Employee Connection Chain
“Our employees just don’t get it!” Many leaders today have muttered these words in hopeless frustration. In my 25 years of experience in personal and organizational transformation I found the employee connection chain is so often underestimated and unknowingly broken.
The employee connection chain involves the direct relationship among 3 links:
-Conditional/unconditional trust,
-Effective communications
-Meaningful connections
This employee connection chain must be understood and effectively addressed or leaders will continue living with their frustration.
The first link in the chain is trust. An organization falls in to 3 areas with respect to employee trust.
-Distrust
-Conditional trust
-Unconditional trust
Obviously, the first key is to have leaders genuinely act and function in a trustworthy manner. It’s easy for leaders to speak of trust; it’s much harder to actually live and do. Let us think of the 3 states of trust on a continuum with distrust on the left, conditional trust in the middle and unconditional trust on the right. Organizations and leaders will find themselves somewhere on that continuum and need to move to the right towards unconditional trust.
Organizations and leaders must progress in the trust area to a point where they can begin the journey of delivering effective communications. For there can only be effective communications which is the second link in the chain, if there is at least conditional trust and it is truly ideal if there is a state of unconditional trust.
Today every type of communications media available to humans is thrown at employees, including emails, text messages, web casts, websites, audio conferences, video conferences, and a multitude of meetings. The concern should not be so much the amount of communications but the degree to which that communication is trusted and connects with the employees.
Why are so many employees complaining about either the lack of communications in general or the lack of believable communications? Is it the medium? Is it the quality? Is there too little? Is there too much? We’re sending the message but employees aren’t listening and connecting.
The major reason for employees not connecting is the over use of the visual sense in our organization communications. The natural balance among visual, auditory and tactile communications is dramatically skewed to the visual.
If we took all the communications delivered in one organization; the largest percentage is delivered relying on vision. The media utilized has relatively little use for auditory and even less for tactile. This over stimulation of the visual sense at the expense of the auditory and tactile modes of communications has significant affects on the ability of human beings to connect.
Leaders spend hours attempting to get the look just right; ensuring all the latest visual tricks are integrated. The mark is missed one more time. Whatever the media being utilized, we connect with people primarily through the use of our tactile sense, and next through listening. The words and tone are critical. The visual aspect is the least important for human connections. Remember we are talking about human connections and not basic communications.
Most communication media utilized do not allow the words and tone to be effective. For example let’s think about many leaders today; it is so sad to listen to the quality of presenters. They are slaves to their visual technology. The slides, pictures and charts dominate the show. The visual aids become the centre point, seldom the speaker. There is so much time focused on the visual aspect and so little focused on the auditory and the tactile. Messages are lost. Critical connections are missed!
Then there are those big important presentations where they are scripted down to the last detail; even words and tone. The genuineness is planned. Artificial runs rampant through the presentation. The manipulation is felt by many. Leaders applaud themselves. Limited connections are made one more time.
There is hope. The key is the use of the non visual senses in both building trust and in delivering effective communications. I continue to encourage leaders to break their visual behaviour patterns. If leaders of an organization predominately focus on the visual; that organization will never go beyond distrust. Continuing to have minimal connections with employees.
If the leaders of an organization can focus on the visual and listening; then the organization will have a chance at progressing to conditional trust. Improving the connections with their employees to an extent.
However, if the leaders of the organization can balance all three modes of communications; visual, auditory and tactile. The organization has a great chance of one day attaining unconditional trust. That unconditional trust is where the deepest of human connections are experienced and provides a very strong third link. Resulting in an extremely well oiled overall employee connection chain.
This highly coveted chain is the foundation for bringing back the loyalty that many organizations have relinquished over recent decades.