Some years ago, the then-CEO of Air Products told me that it took his team two months to decide and plan layoffs, two weeks to do them, and two years to recover. When I asked why the company had done something that caused so much damage, the reply was that it was expected by Wall Street and his CEO peers.
To resist doing what everyone else is doing or what you are expected to do requires courage. A friend who has worked for decades at the Bank of America told me that the company fully understood the poor loans it was making. The people working for the bank weren’t idiots. But everyone else was making similar loans and as long as they could be off-loaded through securitization, the company could continue to make money and was under pressure to do what all the other major banks were doing. As these examples illustrate, CEOs not only need a new set of beliefs they need the courage of their convictions to act on those beliefs.
There are some notable examples of CEOs with courage:
• In the days following September 11, 2001, Southwest Airlines did not follow its many competitors and lay off tens of thousands of people, thereby keeping intact its record of never having a layoff, or furlough, and building its market share.
• John Mackey of Whole Foods, at an annual meeting in San Francisco in the late 1990s, explained to an investment analyst that the company’s stores made lots of money after they had been open a while. And because there were not an infinite number of places to locate stores that fit the Whole Foods’ demographic, the company would sign up great sites whenever it could. If the analyst didn’t like the fact that this might constrain profits in the short term, he could sell the stock.
• George Zimmer, founder of The Men’s Wearhouse, the chain that sells off-priced tailored men’s clothing, talks about values, mind-set, and the company’s unique organizational culture even if it makes analysts nervous.
• Kent Thiry, the CEO of kidney-dialysis company DaVita, has been captured in videos in costume and doing backward somersaults as he and his colleagues seek to create a company which is “new, ours, and special.”
• Steve Jobs of Apple has eschewed criticism of the company’s enormous cash hoard — that it was keeping too much cash — and has continued to introduce innovative new products even in the midst of economic downturns.
As former Procter & Gamble CEO A. G. Lafley has noted, the best time to gain market share is when your competitors are in retreat. And, as common sense suggests, if you want to earn exceptional returns, you can’t simply copy what everyone else is doing. If you do what everyone else does, you will get essentially the same results.
One might think that in a world of soaring CEO salaries, the high pay would have produced innovative and courageous leaders who both know and do the right thing for the long-term well-being of their enterprises. But that’s not what goes on. For the most part, CEOs hire outside experts to help them benchmark — as though you could benchmark your way to the top. And they pay way too much attention to business pundits and analysts who are great at commenting on what has gone on but poor prognosticators of the future (if I had a dollar for every person who has written Apple off in the past as being irrelevant in the market, I could retire).
The best companies and the best leaders understand the real drivers of business success: a long-term perspective which focuses on customer and employee relationships as the sources of competitive advantage and an emphasis on values and ethics as guides to decision making. What separates these CEOs from the pack is not just a more sophisticated and empirically accurate understanding of individual behavior and the sources of organizational success but also the courage to implement these insights even when, or particularly when, they seem to defy conventional wisdom.

