Keep information flowing
It’s crucial that employees feel like their voice matters if you want them to truly speak their minds. You need to begin by communicating in a way that can only be interpreted as clear and transparent messaging.
“People have to have the information so when they are speaking, it’s not because they don’t have the information,” Levin says. “They have it, and they still might have a question or a concern.”
Use multiple means to convey your message. Levin posted a lot of hard data and numbers electronically and told everyone where the data could be found if they were curious.
“Some partners want to see everything and other partners don’t care to see anything,” Levin says. “So it’s up to them to make the effort to download it on their computer screen.”
With the Western Michigan expansion, Levin provided data on previous expansions and how they had worked or not worked.
“You drill down and give them some detailed information that you might pull from consultants or you might research yourself about the decision,” Levin says. “If we’re going into Atlanta like we did last year, it was important for our partners to understand some of the size of Atlanta, information about corporate Atlanta, information about how many law firms they have and the concentration of what type of lawyers and what areas they practice.”
The idea is to make it clear that hearing about your plan isn’t a one-shot deal. It’s why multiple mediums are crucial.
“I might call the managing partner in Chicago and ask him to comment on this particular part of the proposal so people will hear it from another office,” Levin says. “We have about 50 percent of our partners in Indianapolis, so it’s easy for me to do that and to answer questions from the people that are 20 feet from me versus the people on a TV screen behind me.”
The key thing to do when you’re using electronic means to communicate is to make sure you’ve done all you can to prevent glitches. It’s a great way to cause hard feelings and leave people feeling left out at outside offices.
“It can cause significant problems,” Levin says. “It’s how you respond to that or learn from those things that is another way to measure your success as a leader. Rather than saying, ‘Well, we’ll just update those people later,’ one time, we postponed the videoconference until later in the day. Another day, we just waited until we got it fixed and everybody could hear the message. … We emphasize as much as anything when we have a videoconference that there is no room for error.”