Elevate Culture and Engagement with A "Conversation Cadence"

Work culture’s an important thing. It’s usually invisible, outside of conscious awareness – but it effects everything! What we understand, who we trust, whether we love our work or hate it, even what we believe about ourselves and our place at work.

It can be the difference between going to work fully engaged, eager to contribute, looking forward to being there – and showing up to do the minimum, furtively looking for another job.  Which kind of culture do you have? How engaged are your employees?

Culture is a pervasive force  that influences the way people work together, how decisions get made, which behaviors are rewarded and who gets promoted. It's what we do we're not thinking too much about what we're doing.

Engagement is...

• The emotional commitment a person has for his/her work.
• The invisible force driving discretionary effort.
• A reflection of the mind, heart and spirit.
• A measure of effort in the face of difficulty.
• How hard someone will work when things get hard.
• A psychological condition affecting energy, effort and enthusiasm.
• How much a person is invested in his/her work.

Conversations – how we talk to each other – can make all the difference in culture and engagement. Our words can trigger different reactions – some toward trust & engagement, some toward fear and anxiety.  We’re often not fully aware of the effects of our verbal and nonverbal communication. (Most people know that 93% of face-to-face communication is nonverbal. However, unless we are giving a presentation, most of us aren't conscious of our nonverbal communication and it's impact on culture and engagement.)

As leaders, we must always be thinking about when and how and what we communicate with our team members. Finding our way here is critical to our short and long-term success as a leader. My recommendation is to consciously create a "conversational cadence" with your team members. In this post, I will explain what that is, and how to create one for you and your team.

Create a "Conversation Cadence"

A conversation cadence is the flow or rhythm of communication between people, in this case between a leader and their team or individuals on the team. While this rhythm might not be the same with each team member, one needs to exist.  Like a band that can’t stay together without a drummer creating and maintaining a rhythm, without a clear plan and cadence, communication with your team members will be less clear and less effective overall.

Keys to Creating a "Conversation Cadence"

Determine the right cadence. Not every song has the same tempo, and not every person requires the same frequency of communication with you.  Think about the competence and confidence of each team member along with their personal communication needs.  Consider the nature of their work, and both their needs and yours.

Think this through for yourself and talk with them too. Ask them how often they would like to connect and talk, ask them what they need from you to be successful.  While you want to take their input, don’t ignore your needs either.  Come to an understanding and create a plan for your communication cadence.

Factor in the informal. Some leaders leave this to chance, figuring that we will run into each other during the work day, and take care of issues and topics as needed. While we should hope that we will talk with our team members outside of planned communications (though this is difficult and a bad assumption if your team members work remotely), assuming this will suffice for communication is dangerous.  All you need to do is look at the amount of poor communication in organizations to see that working without a plan isn’t working.

Create great one-on-ones. A big part of your conversational cadence is determining the frequency of your on-on-one dialogues. I’ve written some tips about these meetings before.  Here are three specific tips that will help these meetings maintain your conversational cadence:

• Have a schedule – it is one thing to decide you are going to meet every week, but another to actually meet. Get these meetings on your calendars and hold them as sacred times to connect and build better communication.

• Have a standing agenda – make sure both of you know the types of topics you will always address during these meetings.

• Keep a running list – as a leader keep a list of things you want to discuss with each team member and if they don’t get resolved in informal conversation, use time during your one-on-ones to do that. Encourage your team members to do the same.

Remember the bigger picture. With regularly scheduled one-on-ones your communication and success will improve.  But there is also a need to think bigger and longer term with people too. Talking about goal and career planning and other bigger picture topics is important and doesn’t need to happen as frequently as the one-on-one. Schedule time for the long range and bigger picture topics beyond the regular work communication.

In most cases quarterly will be a good frequency here, but make sure you don’t go longer than once per year. In many cases the team member won’t ask for this conversation, assuming you will ring it up.  Them not asking doesn’t mean they don’t want or need theses conversations. As the leader you are setting the cadence and make sure these bigger picture conversations are a part of it.

A Final Thought

Successful communication is hard enough when you have a cadence or a flow.  When communication is sporadic and unpredictable it becomes even more difficult and less successful.  As a leader you are the drummer, creating the right rhythm and flow for your communications. Set the tempo and make sure the beat goes on, and your conversations will help to elevate employee engagement and create a thriving culture.

A Challenge

Reflect on and answer these two questions:

• What's a conversation that you need to have that you're not having?

• What's a conversation that you're having over and over that you wish you weren't having?

"No change, no change."

Check out a related post: Leaders Need to Focus On Culture and Engagement

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

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