L12: Leading through Effective External Relations

A positive public image or reputation affects a company’s ability to achieve all other measures of success. Reputation Institute says that the companies with the best corporate reputations outperform all others in terms of market share and share value.

Effective external relations require a sound communication strategy. These are the following steps to create a strategy for external audiences:

Clarify your purpose and strategy objectives.
Identify your major audiences or stakeholders:
Community, customers, union groups, retirees, analysis, board, company, etc.
Create, refine, and test your major messages:
Honest, clear, consistent, meaningful
Select, limit, and coach your spokesperson(s):
Legitimate, referent, expert, knowledge, position, title, charisma, rank
Establish the most effective media or forum.
Determine the best timing.
Monitor the results.

Everything a company does influences public opinion and reputation, therefore, every company should look carefully at building, a positive reputation. In Reputation: Realizing Value from the Corporate Image, Charles Fombrun identifies six ways companies can build and maintain a positive corporate image:
Design campaigns to promote the company as a whole.
Carry out ambitions programs to champion product quality and customer service.
Maintain systems to screen employee activities for reputation side effects.
Demonstrate sensitivity to the environment.
Hire internal communication staff and retain public relations firms.
Demonstrate “corporate citizenship”

This list reveals the importance of being proactive and comprehensive in fostering corporate reputation. One mistake in any of these areas can cause repercussions from which a company may never recover.

The mistakes or missteps that tarnish a company’s reputation are most often uncovered and publicized by the news media. To increase chances for favorable treatment, it is important for a company to establish a positive relationship with the media and for every senior manager to know how to work effectively with them.

Since all major newspapers and most TV networks provide coverage of major corporations and are definitely interested in sensational news from smaller companies, every company needs to recognize the importance of the media and take the local media representatives and learn a little about their needs and interests. In addition, companies need to understand the value of positive public relations and realize that establishing a relationship with the media,, either directly or through a public relations firm, can open the door to a tremendous amount of “free” publicity.

Interactions with the media can allow a company to reach a large and globally dispersed audience, present their point of view proactively, and establish a positive public ethos.

Any leader or high-level manager should receive training and, ideally, specific coaching in preparation for an encounter with the media. The training should include the following at a minimum, preparation for the interview, performance during the interview, and steps to take afterward.
Preparation
Performance during the Interview
Steps Take after the Interview

Although establishing positive relationships with external audiences prior to a crisis will help in all but the most extreme situations, no amount of goodwill can guarantee the positive coverage that is necessary to avoid permanent damage to a company’s reputation.

The following guidelines will help companies respond appropriately in most crisis situations:
Develop a general crisis communication plan and communicate it.
Once the crisis occurs, respond quickly.
Make sure you have the right people ready to respond and that they all respond with the same message.
Put yourself in the shoes of your audience
Do not overlook the value of the Web.
Revisit your crisis communication plan frequently.
Build in a way to monitor the coverage.
Perform a post-crisis evaluation.

L11: Leadership through Strategic Internal Communication

 One of the major responsibilities of an organizational leader is communication with employees. Effective internal communications provides organizational direction and employee motivation. Organizational direction comes from leaders having created and effectively communicated a clear and meaningful vision. Developing and communicating a vision is one of the most important and visible communication tasks of senior management.

Employees are motivated when, through words and action, the leaders carefully translate the vision and strategic goals into terms that are meaningful to all employees. To do so requires analyzing audiences, targeting messages, and creating communication strategy. Motivating employees also requires listening to them and using emotional intelligence to connect with them. Leaders who appreciate the importance of connecting with all employees through communication and through their actions see results.

Direction setting and the creation of a motivated, productive workforce alone are reasons enough to pursue effective internal communication. Effective employee communication clearly results in higher organizational performance and increased productivity. In addition, effective internal communication has a measurable final impact. From daily informational exchanges and interactions with employees to creating and communicating visions, strategic objectives, or other direction-setting messages, to helping employees understand and support major changes, internal communication requires leaders to use all of their best leadership communication skills.

Leaders also need to spend most of their time on the content side. You must ensure that the strategic objectives and messages are clear, unambiguous, meaningful, and understandable for internal communication to be effective. Missions, visions, values, and guiding principles make up one category of major strategic messages that most organizations convey to their employees.

Leadership communication must include how best to create and deliver these core messages to ensure they are strong and meaningful and not simply feeble slogans good only for adoring coffee cups. You want the vision and mission in particular to guide employees’ efforts toward achieving your company’s strategic goals.

Organizational change is inevitable yet rarely easy. Mangy change efforts fail to deliver the value the company seeks. For instance, mergers are one of the most frequent causes of major organizational change, but only a few yield the anticipated or hoped results. The greatest difficulty the leaders face in bringing about change involves the people.

To achieve successful change, leaders must confront the challenges of reaching the employees through effective leadership communication before, during, and after any major, companywide change programs. Without effective employee communication and a rigorous approach to the leadership communication, a change program has little change to succe.

L10 High-Performing Team Leadership

This chapter discussed about how to build and lead the team effectively. Deciding to form teams is the first step to build the effective team. The team is ready to be formed after we know that the team is the best approach to achieve goal, the organization knows how to manage team issues and processes and know how to resolves the conflicts, the company technology supports team communication, and the performance can be measured.

There are several processes to be established. It started at creating the team charter which consists of the purpose, member roles and responsibilities, ground rules and the communication protocol. Action plan allow the team to see the big picture of the project meanwhile work plan becomes a more specific elaboration of the action plan.

The team’s performance is up to the ability of the team to deliver the results of its work. Team member should learn each other’s experience of being on the team. The talent can solve the problem, however, the talented people clash. We can improve the ability to work together smoothly by taking time to know each other’s current situation (Position and responsibility), Work experience, Expectations, Personality, and Cultural differences. After spending time together, we might experience conflict.

