Many leaders pride themselves on their ability to develop elaborate business strategies. Unfortunately, these same leaders often experience a failed execution of these plans by the people within their organizations. This failure points to a communication gap that often exists between organizational leaders and the people they depend on to implement their strategies.
If we reduce leadership down to the essence of what is to be accomplished, then a leader’s true job is to align the people of an organization with the purpose of an organization.
An organization can be simply defined as a team of individuals with a unifying purpose. While this concept seems straightforward, the development of an effective organization is compromised when a leader fails to recognize that leading people and aligning them with an organization’s purpose requires consistent in-person communication.
Too often, leaders are distracted by strategies that need to be written or policies that need to be drafted, relegating their first responsibility of leading people to the bottom of their to-do lists. When actively leading and communicating with team members becomes a lower priority, the communication gap between leaders and their subordinates grows increasingly larger.
My simple approach for encouraging communication and true leadership within an organization is to suggest that every leader have at least a 10-minute conversation with their direct subordinates every week. When the leaders doing the strategizing actively encourage a dialogue with the people who will enact their plans, they will be successful at aligning employees with the organizational purpose.
In such weekly conversations, leaders should ask their employees:
How will the work you do next week fulfill our organizational purpose?
Did you find your work meaningful this week?
What barriers did you encounter that made your work more difficult?
What can I do to help you make progress in your work next week?
By asking these brief questions, leaders clarify any role confusion and identify barriers that may detract from an employee’s ability to fulfill an organization’s purpose. A 10-minute conversation becomes a new management style, resulting in a team that is more engaged and increasingly accountable. Unaligned employees can be more easily identified, allowing the pursuit of corrective measures. Overall, the organization becomes more fluid and efficient in operational processes.
Of course, for leaders to effectively deploy the 10-minute conversation model, they must have a manageable span of control (preferably no more than 25 employees) and must be able to re-allocate their time in order to accommodate such conversations. When effectively enacted, however, these weekly conversations reduce the time required for the leader to correct employee mistakes, address unproductive behaviors, and recover from customer service failures.
To align your people with your organizational purpose, return to building relationships through in-person conversations. Developing a successful approach to organizational change begins with you.