Author: Evan Hackel

To really understand the importance of communication in a company, it’s helpful to look at what it costs an organization that suffers from bad communication . . .

• Inability to execute – People become stalled and don’t believe that they are able to get important things done. On the surface it might look like you are dealing with a morale issue – people not believing in themselves – but if you look deeper, bad communication is at least part of the cause. When people do not understand why they are being asked to do something, they fail to act. They do just enough to get by. Because they are not motivated to achieve anything significant for themselves or for the organization, they become complacent. Growth and improvement stall.
• Ineffective, repetitive communication – If you are an executive in an organization where bad communication patterns have become ingrained, you have become frustrated by the repeated, extra and pointless work that it takes to get even simple things done. It seems that you need to communicate to people constantly and repeatedly, just to keep them in the know. They’re not visiting your intranet/extranet, they don’t read the emails you send and if they do, the information they contain isn’t absorbed. So you do what you have to do – you spend countless hours calling and talking to them to make sure they have the information they need to work, be successful, and ultimately to help ensure the company is successful. All those extra man-hours you are investing to get people up to speed take you away from the higher-level tasks that you should be performing as an executive. You have to waste other people’s time too, because you have to intrude on the time they should be allocating to more important activities.
• Inefficiencies and high operating expenses – According to “The High Cost of Poor Communication,” a report from the 360 Solutions consulting organization, poor communication patterns are costly as well as frustrating. In a company with 100 employees where inefficient communication patterns have taken hold, company leadership has to invest an average of 17 hours each week striving just to clarify communication. That translates to an annual cost to the company of $528,443. According to the study, some of the most costly forms of bad communication include closed-minded leaders who cut off feedback, interruptions, a preponderance of negative body language, and downright anger.

Communication Best Practices

One of the best things you can do for your organization (besides hiring a communication professional) is to make sure everyone from the top down understands the importance of good communication practices in your organization. Here are some of the best practices to keep in mind.

Strive to know your audience . . .

Knowing what makes your audience tick is incredibly important to ensuring that your communications are read and absorbed. Put yourself in the shoes of the people with whom you are communicating. Strive to understand why they will or should care about the project or initiative you are addressing. In short, what’s in it for them? Once you truly understand your audience, you can more effectively target your communications.

Build engagement through participation . . .

We often hear people say, “If we did everything by committee, we’d never get anything done.” There is some truth to that saying. However, I think people should think about it this way: “If we did everything by committee, we might not implement everything we thought we should, but that’s because we determined that it wasn’t worth doing. And what we did implement helped us move toward our shared vision and do things right the first time.”

Genuine participation in important projects and processes is a key to success. Getting people to participate in projects (especially those that affect them directly) can help improve their level of engagement within any organization. Here are some steps you can take to encourage participation . . .

• Convert people into stakeholders – Talk to them, ask them how they would address problems, listen to them, and strive to understand the issue from their perspective. Remember that the more involved they are in a project, the more they will buy-in and work for its success. Really listen to them and be sure to consider their ideas when making decisions and planning processes.
• Use committed task forces – Create steering committees of thought leaders within your organization to get input and insight and buy-in. Encourage people to ask, “How does this initiative help us get closer to achieving our organization’s goals?” and, “How does it align to our mission, vision, and values?”
• Let staff members participate in the communications process – Encourage them to contribute articles and other resources, let them invite feedback on the information they have provided, share information, conduct polls, and to be proactive in communications within your organization.

This article is adapted from my new book Ingaging Leadership Meets the Younger Generation. Order your copy HERE.

by Evan Hackel

When I was starting out in my career, I was comfortable with the idea that I would get promoted after “learning the ropes,” making mistakes, and moving upward gradually. Most often, I would get feedback about my performance only when I went into a job review session with my boss.

In those sessions, I would get news that I was handling some aspects of my job well, and others less so. Some of my supervisors—the better ones—would outline a series of action steps and objectives for me to tackle, and then when it was time for me to have another review, I would get a little more feedback on how I was doing, and possibly some new goals to pursue.

It has been my experience that with that kind of hit-or-miss approach, giving feedback doesn’t work well with younger employees for some very specific reasons. They don’t like the idea of learning through trial and error; they like the sense that they are making a difference and contributing confidently to the success of your organization. Perhaps more importantly, they like to understand how they can move up and make a long-term contribution. It is best if you begin to talk about advancement and career planning with younger generation employees as soon as they arrive on the job. One good approach is to have career planning meetings with younger employees during their initial training period as new employees.