We can classify the internal team conflict into four types; Analytical conflict, Task conflict, Interpersonal conflict, and Roles conflict.

The virtual teams are teams whose member are geographically dispersed and rely primarily on technology for communication and to accomplish their work as a team. There are several advantages be provided by using virtual team such as lowering travel cost, reducing project schedules, improving efficiency, and so on. The virtual team needs to have more structure than a traditional team so the member should be trained and practice.

L09: Meetings: Leadership and Productivity

The Seven Deadly Sins of Meetings:

-People don’t take meetings seriously.
-Meetings are too long.
-People wander off the topic.
-Nothing happens once the meeting ends.
-People don’t tell the truth.
-Meetings are always missing important information, so they postpone critical decisions.
-Meetings never get better.

Communication purpose and strategy should come first in planning meetings, as in all communication situations. You need to define a clear purpose and analyze your audience to determine whether a meeting is the best forum for what you want to accomplish. Use the following questions to direct you in deciding to meet or not:
What is the purpose? What do I hope to accomplish?
Will a meeting accomplish that purpose more efficiently? More effectively?
Can I describe exactly the outcome I am seeking from the meeting?
Is our group more productive when we meet?

Leaders often have assistants to handle the details associated with their meetings but you will need to decide about the purpose, outcomes, agenda, setting, timing, and materials. To ensure your meetings are productive, you must conduct the necessary planning by answering the following questions:
What is the purpose and expected outcome?
What should be included on the agenda?
Who should attend?
What is the best setting?
What is the best timing?
What information will now need for the meeting?

To ensure a productive meeting, you will want to manage expectations by communicating to your attendees before or just after the meeting starts what the decision-making procedure will be. Your approach may be so pervasive and well understood that you will not need to bring up the subject in a meeting; however, you may want to use different approaches for different types of meetings or problems, so you should make your approach clear for each meeting.

You should define the meeting roles and responsibilities before or after the meeting starts. The roles recommended for most meetings are as follows:
Leader
Facilitate
Note taker
Timekeeper

Example Ground Rules for Virtual Meetings
Introduce yourself when you join the meeting
State your name prior to your comments throughout the call
Avoid any side conversations since not all participants can hear them
Keep the speakerphone close to the person who is talking to avoid background noise
Avoid tapping pens or shuffling papers since these sounds may be exaggerated on the other end.

Common analytical tools that work well in many different types of problem-solving meetings are as follows:
Brainstorming
Ranking or rating
Sorting by category (logical grouping)
Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats.
Opposition Analysis
Decision trees
From/to analysis
Force-field analysis
The matrix
Frameworks

MANAGING MEETING PROBLEMS AND CONFLICT

Problem
-Confused Objectives and Expectations
-Unclear Roles and Responsibilities
-Confusion between Process and Content
-Drifting off Topic
-Data Confusion or Overload
-Repetition and Wheel Spinning
-Time Violations

Management Approach
-Create an agenda that includes objectives as well as end products.
-Send agenda out ahead of time and review it at the beginning of the meeting.
-Communicate roles and responsibilities with agenda or establish at the beginning of the meeting.
-Separate the leader and the facilitator role.
-Call time-outs for process checks as soon as confusion is expressed.
-Stop and review meeting objectives. If digression continues, suggest
Discussion continue after meeting
-Topic be placed on agenda for next meeting
-Topic be tabled, stored for future (write topic down for all to see and make sure it is discussed at end of meeting if time allows or at an agreed future date)
-Control handouts to ensure all have the same version.
-Create simplified data packs specific to meeting
-Exclude any data not directly relevant to objectives
-Control the discussion by reminding attendees of objectives
-Start on time. Allowing delays at the beginning of meetings cuts efficiency and sends the message that the leader is flexible on time
-Have a timekeeper. If time limits are repeatedly violated, reevaluate agenda topics and time limits and build in cushion time

When the common meeting problems turn into direct conflict, perhaps because of personality or factions within the group, facilitators may need to be more aggressive in their tactics. One popular technique often used by negotiators calls on the individuals involved in the conflict to apply different levels of assertiveness and cooperation. They can approach the problem by competing, collaborating, avoiding, or accommodating.

None of these modes seem the best for the situation, the facilitator may want to try one of the following methods of conflict management to calm the situation so that the meeting can continue:
Turn the question to the group.
Use the is/is not approach or a pro/con format.
Try listing points of agreement and disagreement.
Attempt to get an underlying assumption.
Shift the discussions to the facts (put on the white hat).

ENSURING MEETING LEAD TO ACTION
Assign specific tasks to specific people.
Review all actions and responsibilities at the end of the meeting
Provide a meeting summary with assigned deliverables included.
Follow up on action items in a reasonable time.

L8 Cross-Cultural Literacy and Communication

There are six factors in environmental context that make international negotiations more challenging than domestic negotiations: political and legal pluralism, international economics, foreign governments and bureaucracies, instability, ideology and culture.

            These factors can act or limit or constrain organizations the operate internationally, and it is important that negotiators understand and appreciate their effects.

            The immediate context factors that can have an important influence on negotiation are: relative bargaining power, levels of conflict, relationship between negotiators, desired outcomes and immediate stakeholders.

            These models are good devices for guiding our thinking about international negotiation.

            The most studied aspect of international negotiation is culture. It is important to recognize that even though culture describes group-level characteristics, it doesn’t mean that every member will share those characteristics equally. There are two important ways that culture has been conceptualized: culture as shared values and culture as dialectic.

            Cultural differences have influenced negation in several different ways: Definition of negotiation, negotiation opportunity, selection of negotiators, protocol, communication, time sensitivity, risk propensity, nature of agreements and emotionalism.