Leadership Lessons: Essential Skills of Communicating

Promoting open and honest communication...

In today's world, we have communication innovations such as iPODs, Instant Messaging, Text Messaging and other technically savvy ways of communicating. However, it is the essential skills of communicating that really allow an individual to convey a message to their team that will inspire, create, and drive free-thinking and innovation.

Some Perspective

The foundation for great communication is openness. When a manager encourages the free exchange of open, honest communication, people are not afraid to offer up new ideas or disagree with an old one that could be improved. When this is done consistently by all your managers, it signals a change in your organization that brings innovation to the table. Innovation leads to better ways to serve the customer and eventually comes back to your bottom line in increased productivity and revenue.

Because of workplace diversity, managers also have to be cognizant that the way they communicate can't be a one-size-fits-all conversation. Managers have to be concerned with understanding individual team members' interests and tailoring their messages accordingly.

Great companies have managers who communicate openly and often, ask for feedback, listen, and then respond appropriately. Take Grand Circle Corp., a Boston travel company, which is one of HR Magazine's 50 Best Small & Medium Places to Work. Grand Circle defines what they celebrate as "open and courageous communication" as being willing to ask tough questions, give constructive feedback to others, and accept such feedback without defensiveness. It's one of the organization's values.

What happens when you have both innovative communication technologies and managers trained to communicate more effectively? Employees look forward to coming to work because the organization promotes good, open communication and innovation.

A Solution

Communication technology in conjunction with managers, who communicate well, will streamline work, accelerate transactions, release creativity, and empower employees. High Performance Innovation is one of the top ten forecasts of what every business needs to prepare for according to the Institute for Global Futures 2007 Global Trends Report.

Making the next step toward an innovative culture means you need to train your managers well. "Essential Skills of Communicating" is one program from Vital Learning that can help you to have a high performing, innovative organizational culture by:

• Creating a climate of open communication
• Design clear, concise messages
• Listening to communicate

The Vital Learning curriculum is designed to meet your training and budgetary needs. Want to learn more about "Essential Skills of Communicating" or the complete Vital Learning leadership development curriculum? Available in Classroom, Online, or Blended delivery options, the Vital Learning curriculum includes the following essential topics.

• Delegating - understanding when to use delegation and how to make it motivating
• Complaints - being able to effectively manage complaints
  
• Coaching - knowing how to productively coach job skills
  
• Project Management - being able to run projects, both on-time and on-budget
  
• Conflict - understanding how to successfully resolve conflict
  
• Hiring Winning Talent- knowing what to do to consistently hire the right talent
  
• Providing Feedback - understanding how to establish performance goals and standards and give feedback
  
• And more...
  

For details go to www.TheLearningEngine.org

Leadership Lessons: New Goals for 2009

Tough Times

The economic crisis has brought a new business reality to today's leaders. The jobs of human resources and training professionals have expanded so that they are now in ensuring that performance goals and standards are in sync with this new reality. According to management issues.com and a research study of more than 1,500 high-income U.S. workers conducted by the Center for Work-Life Policy, managers will have their work cut out for them in maintaining the moral and engagement of those left-behind in the face of long hours, uncertainty and stress. These factors essentially drive productivity in the wrong direction.

Organizations must be smart about the kind of training that they provide for managers, supervisors and team leaders. With employees becoming increasingly more demoralized, encouraging them to work harder and step up to the plate to deliver is not enough. Organizations must maintain loyalty and trust in this scenario. An employee can be working very hard, but may not be doing the right thing. Often, the employee is the first to know it. The Center for Work-Life Policy's study indicated that employees who said they felt loyal to their companies fell from 95 percent to a little more than 50 percent over the past year. That's startling. Are your workers starting to crash?

What to Do Now

One of the most important things team leaders can do right now to turn the tougher environment in their favor or stop it from becoming negative, is to start preparing for 2009. Developing goals and performance standards that teams can look forward to makes them feel like they are a part of the plan and a part of the solution. They see that someone is actually asking them to define the issues and the goals to deliver results that they feel good about!

Manage the Knowledge A second issue associated with this is how you empower employees with knowledge to deal with new issues and pressures. Part of the planning process is to develop a system whereby much of the existing knowledge surrounding tough business issues is available for employees to find out what they need to know. The rise of the knowledge-based economy requires more attention to knowledge filtered through the organization for greater transparency in the planning process. Performance goals must encompass this aspect. Teams can then identify their needs and issues as well as and current and potential barriers to individual and organizational performance. This allows for organizational strategies to bubble up and for focuses to become solidified. Findings from performance standard sessions lead to further knowledge and better performance.

Key Behavior Modeling

Your training program for the development of performance goals should include highly practical and interactive components that provide participants with a clear framework to successfully prepare for a changing and challenging environment. Through exercises that are tailored to the environment, team leaders and employees gain insights into more competitive strategies, value opportunities and clear lifecycles for development. These are the practice sessions that identify and set performance standards that are specific, measurable, attainable, results-oriented and time-framed using concrete language that can help employees justify sound business decisions when they are on the job.

Case Study

Marty has been a top performer in his organization. The economy has been tough and the organization made a decision to downsize, eliminating three of Marty's peers. In the re-structuring, Marty received three new teams to manage. He determined what some of his team members did, organizationally, but productivity is off because of the changes. Many individuals on Marty's new and old teams are disgruntled and frustrated. Marty is working longer hours and is finding it harder to be a team player. He feels like the re-structuring was a bad decision and no one asked his opinion about the plan. Now, Marty is being asked to create a strategic plan together and have it finished by the end of the month. He has vented to his team about it. "Nobody is taking this seriously," he said. "This is just a piece of paper; we all know that this isn't how it really works." Marty's collective team is now completely de-motivated and starting to see their frayed manager come apart at the seams. The result is that Marty might find it difficult to engage his employees in and individual performance development processes. Apathy rolls down hill. Nothing positive is occurring in this scenario.

If a good process of setting performance goals and standards were in place, Marty might have faired better by coming up with concrete solutions with his team members that could be integrated with a better strategic plan.

Developing a Roadmap

Increased demand and competition, a complex marketplace, tough workforce decisions and changing technologies are all impacting organizations today. A good performance and development planning process is the key to developing a clear roadmap to guide employees through the rough terrain ahead. This starts with well-trained managers, supervisors and team leaders. Train them with "Developing Performance Goals and Standards" by Vital Learning. Then ask them to commit to applying what they have learned immediately. Leaders benefit from the following:

• Learning to influence future results from their team rather than leaving it to chance.
  
• Planning that will increase job contentment among team members and eliminate confusion.
  
• Improved quality of work through planning which ensures that work is conducted properly and in a timely manner.
  
• Leaders who plan usually discover what works and what doesn't, then seek to improve individuals, teams and the organization.

For general supervisory leadership skills, we continue to offer you the award-winning series by Vital Learning. Available in Classroom, Online, or Blended delivery options, the Vital Learning curriculum includes the following essential topics.

• Delegating - understanding when to use delegation and how to make it motivating
• Complaints - being able to effectively manage complaints
  
• Coaching - knowing how to productively coach job skills
  
• Project Management - being able to run projects, both on-time and on-budget
  
• Conflict - understanding how to successfully resolve conflict
  
• Hiring Winning Talent- knowing what to do to consistently hire the right talent
  
• Providing Feedback - understanding how to establish performance goals and standards and give feedback
  
• And more...

For detail go to www.TheLearningEngine.org