#385 Pressure and Leadership Communication

Pressure and Leadership Communication

How leaders gain or lose the trust of employees

Communication makes the difference.

Last week, communication was once again at the centre of public attention. The government in Germany has collapsed, and new elections are imminent. Documents that are said to originate from FDP, the liberal party, show a much-discussed choice of words. The Secretary General explained that employees had created these documents. The core message was clear: the employees are to blame here. The response to this statement was overwhelmingly negative. The following day, the Secretary General of the FDP resigned. This moment shows once again that executive communication is of crucial importance.

How does excellent leadership communication under pressure work better?

Responsibility versus accountability

A core error of leader and their organisations usually lies in the incorrect understanding of responsibility and accountability. For example, you work in the organisation's software development department. Your manager told you that you should design software A. You design software A and deliver it. However, it now turns out that software B is needed. This moment is where it becomes clear whether a leader correctly understands the distinction.

You have been given a task, so you are responsible. You must complete it and receive the appropriate resources to do so. The leader, on the other hand, bears the accountability. This status requires full personal liability for the overall outcome of projects.

In this case, good leadership and communication by a leader would recognise that the wrong task was assigned. The manager puts himself in front of the employees and protects them. Poor leadership and unacceptably bad communication show leaders celebrating themselves for every success but assigning mistakes to the employees. Responsibility cannot be delegated at all or only with incredible difficulty. Managers must live this in everyday practice.

(More details on this and other models for better management in this week's podcast; see links below).

The case of the documents

When the Secretary General said that documents were created at the employee level, it became clear that this person would no longer be acceptable amongst party leadership. Firstly, it is extremely rare, if not unheard of, for strategy papers to be created at the operational level and allegedly adopted or circulated from there. Furthermore, such a case of ignorance on the part of the leader would indicate a loss of control, which is evidence of a failure in management work. You don't generally throw your employees to the front if they criticise you and your actions. An appropriate role model function is necessary here. Recognise mistakes yourself, admit them and work through them. Further cooperation can occur if the learning effects are recognised in many cases. However, if the leader misbehaves at a crucial moment, little or nothing regarding that leader's position can be salvaged.

Trust

According to studies by Professor Tsedal Neeley of Harvard University, it is not correct to say that trust arises automatically when people work together. Furthermore, trust is not an amorphous mass mysteriously created from nothing. Quick trust (cognitive swift trust) ensures that we can work together objectively based on a superficial trust, usually based on little information. Still, more is needed to ensure that deep trust (emotional trust) develops. This deep trust can only grow if the leader acts exemplary and sustainably in moments of crisis, so-called moments of truth. When this happens, emotional trust increases permanently. It continues to rise the more and more often a manager acts excellently. However, if behaviour is contrary to this, the emotional trust, which was not very high initially, falls. A loss of trust can be irreversible. Even if it is not, it takes a long time for the trust curve to rise again, and it will rarely or never reach the level it could have reached if no misbehaviour had occurred beforehand. Negative previous experiences of employees at other organisations must be considered and accepted.

Conclusion: if the manager has excellent communication skills, you will gain the long-term, lasting, deep trust of employees and all the other benefits that go with it.

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More on this topic in this week's podcast: Apple Podcasts / Spotify
See below for the podcast transcript.

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Niels Brabandt is an expert in sustainable leadership with more than 20 years of experience in practice and science.

Niels Brabandt: Professional Training, Speaking, Coaching, Consulting, Mentoring, Project & Interim Management. Event host, MC, moderator.

