.::.Easy Mind Reading.::.

Most organizations use tools such as the intranet, emails from the CEO, Town Hall meetings and blogs as a means for the CEO to communicate with employees. However this focus on information tools whilst necessary in letting employees know the details of what is happening do little to engage employees with the reason for change. This is especially true when those changes relate to a merger or acquisition, a restructure of the organization, the announcement of financial results or other complex change messages. In these instances an engagement strategy needs to be designed to ensure that employees truly embrace the reason for change.

Transformational leadership is about engaging employees in changing behaviours to support the new business objectives. However whilst information is important, as part of leadership communication it only serves to provide information on what is changing and when, it is not an engagement tool.

Here are 5 tips that will ensure that your leadership communication methods do achieve those outcomes.

1. The first step is to review the current ways you are communicating with employees and determine whether your leadership communication methods are engagement tools or simply information tools. So this first tip is to gather up all the ways you communicate with employees and decide whether they are one way or two way communication vehicles and whether the messages are information or could be enhanced with an engagement strategy.

2. Step two is very important for transformational leadership because you want to create an "Aha!" moment for employees. This means you convey information in such a way that creates a paradigm shift in their thinking about a topic. The focus for employees needs to be that they finally understand what the change will mean to them, how they can contribute and why it is important.

3. This third step is about conducting focus group research to find out what employees actually think about a particular topic and then what information you have to counter their views and to create a change in how they think. The objective is to find out what information will make employees stop and say, "Aha! now I get it". Once you have the answer to this it is easy to design engagement strategies that will focus employees on the change to the organization and the work that they do.

Benefits of focus group research are that they are a good format for allowing topics to be explored further and frequently will uncover issues or ideas which hadn't been considered prior to the session. Focus groups generally are held for one and a half hours duration and in groups of 8 - 10 participants. The facilitator should lead the discussion but leave the actual dialogue to the participants, and steer them around to the main issue if they have gone off topic and to ensure that all the topics that you wanted to cover within the timeframe allocated are. Well facilitated focus groups identify the key messages to focus your leadership communication strategies on as they relate to specific business objectives.

4. In this fourth step you gather the information sourced from the focus group feedback. The key data you are looking for is what the opinions are of employees about a particular topic or issue that directly relates to the business issue at hand. Then if it is based on false information or assumptions you find the factual data to refute this and then present it in such a way that employees are engaged and understand the basis for change.

5. The fifth tip is that you take the key information from the focus groups, identify a business issue that you feel certain your leadership communication strategies can impact. By using that information you then implement a personalized leadership communication strategy that can be measured by business outcomes.

The outcome is that with all this information you are then in a position to design leadership communication strategies that will engage employees around the one key business message. Most of these employee engagement strategies will mean that employees will be actively involved in some aspect of change through direct participation. As always with all change management strategies these engagement techniques will then be supported by communication information tools.