The Five Messages Leaders Must Manage

If you want to know why so many organizations sink into chaos, look no further than their leaders’ mouths.  Leadership, at any level certainly isn’t easy – but unclear, vague, rollercoaster pronouncements make many top managers’ jobs infinitely more difficult than they need to be.  Leaders frequently espouse dozens of cliché-infused declarations such as “Let’s focus on the key priorities this quarter," “Customers come first," or “We need a ful-court press in engineering this month."  Over and over again, they present grand, overarching – yet fuzzy- notions of where they think the company is going.  Too often, they assume everyone shares the same definitions of broad terms like vision, loyalty, accountability, customer relationships, teamwork, focus priority, culture, frugality, decision making, results, and so on, virtually ad infinitum.

Even the most senior managers nod in polite agreement when the CEO uses inflated terms like these, but the executives may feel somewhat discomfited, wondering whether they’ve truly understood.  Rather than asking for clarification – a request they fear would make them look stupid – they pass on vague marching orders to their own troops, all of whom develop their own interpretations of what their bosses mean.  In the absence of clear communication that satisfies the urgent desire to know what the boss is really thinking, people imagine all kinds of motives.  The result is often sloppy behavior and misalignment that can cost a company dearly.  Precious time is wasted, rumors abound, talented people lose their focus, big projects fail.

By contrast, think of the way a high-reliability team – say, an emergency room staff or a SWAT team – works.  Every member has a precise understanding of what things mean.  Surgeons and nurses speak the same medical language.  SWAT teams know exactly what weapons to use, and when and how and under what conditions to use them.  In these professions, there is absolutely no room for sloppy communication.  If team members don’t speak to each other with precision, people die.  People don’t die in corporations, but without clear definitions and directions from the top, they work ineffectively and at cross-purposes.

For the past five years, I’ve worked with hundreds of CEO’s as leadership coach, a board member, a venture capital investor, and a strategy consultant.  I’ve also been a president and CEO myself (m company, Whistle Communications, was acquired by IBM in 1999).  The companies whose CEOs I’ve worked with – typically technology firms – range in size from about 100 to several thousand people.  In observing CEO’s, I’ve come to the conclusion that the real job of leadership is to inspire the organization to take responsibility for creating a better future.  I believe effective communication is a leader’s single most critical management tool for making this happen.  When leaders take the time to explain what they mean, both explicitly (by carefully defining their visions, intentions and direction) and implicitly (through their behavior), they assert much-needed influence over the vague but powerful notions that otherwise run away with employees’ imaginations.

" The Five Messages Leaders Must Manage", By John Hamm, Harvard Business Review, May 2006.   Visit CJPS-Enterprises for more information.