Imagine a company with two identical sites, both sites roll out the same pay change. It gives the employees a significant pay rise by removing a complicated bonus structure and replacing it with a much higher basic hourly rate.
Site A gets 100% agreement from staff to move to the new package, everyone is really pleased and overall morale goes up. Site B only gets 30% of staff moving to the new scheme. Staff at Site B are suspicious and immediately look for how they’re being hard done by. Eventually nearly all of those who did move over at Site B demand to move back to the old structure because they’ve heard from other’s they’re losing out.
It may sound ridiculous, but I watched this scenario play out and over 50 people chose to be financially worse off because of how things were communicated.
There was nothing magical about Site A. The manager prepared his figures in advance, had a one on one meeting with each member of staff two months before the proposed change and gave them time to ask questions and think about it.
By contrast the manager at Site B told us he was having those meetings, but didn’t. Then on payday – after the change had been put in place – he told a lower manager to inform staff what had happened while handing out payslips.
So, why did they do things so differently when they received the exact same guidance and advice? The manager at Site B isn’t the world’s worst manager but he did have a history of bad experiences with staff. In the past when he’d tried to do something good for them one or two were very vocal about how he should do more, or that it should have been done earlier. And, he never got positive feedback from the majority, so understandably was left feeling disheartened.
Rather than continuing to practice communicating with staff and getting their buy in on change, he started doing things behind their backs. If he didn’t give them warning something was changing, they wouldn’t be able to get angry about it. And in turn they learned not to trust him.
This approach is all too common. If we have a bad experience our brain want to protect us from it by not encouraging us to do it again. So we stop trying the exact thing we need more practice with. You can learn more about how our brain hinders our development in my post “Tell People Your Weaknesses”.
Communication takes constant practice. Just because you’ve done it well in the past, doesn’t mean you never have to do it again and definitely doesn’t mean you have nothing more to learn. You’ll need to put constant effort into giving your team the right information at the right time, and you won’t always get it spot on but they will build trust in you and forgive you when you might get it wrong.
To be a great communicator you should give your staff the information they need to do their jobs well and to feel good about being a member of the team. That’s a team you’re a part of too, so communicating with your team should make you feel good as well.
You also need to give them information in a timely way, wherever possible talk to them before a decision or action is due. Give them the time to reach their own conclusions and input on the final outcome. If you’re making good choices they’ll come to the same conclusions you have.
People say the worst thing you can do as a leader is communicate too little, too late. But you can also communicate too much and too soon. This happens when you don’t have the appropriate information to help the person you’re talking to reach a conclusion. When this happens, instead of causing suspicion and rejection which happens when you don’t communicate enough, you might cause panic and fear which will be just as damaging.
People need to feel empowered and communicating information allows them to make decisions and choices for themselves. As a leader communication is an important part of your role and practising great communication will be key to your future success.
Jenny Sanders
Laura Kelly 