Podcast Transcript

Niels Brabandt

Was an interesting week in politics, to say the least . I don't know if you heard of it . However, in Germany, the Liberals had a bit of their personal catastrophe . What happened was documents came to light, which pretty clearly said that they ran the government against the wall, the government that just collapsed under chancellor Scholz . And what their general secretary did was they said that person said, well, these documents were created by employees on on employee level, and he blamed his own employees on the matter . Well, long long story short, one day later, this person had to step down as a leader . We're going to talk about accountability and leadership communication today, obviously . One of the main issues is that quite often people say my leader does not take the accountability when they need to do so, and we need to first that's the very first aspect we have to talk about, the massive difference between accountability and responsibility . I give you a very I give you a very simple example . Let's say I work in IT, and I'm a developer . I'm a software developer . And my boss tells me, could you please design x, y, z ? And I design x, y, z in the perfect code, in the most perfect code possible, hand it back, brilliant . Everything worked perfectly fine . However, it then turns out, x y z was not the flavor of the month . Actually, highest management and executive senior leaders wanted a, b, c, not x y z . And what my leader then can do is either, hey, I think I misunderstood the task or I did something wrong . However, it was not my employee doing things wrong because I told him to do x, y, z and not a, b, c . Or the leader could say, well, that was not my my fault . My employee did XYZ, although ABC clearly was available to to see for him, and why didn't he tell me ? Why did he do the wrong thing ? These are the two options you have, and obviously it is better as a leader to take personal accountability . The main difference in the very beginning is when you give someone a task, they are not accountable for the task . They are responsible . Responsibility means you have to do a task that someone else gave you, or you have to fulfill a certain task that you needed to do according to your job description . That is something which you are responsible for . Accountability means there's a full liability, and I'm on a a full and personal liability by a certain person . So for example, when something collapses in your department, the department usually has to step down because they chose the people to run the department . They hired the people . And when they didn't do their job very well because they either did wrong picks, didn't have good recruiting methods, or probably were corrupt, hired their personal mates . Nep nepotism, cronyism, you probably know the game that sometimes happens . Then people have to take accountability . So responsibility means do the task . Accountability means you are you are accountable for the overall result, and you have a full on personal liability here . The usual model that you use in projects to assign different tasks to people to see what are they doing with this task is the so called Ray CVS model that some of you might know . Every letter stands for something, r stands for responsible, you do a task, a stands for accountable, means you have the full on accountability and liability, personal liability for the result of the whole project, of the whole task . The c stands for consulted, someone just asked someone gets asked about something . I stands for informed, you probably get something and cc'd in an email . V verified, 4 I principle, you probably know that sometimes, especially in banking for example, they are very keen on that . And as sign off, someone is legally allowed to sign something off, either, Pukura or something . Anything that people can do where they are legally allowed to sign contracts, for example, or to sign anything in the name of the company . Very important here, accountability cannot easily be delegated . Usually, it can't be delegated at all because when you delegate accountability, you have to delegate it to the full . Let's say, my boss let's get back to the story of me working in IT . If my boss come gets gets to me and says, look, I'm coming here to tell you you are now accountable for the project, not responsible for task . You are accountable for the project . I will, of course, say, perfect . So that means I can give orders to other people . I can hire people . I can decide about budget where money is spent, and then they will say, no . No . No . No . No . No . No . Do the task, not the rest . You can't tell anyone anything . And then I say, well, then I'm not accountable . I am responsible . You can't do cherry picking here . Accountability cannot, by cherry picking, be given to someone, so you end up basically picking how did the project go, and when it went well, you said great leadership work, and when it went really bad, you said it was the fault of the employee . That's not how anything works . It needs to be some sort of bonus, mailers, plus minus system, where you say, if you are accountable for a certain project and you do very well, you get a certain bonus on it . However, when you do really bad, you probably have to leave your job or you will not get another interesting project or you get a worse one than you did before . So there has to be one of these plus minus systems . What do I get in favor or what do I get held against me if I do very well or not very well ? The case that we just here have with the political party of the Liberals in Germany, someone on senior leadership level says employees created a strategic document about party strategy and executed that . There are different options here . So first, I haven't heard very often that strategy of any organizational unit is decided by operational level . That is something I've hardly ever heard . If that happened, and it, of course, is possible that this happened, then there's there's a complete loss of control, and that means he failed as a leader needs to step down . Well, he did anyway . And when he lied about that, and this was not the case, then for the lie he has to step down . So anyway, this was never a great statement . Telling that telling someone that the operational, on the hierarchically lowest level, the operational people decided to create a document about party strategy is so highly unlikely, and if it happened it just means that you had a complete loss of control under your leadership . It's not very credible as well . Probably you heard of the strategical and the tactical and and the operational model, the the STOW model, STO . When you have something on strategy, then usually derive tactics from there, and then you do operational business from there . You do not have operational people writing a document and saying that is the strategy of the day or that's the flavor of the month or that's the strategy for the next year or decade . That simply doesn't happen . And if it happens, it's your fault as a leader not to see it . Bad leadership always means celebrating successes for yourself and taking full accountability for any success, but anything that goes wrong is the fault of someone else . And that is why someone here had to step down . He said, without knowing, he made wrong statements about the document and the source, etcetera, etcetera . Anyway, he had to step down and people are asking for more people to step down . Let's see how that unravels . The main part here is how do you gain employees' trust, and clearly that was not a good way how to gain employees' trust . And also many people and many leaders unfortunately do not know anything about trust . They usually say, well, trust is something that happens when you work together with people for a long time, and then it magically happens, and that is a 100% wrong . We have 2 different trusts . The first trust, and I'm referring here to the to the, scientific work of professor at Cedille Neely, Harvard University . There are 2 types of trust . The first type of trust is the so called cognitive swift trust, or if you want to have it a bit