Keep the signal strong
Communicating over multiple levels of an organization can result in a loss of signal strength. The message starts out loud and clear from your office, but by the time it reaches the people on the bottom rungs of the company — the employees who are likely interacting with your customers — it has lost a lot of power and might have been distorted as it has passed from mouth to ear or screen to eye.
Rector combats the loss of signal strength by turning his people into signal repeaters.
He and his leadership team work to stimulate feedback from different departments and levels of RMC Bayonet Point. Rector aims to create the dialogue so communication becomes interactive, as opposed to allowing employees to passively receive messages.
The way Rector creates dialogue is through his willingness to admit he doesn’t have all the answers within the organization, and looking to others to provide suggestions and ideas concerning a wide range of issues.
As the leader of your organization, a person who is by definition an authority on the business, you might find it difficult to admit that you don’t know the answer to something. But demonstrating your fallibility can help remove the apprehension that many employees feel about approaching upper management.
“I’m going to be wrong a hundred times this week, so no idea from anyone in the organization is going to be too far-fetched or crazy,” Rector says. “‘Let’s come up with ideas and play this out.’ You have to encourage those types of open discussions because people have to get to know you. Otherwise there will be people out there who feel like they don’t know you well enough to have that type of open conversation with you.”
You have to be willing to set the tone for open dialogue with your work force. You and your leadership team need to demonstrate your desire for open discussion from the top tiers of the company, and do it frequently.
“Everyone on our leadership team has that personality where we don’t think we have all the answers, and we engage everyone in discussion to make sure we are going in the right direction. We realize that it’s an intrinsic trait of leaders that we always want to have the answers. But oftentimes we don’t, or we may think we do until someone points us in the right direction. That’s why everyone on our leadership team knows it’s important to be willing to say, ‘I don’t know that answer; let me go research it. Can you help me with it?’”