The most effective approach is to create an individual career plan for each of your younger generation employees. (Note that I am writing about employees who you can expect to remain with your organization for the long term, not temporary or seasonal employees who are in positions that will be short-lived. If you employ younger students who are only going to work for you for a short time, for example, you will not need to create individual career plans for each of them.)

Here are some steps to follow:

• Ask younger employees about their personal ambitions and interests, and work with them to create a plan that lets them live out those dreams as they work for you.
• Explain the behaviors and activities that are most valued in your organization. You can say, for example, “If you can grow repeat sales in your department, we will make every effort to reward and value your contribution.”
• Explain how advancement works in your company, and how it could work for your younger generation workers. If they are starting out as a salesperson in one territory, for example, they can work toward taking over a new territory after a year of hitting sales quotas and bringing in a certain number of new accounts.
• Talk about your company’s values and mission and invite younger workers to tell you how they can be part of them.
• Explain management training and other development programs and lay out specifics about how younger associates can take part.
• Establish specific benchmarks and expectations for your younger generation employees to attain. Build in timelines and due dates to keep the process specific.
• Schedule future check-in meetings at regular intervals to assess how the career plan is working. Members of younger generations like plenty of other employees, do not like to work in a vacuum. So, every month or three months, meet with them to assess how well the employee is doing with his or her career plan. At those sessions, keep the tone encouraging, and ask whether you or the company can help or provide resources. 

Action Step

Meet with your top executive team and representatives of your training and HR departments to plan ways to create individual development plans for as many of your employees as possible.

This article is adapted from my new book Ingaging Leadership Meets the Younger Generation. Order your copy HERE.

by Evan Hackel

When I was starting out in my career, I was comfortable with the idea that I would get promoted after “learning the ropes,” making mistakes, and moving upward gradually. Most often, I would get feedback about my performance only when I went into a job review session with my boss.

In those sessions, I would get news that I was handling some aspects of my job well, and others less so. Some of my supervisors—the better ones—would outline a series of action steps and objectives for me to tackle, and then when it was time for me to have another review, I would get a little more feedback on how I was doing, and possibly some new goals to pursue.

It has been my experience that with that kind of hit-or-miss approach, giving feedback doesn’t work well with younger employees for some very specific reasons. They don’t like the idea of learning through trial and error; they like the sense that they are making a difference and contributing confidently to the success of your organization. Perhaps more importantly, they like to understand how they can move up and make a long-term contribution. It is best if you begin to talk about advancement and career planning with younger generation employees as soon as they arrive on the job. One good approach is to have career planning meetings with younger employees during their initial training period as new employees.

The most effective approach is to create an individual career plan for each of your younger generation employees. (Note that I am writing about employees who you can expect to remain with your organization for the long term, not temporary or seasonal employees who are in positions that will be short-lived. If you employ younger students who are only going to work for you for a short time, for example, you will not need to create individual career plans for each of them.)

Here are some steps to follow:

• Ask younger employees about their personal ambitions and interests, and work with them to create a plan that lets them live out those dreams as they work for you.
• Explain the behaviors and activities that are most valued in your organization. You can say, for example, “If you can grow repeat sales in your department, we will make every effort to reward and value your contribution.”
• Explain how advancement works in your company, and how it could work for your younger generation workers. If they are starting out as a salesperson in one territory, for example, they can work toward taking over a new territory after a year of hitting sales quotas and bringing in a certain number of new accounts.
• Talk about your company’s values and mission and invite younger workers to tell you how they can be part of them.
• Explain management training and other development programs and lay out specifics about how younger associates can take part.
• Establish specific benchmarks and expectations for your younger generation employees to attain. Build in timelines and due dates to keep the process specific.
• Schedule future check-in meetings at regular intervals to assess how the career plan is working. Members of younger generations like plenty of other employees, do not like to work in a vacuum. So, every month or three months, meet with them to assess how well the employee is doing with his or her career plan. At those sessions, keep the tone encouraging, and ask whether you or the company can help or provide resources. 

Action Step

Meet with your top executive team and representatives of your training and HR departments to plan ways to create individual development plans for as many of your employees as possible.

Ingaged leadership is a new way of leading, founded on the belief that if leaders create an organization where everyone works together in open partnership, that organization becomes vastly more successful.  

Instead of telling people what to do, Ingaged leaders unlock the power of people’s minds, creativity and emotions. Some of the key skills of Ingaged leaders include: 

• Asking for help, because doing so is a sign of strength, not weakness.  
• Listening constantly and actively for nuggets of high value in what other people are saying and supporting the best of them.  

