Category: Management Tools

The Culture of Conversations

I recently attended a presentation by Andrew Engelbrecht, Senior Associate with Arrowhead Consulting. He provided some thought provoking insights as they relate to corporate culture change and how to communicate it. This is my take on what he expressed to us:

A conversation is an interchange of thoughts and ideas. That’s how you want to communicate with employees. Culture isn’t a program, but rather he way to approach work; think, feel, perceive and then act. Feedback is a part of the conversation, not the conversation itself. For example, when having a conversation on safety, it should target “what does safety mean to me?”

• don’t dictate but engage the other party you’re communicating with. Make it a two-way dialogue.
• After communicating the change, remind people vs instructing them. When your thoughts are viewed as dictatorial, expect nothing but pushback.
• Elicit and welcome feedback, you should be open and receptive to an employee’s evaluation and criticism and foster open dialogue with no repercussions as a result. When a manager says they want to give feedback to an employee, it’s often construed as negative, e.g. “Can I tell you what’s wrong with you?” This fosters dislike and distrust.
• GOOEY = Get Out of the Office and Engage with Your employees; schedule time to get away from distractions and allow some time dedicated to dialogue and getting to know one another better. You may learn that an employee is dealing with a personal issue at home that could be affecting their work, or a personal interest that may allow you to connect better with one another.
• Every employee needs individual feedback. Congratulating a team is a very positive move but there’s nothing that takes the place of one on one feedback, so they know how their performance is being perceived. Provide your thoughts or observations and make it a conversation, not a speech.
• Change usually brings the pendulum effect; people tend to think negatively about culture changes, so try to implement change in small doses.
• Tell employees it’s ok to be less than perfect; a client told me that he welcomed an employee’s failure, assuming it resulted in a lesson learned…failure can lead to success!
• Before you provide feedback, are you in a good place mentally? You’ll almost always project the mood you’re in.
• Before conducting a performance review, give the employee the talking points you want to discuss, to allow them the opportunity to be prepared…otherwise, they may come in stressed and unprepared for what you must discuss with them.

More often than not, people quit people; they don’t quit a company. Don’t be the reason a valued employee quits. Don’t procrastinate; follow through and do it.

“The only difference between evolution and revolution is the time and pain it takes to make a sustainable change.”