Skip to main content

Engage Employees With Realism, Not Just Rah-Rah!


The other day, a client told me to remove text from and internal/employee communications vehicle because it talked about some jobs that were cancelled. This information was also available online in their organization. The client felt that the comments were not positive and therefore would not be conducive to employee engagement.

I find this attitude quite fascinating. What it tells me is that some of my clients believe that you cannot engage people unless all the messages are 'happy-happy/feel-good' messages. I disagree; in fact, if that is all you focus on sharing, employees will begin to distrust you when they start noticing that things in the organization are not as rosy as the messages sent to 'engage'. However, when a senior manager, executive or organization sends real messages from time to time that paint a more realistic portrait, or they admit some mistakes, these brave leaders gain lots of trust.

For example: We really tried to keep this project on track, but as many of you also experience in your own roles, things don't always turn out the way you plan or anticipate. That's exactly what happened here. Thanks so much for your patience and we look forward to sending you the next update.

Employees are tired of the 'shine'. They want something they can believe.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

If You Clarify, There's No Need to Explain

Clarifying is not the same as explaining. Let me explain. No, wait: let me clarify that...which is it? When I hear the word 'explain', I envision multiple paragraphs of additional text that may not be necessary. Whereas the word 'clarify' evokes a beautiful landscape of writing where every word means something and no word can be left out. In the meantime, yes, 'clarify' and 'explain' are synonyms, which means they are similar, not exactly alike. In the context of writing well and writing to engage, I recommend clarity over too much explanation; perhaps that's a better way to put it. If anyone needs me to clarify that, let me know.

Dear Executive: Say What You Mean

If you read Clare Lynch's article called: " 10 Ways to Protect Your Copy from A Verbose Exec ", you'll see the following sentence: "There's nothing worse than some verbose exec "improving" your finely crafted copy by inserting references to "delivering key learnings," "driving employee integration strategies," and "interfacing holistically with clients." If you're anything like me, you actually want to tackle rewriting those mucky terms she's highlighted. Let's start with the first one: delivering key learnings. The word 'learning' is a noun; that's not the problem. When you put an 's' on it, you are attempting to count an abstract concept like learning, and that causes confusion. Allow me to give you an example:  Merriam-Wester defines learning as: "knowledge or skill acquired by instruction or study." You do not typically count the number of knowledges you've acq...

What did I say yesterday?

Look at what messages have gone out before communicating new ones. A huge mistake managers often make is to communicate new messages without reviewing what they've already said on the subject in the past, hoping no one will notice. Imagine how far a politician would get using that approach. Unfortunately, we can imagine it all too well. The mistake is not in forgetting what you've said before; with all the messages coming from the CEO, the website, from various marketing and customer service campaigns, it's no wonder we cannot remember what we said yesterday. However, it is our job to either know or find out exactly how we characterize our messages and what we share, even long after we've shared it. For example, if you tell your team to focus on continuous improvement and then a week later, in a weak moment, yell at someone for taking too much time to reevaluate a process, you'll lose trust and credibility--probably two of the most important badges...