• Setting aside personal opinions about what will work and letting people try their most prized ideas.  

How Can You Apply Ingaged Leadership throughout Your Organization? 

Leading and supervising are two very different things. In fact, there are opportunities to practice Ingaged leadership at every level. 

Ingaging with Trustees 

When boards convene, many organizational leaders give them a report of company finances, introduce a few new hires, talk about new products – and that’s about it. Those practices represent disingagement, not Ingagement. Remember that members of your board were appointed because of extensive leadership experience, so invite them to share in open-ended discussions about long-term mission, marketplace trends, competitive issues, and more.  One way to start that discussion is to talk openly about the long-term issues you and your company is facing. The more you share openly, the more you encourage board members to do the same.   

Ingaging with Your Top Executive Team 

To be honest, I have observed that top leadership teams in many companies are hindered by internal fissures and factions that are never discovered until someone quits or a major problem arises. Those problems often happen because executives have ambitions and plans that are being stifled by the company leaders, or because the rejection of their ideas in the past has caused them to self-censor.  

The solution is to build a top management team that is positively disruptive. That means resisting the temptation to surround yourself with “yes people,” “people who are just like me” and people who prefer “group think” to shaking things up. Also, have the courage to recruit people who are genuinely better than you at doing certain things, and let them. Their efforts will free you and results will soar.  

Ingaging with Middle Managers 

The leaders of many organizations overlook the fact that middle managers possess the kind of reality-based, realistic and valuable intelligence that cannot be found anywhere else in house. Instead of hearing directly from middle managers, those company leaders hear about them from divisional heads or other upper-tier executives. That kind of filtering is a crippling mistake. In contrast, Ingaged leaders interact directly with members of middle management. Even in very large organizations like franchises, they create – and visit – advisory boards made up of mid-level managers, leadership councils and other forums where managers can speak and be heard. 

Ingaging with Front-Line and Entry-Level Staff 

Too many companies seem to apply classic “mushroom management” to employees at this level. (“Keep them in the dark and hope they grow.”) What a loss, since front-line employees have critical knowledge and ideas that should be captured and reinforced. In smaller organizations, instituting an open-door policy or visiting hours can help. In larger companies, virtual suggestion boxes on the company intranet have worked well. So have general meetings where employees brainstorm and suggest ideas that can be captured, responded to, and utilized.  

Remember too that your company’s training programs offer a setting to invite and acknowledge new ideas from front-line staff. If you encourage your trainers to explore bigger company issues and invite ideas, you can begin to build high levels of Ingagement, literally from the bottom up.  

Ingaging with Your Sales Team 

Your salespeople know more than anyone else does about customers’ concerns, motivations to buy, opinions of your products, and much more. Yet many companies focus only on sales quotas and incentives, never soliciting salespeople’s insights. To tap this critical intelligence, invite salespeople to attend your top management meetings, listen actively to what they say, and then implement their solutions and new ideas. Another solution is to conduct brainstorming sessions during larger sales meetings, invite people to offer their best ideas, and then let them try them in the real world.  

Still More Opportunities to Benefit from Ingagement 

Ingaged leadership can be used to build more beneficial relationships with job applicants, clients, vendors, top executives at other companies, and many more people. The more you Ingage at every level, the greater you and your organization will become.  

Complacency is like a slow-acting poison that can destroy any organization. Is it damaging yours? 

Complacency, which often takes hold a little at a time, is often difficult to notice. But you can hear it at work in statements like these:   

• “Business is so good, we don’t need to improve anything.” 
• “I’m afraid that if I start monkeying around, things will only get worse.” 
• “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” 
• “We can’t make it any better.”  
• “I’m just happy with the way things are.” 

 Good Is the Enemy of Great  

 To achieve great things, it is often necessary to risk doing damage to processes that are working well enough – that are merely good. But it is a risk that you need to take. If you are not consistently challenging what is good and seeking excellence, you are risking extinction. 

 General Motors is one historical example. At the dawn of the 1960s, GM was still the world’s largest carmaker. Then Japanese car companies entered the U.S. market.  Japanese cars were better made than GM’s, but GM remained stuck in complacency. GM had another 40 years to change but didn’t. What was once unimaginable happened. GM went bankrupt in the Great Recession.  

So we can see that standing still is really falling back. If you’re not improving, you’re losing. Change and innovation are facts of life today, and the speed of innovation is only getting faster. 

 Turn the Lens on Your Own Company 

 Look at your company. Are you seeking excellence? Are you always promoting innovation, improvement, and reinvention?  If not, start! 

