I recently conducted an employee engagement training for a corporate group that included a survey prior to the start of the program. Amongst the top 3 areas identified as the lowest in terms of engagement for this group of employees was "communication" i.e how this was carried out in day to day corporate life.
As a facilitator and also a Community of Practice (CoP) facilitator, I am a strong believer in meaningful conversations at the workplace as a key differentiator for improved employee engagement, reduced conflict and enhanced organizational alignment and performance.
In an article in the June 2012 issue of the Harvard Business Review entitled “Leadership is a Conversation”, authors Groysberg and Slind discuss employee engagement in today’s “flatter, more networked organizations.”
The authors concluded that by talking with employees, rather than simply issuing orders, typical of command & control type of organisations, leaders can promote operational flexibility, employee engagement, and tight strategic alignment.
They identified four elements of organizational conversation that reflect the essential attributes of interpersonal conversation: intimacy, interactivity, inclusion, and intentionality.
Intimacy shifts the focus from a top-down distribution of information to a bottom-up exchange of ideas, advising leaders to “step down from their corporate perches and then step up to the challenge of communicating personally and transparently with their people". It's less about issuing and taking orders than about asking and answering questions.
Interactivity entails moving away from simple monologue and embracing the vitality of true dialogue i.e. traditional one-way media--print and broadcast, in particular--giving way to social media and the idea of social thinking.
Inclusion challenges the employee to play a greater role in the communication process, turning them into full-fledged conversation partners, enabling them to provide their own ideas so that they can create content and act as brand ambassadors, thought leaders, and company storytellers.
Intentionality enables leaders and employees to derive strategically relevant action from the push and pull of discussion and debate so that the conversation reflects a “shared agenda that aligns with the company’s strategic objectives”. The leaders role is then to “generate consent rather than commanding assent” for a strategic objective. The belief is that this enables employees at the top; at the middle; and at the bottom to “gain a big-picture view of where their company stands” on any issue which has gone through this process.
The article is not only insightful but thought-provoking and I am hopeful, that finally, conversation(s), will become an accepted and wider-spread part of the corporate landscape.
