3 ways to make your communication policy match your leadership style
Earning the respect of your employees isn’t just about being an impressive company leader who can turn a profit, but also has to do with authenticity and communication.
Morale within a business is extremely important, since with a solid, team can-do attitude, if your company does fall upon hard times, it’ll be easier to pull yourself back up with a supportive staff. However, fostering this environment not only means being authentic, but also consistent. That’s where aligning all of your different styles of management and leadership into one principled approach come in.
How you conduct communication within your company is reflective of what type of relationships you want colleagues to form, and also speaks to how much collaboration is valued. If you drag people into meeting after meeting all day, and they feel their time is being wasted with non-issues and useless information, frustration crops up very quickly. However, if you invest in the right tools and are carefully inclusive in your communications, it can go a long way in boosting employee morale and loyalty. Here are four ways to make sure that your leadership policy aligns properly with your communication style.
- Cast your net wide
One of the biggest mistakes that many leaders in companies make is that they don’t cast their net wide enough when it comes to communication. Whether your enterprise is 10 or 1,000 people, the fact is that information is valued. If you’re going to impart some essential knowledge onto your staff, make sure that you’re doing it evenly and across the board.
BlueJeans video webcasting offers an approach that makes sense for large crowds, designed to be able to broadcast your message across the world. What ever your geographical needs, though, ensuring that everyone receives important information at the same time communicates a principle of fairness in leadership. This is the type of communication policy that matches up, when presentations and updates for company-wide staff are evenly dispersed in a way that doesn’t put anyone at a disadvantage.
- Transparency is key
Entrepreneur advises creating a company culture of transparency, where employees aren’t on edge and trust can be invested in managerial leaders. In other words, don’t make the people under you anxious for no reason. Whether it’s something as grim as layoffs or simply a change in policy, transparency puts everyone at ease. People like to be able to know what’s coming in the future, and they will also be grateful for the heads up.
Given that in today’s economy and business world there is doubt and uncertainty, providing your staff with a sense of stability at least in terms of receiving reliable information that can help them know what to expect can make a tremendous impact on everyone. Transparency and intent is absolutely essential to building the type of workplace climate that is genuinely all on the same side. Although it’s sometimes necessary to keep staffing changes under wraps, don’t make it a guessing game that happens until the last minute. If you lay people off, being open about the fact it’s happening, rather than turning a blind eye, gives workers a sense of security and level expectation.
- Defining company culture
Tweak Your Biz summarizes the difference between a tight versus loose company culture as the former being a plus since you can expect results, but may result in a loss of innovation and creativity, and the latter as an environment that’s pleasant to work, but may result inefficiency without a strict workday schedule to follow. Basically, what it boils down to is what type of management style best suits your business, based on size, industry, and working process. If you champion innovation and creativity first and foremost, fostering an environment free of micromanagement and pressures to follow a strict set of rules can be to your advantage. This is especially true of creative industries where the bulk of the work is more about ideas than it is about numbers. If you’re working in a more technical area, and especially with a large staff, running a tighter ship may be to your advantage.
What ever you decide, your leadership style should be reflected in your company communication policies.
Employees pay attention to company culture and policies, whether you’re a staff of 100 or 1,000. Often, leaders are judged on their ability to effectively and fairly convey information. One of the most demoralising experiences someone can have is being left out of the loop of a conversation, and then expected to be up to speed with no preparation. Being exclusive with information, whether intentional or not, can lead to serious problems with colleague trust and start to foster an environment of paranoia, stress, and frustration. This can all be avoided by simply paying close attention to how you’re dispersing information, how, when, and to whom. These efforts will not go unnoticed, and can substantially contribute to a positive work environment as well as coworker relationships.