 If you are not sure whether complacency has set in, here are some questions to ask: 

• “Are we experiencing slow or no growth?” If you are, you’re standing still. 

• “Are any increases in profits coming from operational efficiency, not from growth?”

• “Are our best and brightest people leaving us?” 

• “If I were to open a business today to do what we do, what would it look like?”

• “If I were going to open a business today to put ours out of business, what would it look like?”  

• “Am I continually improving our team?”

• “Am I investing in training to improve our team and operations?”

• “Am I cultivating a climate of positive dissent?” You want people to feel encouraged to contribute dissenting opinions and suggestions, as long as they are positive and directed toward making progress. 

• “Have I surrounded myself with yes people who only rubber-stamp everything I want to do?” 

• “Have I built a team of executives who have a variety of different skills and experiences?”

• “Do I cultivate the outlook of a macro-manager?” That means you stay focused on the big picture. Remember, micromanagers kill innovation. 

• “Have I learned to put up with negative people and their outlooks?” New ideas and outlooks can only thrive in organizations where positivity is valued and rewarded. 

• “Do I have a defined process of innovation in place?” One good approach is to pick a time every year where you re-think your business and involve the whole company in that process.

• “Am I working in the business . . . or on the business?” Senior management needs to keep its eye on the big picture. 

Are you complacent . . .   

Think about everything I covered in this article and apply it to yourself. Are you improving and innovating?  How are you making yourself better? 

When to start…. 

Yesterday! 

An excerpt from my new book Ingaging Leadership Meets the Younger Generation, just published by Authors Place Press

 By Evan Hackel

 When I was starting out in my career, I was comfortable with the idea that I would get promoted after “learning the ropes,” making mistakes, and moving upward gradually. Most often, I would get feedback about my performance only when I went into a job review session with my boss.

In those sessions, I would get the news that I was handling some aspects of my job well, and others less so. Some of my supervisors–the better ones–would outline a series of action steps and objectives for me to tackle, and then when it was time for me to have another review, I would get a little more feedback on how I was doing, and possibly some new goals to pursue.

It has been my experience that with that kind of hit-or-miss approach, giving feedback doesn’t work well with younger generations for some very specific reasons. Younger generations don’t like the idea of learning through trial and error; they like the sense that they are making a difference and contributing confidently to the success of your organization. Perhaps more importantly, they like to understand how they can move up and make a long-term contribution. It is best if you begin to talk about advancement and career planning with younger generation employees as soon as they arrive on the job. One good approach is to have career planning meetings with younger generations during their initial training period as new employees.

The most effective approach is to create an individual career plan for each of your younger generation employees. (Note that I am writing about employees who you can expect to remain with your organization for the long term, not temporary or seasonal employees who are in positions that will be short-lived. If you employ younger students who are only going to work for you for a short time, for example, you will not need to create individual career plans for each of them.)

Here are some steps to follow:

• Ask younger generations about their personal ambitions and interests, and work with them to create a plan that lets them live out those dreams as they work for you.
• Explain the behaviors and activities that are most valued in your organization. You can say, for example, “If you can grow repeat sales in your department, we will make every effort to reward and value your contribution.”
• Explain how advancement works in your company, and how it could work for your younger generation workers. If they are starting out as a salesperson in one territory, for example, they can work toward taking over a new territory after a year of hitting sales quotas and bringing in a certain number of new accounts.
• Talk about your company’s values and mission and invite younger generations to tell you how they can be part of them.
• Explain management training and other development programs and layout specifics about how younger generations can take part.
• Establish specific benchmarks and expectations for your younger generation employees to attain. Build-in timelines and due dates to keep the process specific.
• Schedule future check-in meetings at regular intervals to assess how the career plan is working. Members of younger generations, like plenty of other employees, do not like to work in a vacuum. So, every month or three months, meet with them to assess how well the employee is doing with his or her career plan. At those sessions, keep the tone encouraging, and ask whether you or the company can help or provide resources.

 About the Author

Evan Hackel has helped start over 20 businesses, turned around a bankrupt $700 million franchise business, and grown it to $2 billion in four years. He was part of the team that grew CCA Global Partners to $10 billion in system-wide sales in 20 years. Evan is considered an expert in Franchising, Cooperatives, business startups, and general management. He is CEO of Tortal Training, a leading training development company, and Principal and Founder of Ingage Consulting. Evan is the host of Training Unleashed and the author of Ingaging Leadership. Evan speaks on Seeking Excellence, Better Together, Ingaging Leadership, and Attitude is Everything. To engage Evan as a speaker, visit EvanHackelSpeaks.com