement, ROI and Stating Our Case
4: Negative “blog swarms” and Crisis Planning
5: New Media Marketing and PR Tools
6: Organizational Trust
THE EXPLODING MEDIA UNIVERSE, Norman Clements, Senior Vice President, Global Analysis Services, Cision, Inc.
New listening and measurement tools are coming that will greatly improve communicator’s ability to speak the language of business.
Sharon Wamble-King told the final and lingering story of the day after the last roundtable reported on its discussion. Sharon went through the story of the lemonade stand owner who kept getting folks offering their advice on how to expand his business. The corporate communicator said she could give him a strategic plan, which he rejected. The HR professional said he could give him an employee engagement plan, which he rejected. But the person who came by to offer advice on making sure he didn’t run out of sugar and ice each day was listened to. Why (and the lesson for communicators)?
“It’s all about the lemonade.”
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Adhere to these and your audience receives your message as you intended, and you achieve the results you desire. Solari Position Paper.
MDA Leadership Consulting Whitepaper includes 12 negative out-comes—“The Dirty Dozen”— seen in organizations that are poorly managed when facing complex change.
Download pdf at http://www.mdaleadership.com/leadership-library/docs/MDA_Mergers_Acquisitions_white_paper.pdf
John Baldoni is a leadership consultant, coach, and speaker. He picked up one leadership lesson while teaching at the Banff Centre recently that really resonated.
Andrew Solnordal, a regional manager at Gulf & Fraser, a credit union in British Columbia. Andrew is responsible for a nine-branch operation and more than eighty employees. He has committed himself to visiting with each and every employee once per quarter.
“Think about it,” writes Baldoni in Harvard Business Publishing. “He’s adding 320+ meetings to his schedule per year. Not because he has to, but because he feels it’s the right thing to do.
Here are three reasons why Solnordal’s idea may be a good one for you. Read the article.
How effective are you as a leader and how much of that is tied into the perception of people of you and your image? It is that question that the Center for Creative Leadership recently looked at in a guidebook titled, Building an Authentic Leadership Image.
Here is an article looking at some of their findings.
The holiday office party offers a great opportunity to socialize with co-workers, meet new people, and develop or deepen relationships. However, a holiday get-together can also quickly turn into a career-limiting event, unless you understand the do’s and don’ts of appropriate behavior.
The desire to relax and have fun – especially in these challenging economic times –can be a highly anticipated, positive antidote to workplace stress. But when you combine the need to let your hair down with too many glasses of wine, it’s a mix that can cause trouble. You may forget that this is not the time to rant about the depreciated value of your 401K, tell the latest off-color joke, or let your boss know that the whole department resents her micro-management style. In fact, those kinds of inappropriate comments, which all too often slip out after a few drinks, may not only cost you a promotion, but quite possibly a job.
On the other hand, the holiday party is a wonderful time to mingle with colleagues in a less pressured setting. It’s a great chance to thank those who have been helpful or supportive throughout the year. It may even be an opportunity to meet with senior executives, either to introduce yourself or get to know them on a more personal level.
But there is another personal dynamic you should be aware of at an office party beyond moderate drinking and monitoring what you say: It is also about understanding the impact of everything you don’t say.
In all workplace situations, including office parties, your nonverbal behavior speaks volumes. The trick is to actually embody the messages that you want delivered. Here are some body language tips that will help your holiday office party be a personal and professional success for you:
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Develop an inclusive, welcoming attitude. Pretend that you are the party’s host or hostess, and that your job is to make others feel welcome and at ease. Approaching people with this attitude will immediately resonate in a positive way.
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Stand tall. Your mother was right when she told you to stand up straight. As you pull your shoulders back and hold your head high, you assume a posture of confidence and self-esteem.
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Optimize the power of touch by shaking hands – but don’t go overboard. The way you greet your fellow party-goers can have a huge impact on their perception of you. A firm handshake is a business skill worth developing, and a light touch on the arm or shoulder can create an instant bond. But if you hang on people or touch them too frequently, you send unintended signals of neediness or flirtation.
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Let your body show that you are at ease. If you want people to see you as comfortable and approachable, assume an open position with your legs about shoulder width apart and your arms loosely at your side. Don’t cross your arms and legs or use objects as barriers. It looks as if you are closed off or resistant.
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Mirror the other person’s gestures and expressions. When we meet others for the first time, subconsciously we scan the other person’s body to see if they move or gesture in a similar way to us. When you subtly mimic the person you are speaking to, it is a way of silently saying, “We are alike. We feel the same and have the same attitudes.”
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Smile. A smile is an invitation, a sign of welcome. Smiling directly influences how other people respond to you. The human brain prefers happy faces, recognizing them more quickly than those with negative expressions. In fact, research shows that if you smile at someone, it activates the “reward center” in that person’s brain. It is also a natural response for the other person to smile back at you.
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Make positive eye contact. Looking at someone’s eyes transmits energy and indicates interest and openness. (To improve your eye contact, make a practice of noticing the eye color of everyone you talk with at the party.)
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Lean in slightly. Leaning forward shows you’re engaged and interested, but also be respectful of other people’s space. Although this varies by culture, in North American business situations, even in a party setting, that means staying at least 18 inches away.
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Use open arm movements and show the palms of your hands. Those gestures are subconsciously evaluated as positive, candid and persuasive. But keep your gestures below shoulder level. Flailing your arms in the air will not look convincing, only erratic.
You should definitely attend the holiday office party and have a good time. Just remember, you’re at a work-related social function that is just as important as any other business function. Which brings me to my last point: Don’t wear your “club appropriate attire” to the office party. Women should save their strapless, midriff baring, see-through tops and micro-mini skirts for socializing with friends. Keep these tips in mind and use the office party to help advance, not derail your career!
Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. is the author of nine books including CREATIVITY IN BUSINESS and “THIS ISN’T THE COMPANY I JOINED” — How to Lead in a Business Turned Upside Down. She delivers keynote speeches and seminars to association and business audiences around the world. For more information or to book Carol as a speaker at one of your events, please call: 510-526-1727, email: CGoman@CKG.com, or visit her website: http://www.CKG.com.