How do corporate despots survive?

The fabulous eye of cartoonist Tom Fishburne is in spot on focus with this amusing array of corporate characters. If I was a talented artist like Tom I might add the Talk To The Hand guy and Mrs Shssssh You Have Nothing Interesting To Say While I'm In The Room - both of whom I have encountered. And let us not forget Mr Jump-Up-And-Down-On-The-Spot-Ranting-In-The-Middle-Of-An-Open-Plan-Office whom I met on one, very memorable, occasion along with 150 aghast colleagues. Now, I hasten to add, I have worked with many brilliant, inspiring people but there have been a few really, really bad ones along the way. And I am not alone. One such baddie is the bane of a good friend's life. 
My pal is pretty resilient but has extreme challenges with one of those 'Unique Individuals' who everyone seems terrified of, who has single-handedly added triple digits to the sick leave stats, yet whose budget and organisational power remain solid and growing, year-on-year. (Think Edward Tufte's Stalin doing a PowerPoint presentation for more of a pen picture).

In his three million years of service with the organisation, scary, unpleasant, upward managing, nightmare Head of Function big cheese has clawed his way up and all the while successfully avoided any attempts at leadership support, training, performance management and Decent Human Being immersion courses.
Yet it's my pal who is being coached on how to handle this despot and all to improve communication! It's a complete mystery to me what these fiendish folk are good at apart from filling dead men's shoes or roles left by better people having babies. Yet how do they survive? If there's a war for talent, if CEOs are generally wanting to embrace employee engagement, and if research shows people leave their manager not their company, tell me how do they get away with it? If anyone knows, then do please put me out of my misery. 

Read more about 'horrible bosses' from body language guru Carol Goman.

Food for thought

At dinner on Saturday night I was lucky enough to be sitting at the lively end of the table. Amid a range of topics which could have given the BBC Question Time panel a run for its money, my very entertaining companions were regaling me with their stories of life in the companies where they worked, particularly their views of poor communication.

Happily it didn't take long to stop feeling like a doctor who can never socialise any more because strangers want to share their illnesses over the cheesy pineappley things on sticks.

None of what they told me was surprising (which is why there is still plenty of work out there) and I had a few 'remedies' to give them between the starter and pud. Much of our conversation surrounded our views of the barriers to effective comms, how to spot them and points to avoid.

So here they are, sans a particularly tasty bottle or two of chenin blanc and in no particular order:

Listen up: communication is about listening and acting upon what you hear. It’s not just telling people what to do

What's the story? This starts with the leaders of the organisation – many of them struggle to agree on a strategy or if they have one find it challenging to articulate it or share it with employees

Honesty is the best policy: businesses are often governed by their external agenda thus there is still tension around timeliness and transparency of information which needs to be shared with employees

Loosen up: a command and control organisation often struggles with good communication – the great irony is that the military learned long ago that, if you want to win, you have to engage the intelligence of everyone involved in the battle

Do what I say not what I do: everything we do communicates, particularly our behaviour

Take responsibility: effective communication is the responsibility of managers - leaders at all levels need to be able to communicate openly and honestly. It's not a third party activity run entirely by a comms team at HQ!

Hold that thought: there is no shame in saying “I don’t know”. Try: “I don’t know but I will go and find out and come back to you.”

As ever, please feel free to add your thoughts...

Henry Kissinger and keeping calm in a crisis

'There cannot be a crisis today; my schedule is already full.' Henry Kissinger knows what he's talking about and you can't imagine this famous former US Secretary of State not keeping his head when all around are losing theirs. Watch out FIFA!

The same keep-calm-and-carry-on approach is true for the numerous comms pros responding to a 'top tips for handling a crisis' post on Linked In this week.

My top tip, based on managing a crisis in several organisations, is how critical it is for IC and leaders to have a core plan and stick with it - avoiding all temptation to respond and react to everything. 

The human instinct to panic is great and never more so when your crisis is playing out in the media, or with unions, regulators, stakeholders and customers. But please resist 'tit-for-tat' comms as a response to everything everyone is saying about your organisation. It only makes your business look like it's losing control and can also prolong and fuel the crisis. 

That doesn't mean your comms plan should remain static. Indeed, as all good internal comms practitioners know, any communication approach needs to measure its effectiveness in terms of clarity and understanding and in a crisis regular pulse checks with employees are vital so you can respond accordingly.
Just don't lose you own head as tensions rise and keep the messages clear, relevant and timely.