Why Is It So Hard for Leaders to Communicate Clearly?

One of the biggest things that can leave a team demoralized and confused is lack of transparency in communication - or lack of clarity. For instance, upper management conveys one message and yet their actions are in complete opposition to the communicated goals.

Why is this? There are three ways in which leaders send confusing signals to their organizations. Get them right and leaders will get the results they want; fail and you'll have confusion at best and the opposite outcome you are seeking at worst.

Telling Your Organization What Is Wanted

Very often leaders express what they want in terms of tasks rather than in terms of outcomes. They rarely, if ever, make clear the full extent of the what they are looking for. Leaders may hand down a list of projects or tasks to various teams or contributors without sharing how they fit together to create an outcome.

This creates two issues. The first is that there is no buy-in from those executing the tasks since they don't understand the point. They may be put off in favor of tasks or projects that appear to be higher priority. The second is that, without knowing the purpose, those who are working on the projects can't optimize the deliverables. If they know they hoped-for outcomes, they have the opportunity to find smarter and cheaper ways to deliver on the desired outcomes, faster. 

Not Living the Asked For Change

This means an intrinsic change to how leadership conducts itself in every day business. If the desired outcomes are a priority, make it a priority in business meetings, discussions, etc. Don't leave until the end as if it's an afterthought. Be consistent in following progress. Be prepared to provide support and feedback. This means not only being aware of what you are doing in any given moment, but also of how each thing you do impacts those around you.

Resourcing and Measuring the Desired Outcomes

How the organization spends its resources and what it chooses to measure are the final critical ways it signals what's important. If you, as a leader, ask for certain outcomes but don't provide the resources to achieve them, you are sending a mixed message. It also sends a mixed message if you don't appear to be measuring the benchmarks and milestones on the way to those changes. Too often, the first few quarters a new change may under achieve and be undermeasured because support hasn't been provided and the KPIs haven't been updated to reflect the new priorities.

Signals Matter

Not getting these signals right matters. Followers are looking for signals to help them understand what they should do. As leaders, we have a disporportionate ability to shape these signals. Failure to communicate clearly and provide the resources needed to achieve the desired and stated outcome will leave followers angry, frustrated, and hopeless.

5 Strategies for Creating a Coaching Culture

"Why a coaching culture?", you may ask. Recent research indicates that coaching cultures create a multitude of benefits including improved employee engagement, job satisfaction, morale, collaboration and teamwork. This indicates that assisting leaders and their teams in developing coaching skills and weaving them into the overall management strategy, not just Human Resources, can reap rich rewards. After all, it's a well-know fact that companies with more satisfied employees are more successful.

Strategies

The Center for Creative Leadership's study on Coaching Cultures separated out 5 key strategies for successfully implementing a coaching culture:

1. Seed the organization with leaders and managers who can role model coaching approaches.

   Note the use of the word "seed" above. This is critical to this strategy. In a large organization, it wouldn't make financial sense to train all the employees in coaching behaviors. It would be cost and time prohibitive. The key is to train select leaders and managers in coaching behavior and have that waterfall through the organization. This ensures maximum return on investment and leverages scale to the best advantage.

2. Link coaching outcomes to the business.

   It's been proven time and again that when undertakings are viewed as business initiatives and presented in such a way as to link them to the business goals, they are more likely to receive continued support from senior leaders. These leaders are more likely to stay interested in supporting propositions if you can tie improved business outcomes to the undertaking. You might even go so far as to create KPIs for individual performance measurement. It's all about the bottom line, folks.

3. Coach senior leadership teams in creating culture change.

   Culture change is always painful. It creates fear and uncertainty if handled incorrectly. In order to successfully create a coaching culture, which would be a culture change in most instances, senior leaders should undergo training on how to successfully implement a culture change. Teams with strong bonds, such as excellent communication and interdependent strengths are more likely to successfully implement an organizational improvement than those without.

4. Recognize and reward coaching-culture behaviors

   This is standard positive reinforcement. You see this emphasized repeatedly in any organizational change management course, leadership seminar, or coaching class. It just makes sense. It ties directly into KPI rewards or business goal achievement. However, unlike those goals, which are typically reviewed quarterly, biannually, or annually, new behaviors should be rewarded on a more timely basis. It's the best way to show support, across the organization, of the desired behaviors.

5. Integrate coaching with other people-management processes

   This is critical for the sustainability of the new culture. It needs to become a "business as usual" process. At the very least the new coaching behaviors should be integrated into learning and development, job competency models and team-management processes.

Any organizational change is difficult, but creating one that appears to have no hard metrics and is relatively intangible is even more difficult. There will also be cultural barriers that will need to be overcome. They may include senior leadership not exhibiting the desired behavior all the while speaking in support of it, lack of accountability, or just not knowing how to start. I've provided some ideas for how to deal with these situations in the strategies above. Just keep in mind - in the end it's worth it.

Impacts

A survey of ~350 key senior leaders (non-HR) shows they feel a coaching culture will have far-reaching benefits. 67% believe this organizational change would increase employee engage. 62% believe that increased job satisfaction and and morale will result and 58% believe a coaching culture will result in increased collaboration and teamwork.

A study by Bersin & Associates, now Bersin by Deloitte, puts it into even better perspective. Businesses that are highly effective at teaching managers and senior leaders coaching are 130% more likely to realize stronger business results and 33% more effective at engaging employees. Bersin's research showed that organizations in which senior leaders frequently coach had 21% higher business results and those with excellent support for coaching had 13% stronger business results and 39% stronger employee results. Coaching organizations clearly have better results. How can you not make the transition now?