Make communication a priority
Steiner’s company is decidedly high-tech, but in many ways, his communication style is low-tech. He emphasizes face-to-face communication, engaging employees on the shop floor and listening to feedback through multiple avenues.
Steiner’s first lesson in communication: Be a leader, not a salesman.
“I don’t get people to buy in,” Steiner says. “That sort of implies that we sold them something. What we try to do is lead by example, and we do that by respecting the people that we employ.”
Part of that comes through interaction. Engaging employees by walking around is a communication style that is as effective now as it was before e-mail and cell phones arrived on the scene. There is simply no substitute for putting your shoes on the floor, and it’s something that Steiner fits into his schedule as often as he can.
“One-on-one, face-to-face communication is simply the most effective method,” he says. “And in order to accomplish that, you have to manage by walking around. It is an old-fashioned idea, but it really works.
“I do it by getting into the plant, walking around on the production floor and talking to the people. I do it by talking to someone in the parking lot or in our home offices.”
You might find that you often communicate with employees only when you have something to tell them. But casual conversations about day-to-day subjects — even subjects that aren’t work-related — can also help build the all-important bridge between the employees on the ground level and management.
“If there isn’t anything that needs to be communicated concerning changes, issues or problems, the communication can be much more casual,” Steiner says. “But even then, I always pick up a lot of very useful information about what is going on, what types of problems people are having, things I would not have known about if not for those encounters.”
Steiner says one of the keys to developing an effective internal communication strategy is to know what communication is right for what situation. Informal communication helps build trust and a sense of familiarity between employees and management. But while personal, ground-level communication has its time and place, it needs to be a part of a larger communication strategy that you can scale to reach a given number of employees and managers with a message.
When Steiner needs a message to reach employees throughout Gamesa’s U.S. footprint, he relies on large-scale planning and the involvement of his managers to ensure that the message stays consistent from his desk to the bottom rungs of the organization.
“If you need to communicate something that is very specific, you need to have a more strategic approach to getting the word out,” Steiner says. “It might involve briefing the management team on what the issue is and what the context of the communication should be. Then you have to build a strategic approach to making sure they get that information out to their teams.
“In our case, we might put something out through a paycheck insert or a handout or bulletin-board posting. There are a lot of different ways to communicate strategically, but the bottom line is that strategic communication is something that is planned and calibrated.”
Once you have disseminated the initial message, you and your management team must keep the message in front of employees. If you communicate a message once and drop it, the message — and your communication strategy — loses a lot of its potency.
“You need to consider follow-ups, as well,” Steiner says. “Many times, people have questions, and I’ve seen the leaders at companies do an unsatisfactory job of answering those questions effectively. They sometimes feel that once the communication is out, that’s the end of the communication process. But the reality is that you probably have to tell people at least three times that something is important. The communication has to have some substance behind it in order for it to be effective.”
At Gamesa, a companywide announcement, such as a change to the benefits plan, is communicated to the line managers first. The line managers will then have meetings with their teams to communicate the message verbally throughout the company. A week later, Steiner’s corporate management team will send out a written communication as a form of reinforcement.
“Then, we follow that up with additional meetings to answer questions, because by that time, employees have absorbed enough information to begin to understand what the message is all about and how it affects them,” Steiner says. “Employees will always have questions, so it’s important to have that follow-up.”
You need to solicit feedback when following up. Employees will have questions, comments and concerns on any message of importance, so you need to provide them with avenues for reaching management, beyond group meetings in which some employees might be intimidated by the idea of speaking up.
“In our case, we do monthly surveys, and another way we get feedback is our monthly meetings with union representatives,” Steiner says. “They hear a lot of things concerning what we do and how we’re doing it — things that we don’t always hear ourselves. They get it in a little bit of a different context, and sharing that helps us to see a bit more clearly what we look like as an organization. It’s critical to get those different perspectives, because none of us in leadership roles can really see ourselves as others see us.”
Once you’ve identified and established avenues for feedback, you need to do something with the information you receive. If you do not react to what employees are telling you, your credibility will suffer.
“You do need to think about what employees are telling you and consider it carefully,” Steiner says. “You have to have a mindset that this kind of input is important and you need to remind yourself that there are people out there in your company who know more than you do. I have found that to be true in every work setting.
“Listening is a very useful skill, but it’s difficult for a lot of people to do. We’re all wrapped up in our own stuff and we have so much information buzzing around our heads that it’s hard to really and carefully listen to what other people are telling us. Unfortunately, that can be true in all of our relationships, workplace or elsewhere.”
