The importance of retaining credibility in management

A key issue in many modern companies - especially those that rely on people providing skills, such as consulting - is effective communication. To be effective, a message must be accurately conveyed, and the desired response to that message elicited by the act of communicating.

As an example, meetings to discuss occupational health & safety (OHS) have the aim of achieving greater safety by encouraging people to work more safely (which is undermined if the measures do not, in fact, make people safer overall). If the delivery is of dry numbers and there is no connection or apparent genuineness of desire for workers to be safer, it won’t work.

Another example would be promoting the use of QAQC procedures - which, in my experience, are most effectively “sold” by acknowledging that a lot of this is about providing customers confidence by enabling third-party audits ... and hence the increased documentation records, but QAQC procedures do also provide the opportunity for better outcomes by preventing big mistakes and, if the system includes factory-floor-up measures, ensuring proper coal-face (I'll find more work related sayings yet!) knowledge is retained and passed on to new people. 

Changes in business practices are another area where effective communication is vital, and that often includes attempts at being “inspirational”.

And that is where things can go particularly badly. 

If the attempt at being inspirational comes across as being out of touch with reality, there is a major risk of managers destroying their credibility, rather than being inspirational.

This particularly applies to senior staff. 

On that, I’ve been through one industry-specific (caused by “reforms”), one pandemic-caused and three other major economic recessions/downturns, inflation of 18%, two major droughts (the 2^ndwas the Millennium Drought, and was by far the worst), floods, been indirectly affected by multiple major bushfires (including the effect of the ash), experienced my nation going through four wars and the culture-destroying 9/11, major changes of OHS and environmental laws (mostly for the better, but not always), the development and adoption of widespread digital devices (starting with the novelty of electric typewriters and then PCs), the growth of the human rights movement and seeing the many desperate needs (including mine) for that but also the conservative political entrenchment of xenophobic white supremacist misogynistic and other hateful bigotry, caring for parents as they died and grieving the death of people I love - including the death by suicide of friends, caring for others close to me through major health issues and struggling with major health issues myself, the end of relationships and the joy of expanding my family to include my birth family, and the rise and spread of the soulless evil now known as neoliberalism ... and if anyone thinks a manager saying we have to make sacrifices to meet an arbitrary profit goal on top of exceeding breaking even to make a modest profit is going to cut it with me, they are VERY much mistaken. I’m far more likely to think the manager is ungrateful and clueless. 

(Another way credibility can be destroyed is with surveys that do not allow those completing them the option of speaking freely.)

When one’s credibility has been destroyed, people don’t bother talking to you: they do things like resign unexpectedly - and, if you’re credibility has been damaged severely enough, they won’t bother providing feedback in exit interviews, as they will think that is a waste of time or that it could lead to retaliation against them or others ... and worse if they give superficial, glib, conformist answers ... . 

If that sort of event is happening, or if engagement is low, then, in my opinion:  

• accept the reality of why people work - it’s not meeting utilisation rates or arbitrary nonsensical “challenges” of making company owners more profit, it’s to support themselves and/or their family, and possibly for personal satisfaction- measures such as longer hours or more intense work are a direct attack on the families of workers as much as the workers, and thus will likely be counter-productive. Adjust your messaging, and accept that your role includes being a punching bag between the company’s goals and the real-life aspirations of the real humans who are working for you; 
• study and use Robert  Greenleaf’s “servant  leadership” concept [See also Note 1];
  
• consider creating a wedge structure (I may have remembered that term incorrectly), where the senior-most executives are able to talk directly with workers at every level - right down to the cleaners; 
• be authentic - including the need to make a profit without trying to justify ambitious amounts of profit, and have a genuine interest in your workers as people.
  

 

Notes: 

1. See also here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
   

 

Assumptions / basis 

In writing this, I have assumed / started from the following: 

• this blog states quite clearly that it is about political and human rights matters, including lived experience of problems, and thus I will assume readers are reasonable people who have noted the content warning in the post header;

Possible flaws 

Where I can, I will try to highlight possible flaws / issues you should consider:

• there may be flawed logical arguments in the above: to find out more about such flaws and thinking generally, I recommend to Brendan  Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking”; 
  
• I could be wrong - so keep your thinking caps on, and make up your own minds for yourself.
  

 

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Finally, remember: we need to be more human being rather than human doing.