Stay close to your employees
Managing your relationships with your clients and customers is essential to your success as a business. But every bit as essential — and perhaps even more critical to the integrity of your culture — are your relationships with your employees. It’s an issue that became magnified as the spiraling economy of 2008 and 2009 created tension and uncertainty within many companies.
As with customers, employee communication hinges on the willingness of you and your management team to get out of the executive offices and engage your people face to face.
“Uncertainty breeds fear, so you need to be honest and candid with your employees,” Stenman says. “Not everything will stay the same. Things may change, but you have to keep focusing on the idea that we’re all part of the change process. When employees are privy to that kind of communication, a level of trust is created.
“The more trust that is created, the more confidence they will have in their abilities, and the better they’ll perform their jobs. The last thing I want our employees doing is worrying about having a job.”
Stenman says economic challenges can provide some of the most profound learning experiences a leader will ever encounter. Few things will test your ability to lead your people like the environment that a down economy creates. Employees will crave knowledge and worry when they aren’t kept in the loop.
At Barnhart, messages don’t always start in Stenman’s office. He wants managers at all levels of the organization to stay involved in communication. The cascading communication keeps managers and employees at all levels of the organization engaged on a face-to-face basis. However, it also requires vigilance on the part of upper management. Stenman and his staff need to follow up on their messages to ensure that they’re reaching every corner of the organization.
“You have to have multiple communications and dialogues at multiple levels of the company, on down the line, interacting with employees at each level,” Stenman says. “It’s somewhat difficult to have one single person do all of it, all the time.”
To help ensure that communication stays consistent as it cascades, particularly when it comes to major messages that affect the entire company, Stenman and his leadership
team will put the message in writing before reaching out to the managers down the organizational ladder.
“We’ll develop a message triangle or a message box,” he says. “We’ll figure out the bullet points we need to discuss the message. We usually come up with a single sheet of paper, so that when we go out with the message, we’re all speaking in a unified voice — all singing from the same sheet of music, so to speak. I think that’s important, because if you go off point, something you said can be interpreted differently, and that can create a string of interpretations that you don’t need. You frame the message, then try to keep it intact.”
