27 Mar HOW TO CREATE CERTAINTY FOR YOUR PEOPLE THROUGH VISIBLE LEADERSHIP
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This week I was working with the most senior leaders of Hilton Australasia, and part of our session focused on visible leadership. It was a timely reminder to me … to remind you about how important visible leadership is right now.
Your people need you to lead. Their world is full of uncertainty. People are watching the news. They are wondering what is going to happen to fuel supplies. They are wondering whether they are going to end up doing some work from home. They are wondering about prices, the cost of food, whether there will be ongoing impacts that are much more far reaching.
Even if it is calm and nothing has changed inside your organisation, your people need you to lead. And if your organisation is being impacted by the conflict in the Middle East and its consequences, of course, your people need you to lead.
Now is the time to be a visible leader. To offer people confidence and certainty in your leadership. They can know that you are going to be continuing to show up and navigate them through this period of time.
For some people, there are COVID-sque themes appearing and of course that brings back concerns from a previous time. Reinforcing the solid foundation of your leadership brings some certainty into your people’s worlds.
How do you do this?
Keep it simple.
Even if nothing has changed in your organisation, reassure them of this. Be consistently on message with clarity about what it is you are doing as an organisation and why you are doing it. Use the channels of communication that mean your people receive these messages.
Conversely, if things are changing in your organisation, if there are impacts whether good or not so good, again, be very consistent with your messaging and let people know that they can trust in your leadership.
Here is a simple 4 step approach to crafting your messages:
1. PURPOSE
- Why do you do what you do?
- Why does your team do what it does?
- Why does your organisation do what it does?
- Why are you continuing to do the same thing you’ve always done? Or,
- Why are you doing something different?
2. PICTURE
- Where are you going to?
- What is the picture when you get to where you are going?
- What is it going to be like when you get there?
Let people see what it will be like as you either keep doing what you have already been focused on, or if you need to change to something else because the situation has changed.
It may be the same picture you have been drawing for your people for the last 6 or 12 months. Keep sharing it. Create certainty and visible leadership.
3. PATHWAY
- What is the pathway?
- What are you going to do?
- What are the steps to get where you are going?
Whether it’s to get to where you are going next week, next month, or next year.
4. PART
- What is the part that you want your people to play in what it is that you’re all focused on together?
- How do you want your people to contribute?
- How do you want your people to participate?
Again, this might be business as usual, or it could be business as unusual, because maybe there has been a consequence or potential consequence from the conflict.
Even if nothing has changed, you need to message your people with frequency, so they know nothing has changed. They know they do not need to be overly concerned. They know they can carry on with a degree of certainty about what is happening in this part of their life, their work situation, so then they are more equipped to deal with any uncertainty in other parts of their life.
How do you get that message out there? That’s up to you. Use the channels that work in your organisation. The channels that your people access and respond to. This might include video, audio, the company internet, email, text message, company messaging app and so on.
I suggest using more than one channel to ensure as many people as possible receive your messaging.
Your aim is to be on message and on the right channels, so the message gets through to your people. It’s all about visible leadership. Your people need to be seeing and hearing you lead them, and to receive your messages multiple times so it gets through to them. Remember, it takes up to seven times for someone to receive a message, particularly in times of change, before that message really lands with them.
I encourage you to think about who needs to get a message of consistency or change from you in the next day or so. This is important. Your people need you to be visible as their leader right now.
I’d love to know your thoughts.
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