Leadership Communication And Organizational Values

Any good leader's primary concern should be to reflect the values that their organization upholds and through good communication management

. Once this purpose in leadership communication is clear in any leader's objectives, then it makes for a commendable trait. The question really is whether or not the leader will appropriately reflect these values in the proper manner through their behaviour and actions in the communication process.

Over again we see ways that are considered not effective change management strategies to bring about organizational change in values. Suppose new values are considered by a Chief Executive Officer to be the necessary organizational change needed in the company that he heads. His conclusion is founded on a survey that was done amongst the staff which had results showing that there was a low trust level among staff members and management, the manager had team communication skills that leave much to be desired, customer service is poor, and the results reflect problems not only inside the organization, but outside it as well.

An external facilitator is requested and they guide the senior management team in a series of discussions and workshops at a retreat outside of the office. After hours of drafting, and deep dialogue the senior management team members come up with the new values that should be displayed by employees in their daily routine and scope of work. In line with the feedback of the staff survey, open team communication is addressed, building trust among workers, enhancing team work and internal communication, and an increased focus on customer service.

Once the senior management team have decided what the core messages are the focus then shifts to communicate this to employees. The strategy usually includes motivational posters encouraging employees to have organizational change in values, a pamphlet outlining the values change management process, which are all given to the different management and staff levels for them to learn the new values to implement. Every level then gets to choose a value that they can enhance and improve to increase productivity. After several hours of brainstorming on activities for improving values they report their ideas back to the core team.

Thus far everything was going to plan. But that is all that happened. After all the feedback, nobody processed the information from the workshops, the owner basically marked it off on the 'to do' list, the work was completed, and the leader felt that after this whole process then the employees already had a full grasp on the new values? This was definitely not the case.

In fact this process caused more headaches than anything else. This organization went on to restructure, downsize and expected employees to work longer hours and do more with less. The senior managers began to panic about their job security so they became more withdrawn rather than open and honest, the focus was on budgets and not the customer and the values became a talking point amongst employees for what they did not stand for.

This is what they should have done. After the initial workshops between the senior management team a select group of employees should have been presented with the outputs by the managers for an in depth discussion about how the current values system could have been improved through enhanced leadership communication. These select staff members could then have been set up into teams to assess and evaluate whether or not the improvements were actually working in terms of customer service, sincere and open team communication between the managers and staff, and working as a team, among others.

The only way that organizational change in values will be successful is to design a strategy that includes the values change in the scope of work that employees already do by making it relevant to their workplace. By communicating values this way transformational leaders can bring about the change in values across their organization.

by: Marcia Xenitelis.

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