easier, quick trust . I'll give you an example . Let's say when your boss tells you, hey, on January 1st, we have 2 people starting here, a mister Smith and missus missus Jones . They're going to start here January 1st . You can, of course, now just wait until they get through the door and then get to know them, but that's not what you do . What you will do with your colleagues, probably with the whole department, you go to LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, whatever you find, you take it . And when the impression you get is that this person is not very competent, that person will have lost any kind of trust before they even step through the door . And that's why especially with remote work, leaders need to moderate the whole onboarding a lot earlier . When you, for example, hire someone and that person has no experience in the industry, but they but you think they have a lot of talent to learn quickly, you need to communicate them proactively . Because if you don't, people will just draw their own conclusions from what they see on LinkedIn and say, good grief again, someone with no experience . Do we only hire the low performers from other organization because no one else wants to work here anymore ? What's going on ? But when you say, hey . Look . We hire someone, and they have no experience in the industry . However, they have certain valuable insights from other industries, and we're very sure that we can onboard them with methods a, b, c, d, e, f, g . And then people would say, okay . Let's give it a try . But this quick trust is necessary, and you know it from everyday work . When you communicate with someone from a different department or from a supplier, you don't know these people personally, but you trust them because we need quick trust . Without quick trust, no economy would exist . If someone delivers a parcel to your door and you open the door, you open the door to usually a complete stranger handing something into your house, you don't know the person, but you trust them based on quick trust . However, this quick trust isn't enough to work together long term . The usual question here is, what do you think brings teams together better, Good times or bad times ? And as you know, bad times usually make people stick together a lot more . However, the conclusion cannot be as a leader, well, then I just create some bad times, don't I ? No, you please don't . Please, please don't . So the moment of truth is the decisive part here, and I give you an example . Let's take this case . I get back to the story, I work in IT, I'm a software developer, and I develop something and it turns out it's not useful for the project . There are now 2 options . Option number 1 is my boss says, look, I probably misunderstood the task . We did the wrong thing, but I I'll help with re repairing everything . My employee is not the person doing something wrong . I did it wrong, and I will fix it . That's option a . Option b is to say, look, people should just put their brains on, turn their brains on when they show up to work . When I tell you x y z, but it's a b c, you need to see that . And you didn't see that, so it's your fault . So blaming the employee . These moments of truth are the decisive moment where people decide, I trust you or I don't . And when you mess up one of these moments of truth, your trust is gone and people will not trust you in the future . The curve of emotional trust is flat enough at the beginning, it's quite low from the very beginning because people wait for the moment of crisis and see how will you behave . And when you behave where people see, okay, you always protect yourself first, but the the the emotional trust will go even lower than than it was before . Because you get some emotional trust because people just like you . So we have the Cognitive Swift Trust, which is the Quick Trust, the real deep trust is the emotional trust . When you act very well and sustainably, and you protect your people, and you put yourself in front of the department, and protect them against any outside harm, then people will work together with you trustfully until the end of all days . And the more moments of truth you do well, the higher the emotional trust curve goes up . If you do things wrong, the curve goes down and it's questionable if it ever gets back up, and by the way, it will never get to the point where it could have been or you need years, probably decades, to repair the damage you already did . And that's why these moments of truth are of crucial importance . So taking all this together, as a leader, any kind of accountability, it always has to be taken to the fullest . You cannot cherry pick your accountability . So take the accountability to the fullest, If you communicate that, your communication will work very well . People will trust you, and that will make your organization and your team a thriving one, and I wish you all the best implementing that . And when you now say, I have some questions about that because I think we had some of these situations, feel free to email me . Nb@nbhyphennetworks.com . That's my email address . Feel free to email me there . I put the email address in the show notes of this podcast as well as my LinkedIn . Feel free to connect with me on there, and also I put my website there, nbhyphennetworks.biz . You'll find the transcript of this podcast on this website . Very important, by the way, when you want to have something very specific like a training or a coaching or someone who speaks at your events, feel free to contact me as well . However, if you just want to have a chat or you just like to talk about certain topics, feel free to do so as well, all free of charge . I'll answer any email, any message within 24 hours . So I'm looking forward our discussion . And, by the way, thank you to everyone getting in touch during the last weeks months . The very fruitful discussions, were were really, really amazing . Even if we disagreed sometimes, very respectable and professional discussions . Thank you very much for that . The second aspect which I always recommend is when you wanna join our live sessions, and we have live sessions quite soon again, and you want to know where do they take place . Very simple . Go to expert.nbhyphennetworks.com . That's where you can sign up for the leadership letter . You put your email address in there . You only receive one email every Wednesday morning . It's a 100% content at free guarantee . So you find in there the whole archive podcast, full access . You find because some people don't like to listen to podcasts . Other people say, I have a leader or someone in my department . I need something written down . Do you have an article ? Yes . Every podcast episode also has an article on the matter . So the full access to all the articles I wrote is there as well . Of course, free of charge when you find my article somewhere else . They usually are behind a paywall of a certain magazine, so feel free to access everything I have via this way . However, the only way how you get into live session is when you sign up for the expert letter, the leadership letter, because only in the leadership letter we announce the date and the time and also where you can access it . There's always the link in there to directly get in . You don't have to register for any sessions . So we have a yeah . Basically, in a bit less than 2 weeks, we have our next live session . So I'm looking forward to seeing you there . And by the way, it's international . So when you say, hey, I have colleagues, but their English isn't too well, is is is not too great . No problem . We can offer English and also German . So it's bilingual if you want it to be . The last bit is the most important one . Apply, apply, apply what you heard in this podcast because only when you apply what you heard, you will see the positive changes that you obviously want to see in your organization . I wish you good luck to do that . If you need any kind of help, please contact me anytime . I'm available 247, and I'll answer any message within 24 hours . And at the end of this podcast, there's only one thing left for me to say . Thank you very much for your time .