What's Your Passion?

Photo Credit: @JOETHOMMAS

I have an obsession with aerial photography. These photos allow you to see the world from a different perspective. For a moment, the entire landscape is on display, and you see the world as a bird, flying high above looking down for a place to land. It gives you the unique opportunity to see the overall picture, much like vision does for a leader. 

Do you ever feel like you are missing the big picture? 

Day in and day out, you are hard at work, but it feels like you are running on a hamster wheel. You are putting the time and effort in, but you are not moving anywhere.

Earlier this year, Ragan Communications and Staffbase [1] surveyed 300 participants from their readership. Pooling from several types of professions, Ragan asked communication professionals questions about their goals, challenges, and departmental structures. 

Among organizations with fewer than 5,000 employees, 71% reported that there was a disconnect between communicators and executives. 

That is a staggering and concerning amount of companies facing a gap between their managers and the individuals whose responsibility is to effectively distribute the company’s key messages to internal staff and external stakeholders. 

The survey concluded that some of the most significant challenges internal communicators faced were:

• 46% lacked support from leadership,
• 47% struggled with reaching all staff members with messaging and,
• 42% failed to engage all employees.

Why should this scream problematic to managers?

Because employees are the lifeblood of an organization, disengaged employees are akin to a virus, detrimental to the health of your company and business success. When your employees are uninformed and disconnected, they are less likely to perform well; resulting in poor customer service, less productivity, and increased chances in safety mishaps. In short, your bottom line becomes more like a fault line waiting for havoc to strike. 

The same Ragan [1b] survey shows that 54% of internal communication departments’ primary goal is to engage the workforce and improve culture. 

PersonalGroup [2] stresses how important it is for leadership to recognize the value of employee engagement rather than lucrative deals and to create an environment of collaboration and openness. Tony Cocker, CEO of EON UK, “Keeping that openness, that collaboration, making sure there are no silos, [and that] we’re all singing from the same hymn sheet, I think is absolutely critical.” The report suggests that countries (based on the engagement levels within the 27 countries that accounted for 80% of global GDP in 2011) with higher employee engagement have drastically higher GDP (when scaled to the size of the UK) than the UK does.

Take a hard look at your company culture. Are teams working toward one common goal, or are they all spinning in separate hamster wheels? With 71% of communicators waving a red flag of discord harmonizing with executives, it is imperative that leadership (not limited to managers) bridge barriers to effective communication.

The Center for Creative Leadership [3] provides five tips for creating an environment of effective communication between management and employees.

1. Communicate relentlessly. Find various ways to communicate ideas and information throughout the workplace, frequently. Create a culture of open communication and transparency. 
2. Simplify and be direct. Brevity is key. Keep communication straightforward and to the point.
3. Listen and encourage input. Allow feedback to permeate the environment. Listen to your employees’ ideas and suggestions before putting your two-cents in the mix.
4. Illustrate through stories. Utilize the power of storytelling to inspire your employees to rally around the company’s cause and vision.
5. Affirm with actions. If you want your people to rely on and trust you, lead by example and be true to your words by following through with what you say.

Howard Schultz, the former Starbucks CEO, often would share the story of his father, Fred. One day Fred slipped on ice and broke both his hip and ankle. At the time his family lived in a housing project, and without health insurance, worker’s compensation, or severance pay, the Schultz family struggled to get by. The incident laid the foundation for Howard later in life to care for his employees. 

Communication advisor Carmine Gallo [4a] explains that Schultz used his father’s story as the “why” behind his company’s mission and values. Schultz’s vision was to build a company that treats people with dignity and respect, unlike his father’s experience.

Have you ever read the Starbucks mission statement? [5]

To inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time.

They go on to list their values.

With our partners, our coffee and our customers at our core, we live these values:

• Creating a culture of warmth and belonging, where everyone is welcome.
• Acting with courage, challenging the status quo and finding new ways to grow our company and each other
• Being present, connecting with transparency, dignity and respect.
• Delivering our very best in all we do, holding ourselves accountable for results.

We are performance driven, through the lens of humanity.

Neither their mission statement nor their list of values begins with the goal of selling coffee. Instead, both begin and end with the company's main focus—people. 

In Carmine’s article, he talks about a time when he sat down with Schultz. After several minutes he asks Howard why he had not mentioned anything much about coffee. “Coffee is what we sell as a product, but it’s not the business we’re in. We’re in the people business,” Schultz responded. “I’m passionate about human connection.” [4b]

Schultz understood how communication and passion connect your employees and customers around a common goal. “I was sent to Italy on a trip for Starbucks and came back with this feeling that the business Starbucks was in was the wrong business. What I wanted to bring back was the daily ritual and the sense of community and the idea that we could build this third place between home and work in America.” Schultz’s passion for creating a home away from home where people can go regularly has made Starbucks synonymous with the terms “experience” and “good coffee,” catapulting the business to open thousands of stores worldwide. Consequently, they have sold much coffee in the process. 

Passion is what separates leaders from managers. True leaders have to be passionate about a vision, not the products they are selling. Remember Harvey Updyke’s crime of passion in last week’s post? 

Passion is what drives people to do something greater (not always positive) than themselves, and it is a leader’s job to harness their employees’ passion and rally them behind the company’s vision.

Jack Welch states, “Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.” [6] A leader’s vision should be evident in every outlet of a company, and employees’ should be able to walk it out daily.

Benjamin Zander in his TedTalk The Transformative Power of Classical Music [7] says, “It’s one of the characteristics of a leader, that he not doubt for one moment the capacity of the people he’s leading to realize whatever he’s dreaming.”

Are you walking out your passion that clearly? Let us leave the hamster wheel behind today.

References:
[1] "Communicators' Struggles, Strengths and Successes." Ragan Communications, June 2019, https://cdn.ragan.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/StaffbaseCommunicators.pdf
[2] "How Strong Leadership Drives Employee Engagement," PersonalGroup, https://www.personalgroup.com/media/1476/the-role-of-the-leader.pdf
[3] "Why Communication is so Important for Leaders," Center for Creative Leadership, https://www.ccl.org/articles/leading-effectively-articles/communication-1-idea-3-facts-5-tips/
[4] Gallo, Carmine. "How Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz Inspired Us to Dream Bigger," Forbes, December 2, 2016, https://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/2016/12/02/how-starbucks-ceo-howard-schultz-inspired-us-to-dream-bigger/#5ca24fa3e858
[5] https://www.starbucks.com/about-us/company-information/mission-statement
[6] Heathfield, Susan M. "Leadership Vision," The Balance Careers, June 25, 2019, https://www.thebalancecareers.com/leadership-vision-1918616
[7] https://www.ted.com/talks/benjamin_zander_on_music_and_passion