Communication, communication, communication. We\u2019ve all heard and perhaps said it ourselves,\u201d What we need is more communication.\u201d Whether it\u2019s from employees who work at Company A or volunteers for a non-profit agency, when things aren\u2019t going well, frequently the cause is cited as \u201ca lack of communication.\u201d Often those who feel that way may not really know what they need to hear, but because the leaders of such organizations do not communication with them, people tend to blame that as the reason for \u201cwhy we aren\u2019t doing better as a company or agency.\u201d Have you ever heard it expressed in these ways?:<\/p>\n
\u2022\t\u201cIf I just knew what was going on around here, I could do a much better job\u201d
\n\u2022\t\u201cWhy won\u2019t leadership tell us how the company is doing?\u201d
\n\u2022\t\u201cI wish I had been told that leadership was considering these changes before they made them\u201d
\n\u2022\t\u201cWould someone tell me what we are doing this?\u201d<\/p>\n
Authors Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind spent time finding out how well organizations in today\u2019s economic environment are doing when it comes to creating an effective communication climate among employees. In their article, Leadership is a Conversation, which summarizes their work, they concluded that leaders must develop processes that are more dynamic and sophisticated\u2014most importantly, these processes must be conversational.<\/p>\n
What must leaders do to make communication conversational? The authors identify four characteristics of organizational conversation:<\/p>\n
Intimacy, interactivity, inclusion, and intentionality<\/strong><\/p>\n Intimacy<\/strong>, how leaders relate to employees, is achieved through communication that is direct and personal. Leaders value trust and authenticity. Leaders \u201clisten\u201d to employees and allow them to engage in a \u201cbottom-up\u201d exchange of ideas.<\/p>\n Interactivity<\/strong>, how leaders use communication channels, implies promoting dialogue. Leaders talk \u201cwith employees\u201d not at them. Leaders and employees use social media, blogs and discussion forums to interact with each other.<\/p>\n Inclusion<\/strong>, how leaders develop organizational content, encourages employees to be \u201cbrand ambassadors and thought leaders\u201d by involving them in telling the company story.<\/p>\n Intentionality<\/strong>, how leaders convey strategy, means carefully explaining the strategic agenda of the organization, developing messages that reflect that strategy, and allowing employees to take part in creating that strategy.<\/p>\n According to the authors, smart leaders use these four ways of creating \u201cconversational\u201d communication\u2014communication that people will listen to.<\/p>\n Dr. James Dittmar is the Founder, President, and CEO of the 3Rivers Leadership Institute. Prior to this Jim founded the Geneva College M.S. in Organizational Leadership Program in 1995 and served as Chair of the Department of Leadership Studies and Director of the M.S. in Organizational Leadership Program until his retirement in 2015. Should you have any questions, comments or feedback, please contact him at jkd@geneva.edu.<\/p>\n Photo by Christina_@_wocintechchat.com on Unsplash<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Communication, communication, communication. We\u2019ve all heard and perhaps said it ourselves,\u201d What we need is more communication.\u201d Whether it\u2019s from employees who work at Company A or volunteers for a non-profit agency, when things aren\u2019t going well, frequently the cause is cited as \u201ca lack of communication.\u201d Often those who feel that way may not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1906,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[50,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/divineinterventionministries.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/christina-wocintechchat-com-rg1y72eKw6o-unsplash-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/divineinterventionministries.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/divineinterventionministries.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/divineinterventionministries.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divineinterventionministries.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divineinterventionministries.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1903"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/divineinterventionministries.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1907,"href":"https:\/\/divineinterventionministries.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1903\/revisions\/1907"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divineinterventionministries.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/divineinterventionministries.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divineinterventionministries.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divineinterventionministries.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}