A frustrated CEO recently shared with me that her employees had lost their edge. They were internally focused, their speed-to-market was down, and they couldn’t find a good balance between serving customers well while making healthy margins. The result was slow progress against the company strategy and an inability to profitably deliver on the value proposition. She had attempted to motivate employees and be clear about the strategy, but she was falling short and was looking for answers on what to do next. The solution in many cases is to overhaul internal communications strategies in order to convince employees of the authenticity, importance, and relevance of their company’s purpose and strategic goals. Here are just a few communications approaches that will help you effectively reach your employees and encourage behaviors that advance your strategy and improve your results.
1. Keep the message simple, but deep in meaning.
Most organizations have a deeper meaning as to why they exist. This tends to influence strategy, decision-making and behaviors at executive levels, but often isn’t well articulated for employees. What you call it doesn’t matter, your purpose, your why, your core belief, your center. What does matter is that you establish its relevance with employees in a way that makes them care more about the company and about the job they do. It should be at the core of all of your communications, a simple and inspiring message that is easy to relate to and understand. Strategy-specific messages linked to your purpose become tools to help employees connect their day-to-day efforts with the aspiration of the company.
2. Build behavior based on market and customer insights
For employees to fully understand how your strategy is different and better than the competition they need to be in touch with market realities. The challenge is in how to effectively convey those realities so that your people can act on them. By building internal campaigns based on market and customer insights, you bring your strategy to life for your employees through this important lens. Package your content so that it can be shared broadly with all departments in your organization, but in a hands-on way. Expose managers first then provide them with easy-to-implement formats for bringing their teams together, with toolkits that include all the materials they’ll need. The purpose is to encourage their teams to develop department-specific responses, and to generate new ideas and new behaviors based on what they’ve learned.
3. Use the discipline of a framework.
Not all messages are created equal. They need to be prioritized and sequenced based on their purpose. I suggest using an Inspire/Educate/Reinforce framework to map and deliver messages on an annual basis.
• Inspire. Messages that inspire are particularly important when you are sharing a significant accomplishment or introducing a new initiative that relates to your strategy. The content should demonstrate progress against goals, showcase benefits to customers, and be presented in a way that gets attention and signals importance. The medium is less important than the impression that you want to leave with employees about the company. Whether you’re looking to build optimism change focus, instill curiosity, or prepare them for future decisions, you’ll have more impact if you stir some emotion and create a lasting memory.
• Educate. Once you’ve energized your team with inspiring messages, your explanations of the company’s strategic decisions and your plans for implementing them should carry more weight. To educate your teams most effectively on the validity of your strategy and their role in successful execution, make sure you provide job-specific tools with detailed data that they can customize and apply in their day-to-day responsibilities. It is most important for these messages to be delivered through dialogues rather than monologues, in smaller group sessions where employees can build to their own conclusions and feel ownership in how to implement.
• Reinforce. It isn’t enough to explain the connection between your company’s purpose and its strategy — and between that strategy and its execution — once. You’ll need to repeat the message in order to increase understanding, instill belief and lead to true change overtime. These reinforcing messages need to come in a variety of tactics, channels, and experiences and I’ve highlighted some approaches below. Ultimately, they serve to immerse employees in important content and give them the knowledge to confidently connect to the strategy. You’ll also want to integrate these messages with your training and your human resource initiatives to connect them with employee development & performance metrics. Recognize and reward individuals and teams who come up with smart solutions and positive change.
4. Think broader than the typical CEO-delivered message. And don’t disappear.
Often corporate communications has a strictly top-down approach. I’ve found that dialogue at the grassroots is just as important, if not more so. Employees are more likely to believe what leaders say when they hear similar arguments from their peers, and conversations can be more persuasive and engaging than one-way presentations. Designate a team of employees to serve as ambassadors responsible for delivering important messages at all levels. Rotate this group annually to get more people involved in being able to represent the strategy inside the company. And when the message comes from leadership, make sure it’s from your most visible, well-regarded leaders. Another mistake is the “big launch event and disappear” approach. Instead, integrate regular communications into employee’s daily routines through detailed planning against the messages mapped in your Inspire/Educate/Reinforce framework.
5. Put on your “real person” hat.
And take off your “corporate person/executive” hat. The fact is, not many people are deeply inspired by the pieces of communication that their companies put out. Much of it ignores one of the most important truths of communication — and especially communication in the early 21st century: be real. “Corporate speak” comes off hollow and lacking in meaning. Authentic messages from you will help employees see the challenges and opportunities as you see them and understand and care about the direction in which you’re trying to take the company.
6. Tell a story.
Facts and figures won’t be remembered. Stories and experiences will. Use story telling as much as possible to bring humanity to the company and to help employees understand the relevance of your strategy and real-life examples of progress and shortfalls against it. Ask employees to share stories as well, and use these as the foundation for dialogues that foster greater understanding of the behaviors that you want to encourage and enhance versus those that pose risks. Collectively these stories and conversations will be a strong influence on positive culture-building behavior that relates to your core purpose and strategic goals.
7. Use 21st-century media and be unexpected.
The delivery mechanism is as important and makes as much of a statement as the content itself. Most corporate communications have not been seriously dusted off in a while, and the fact is, the way people communicate has changed tremendously in the past five years. Consider the roles of social media, networking, blogs, and games to get the word out in ways that your employees are used to engaging in. Where your message shows up also says a lot. Aim to catch people somewhere that they would least expect it. Is it in the restroom? The stairwell? On their mobile phone?
8. Make the necessary investment.
Most executives recognize how important their employee audience is. They are the largest expense to the company. They often communicate directly with your customers. They single-handedly control most perceptions that consumers have about the brand. So if this is a given, why are we so reluctant to fund internal communication campaigns? I suggest asking this question: What am I willing to invest per employee to help them internalize our strategy and based on that understanding, determine what they need to do to create a differentiated market experience for our customers? Do the math and set your hoped-for ROI high whether it is financial performance or positive shifts in behavior and culture. If you choose not to invest be certain of the risk. If you don’t win over employees first, you certainly won’t succeed in winning with customers, as they ultimately hold that relationship in their hands.

Among the many requirements placed on those who take responsibility for the performance of others, there is one that is rarely mentioned. Yet, ironically, it may be the most important because so much else depends on it.

That fundamental requirement is courage.

We don’t just mean the courage to make hard decisions or take tough actions, such as giving difficult feedback, denying a promotion to someone who’s good but not good enough, cutting popular but unsuccessful programs, or even laying off people when the economy goes bad.

We mean all that — those and similar actions do require courage — but we also mean something even harder: the need to see ourselves as others see us, even when others’ perceptions don’t match our own. Risking the possibility of finding out that others don’t consider us the capable, well-intentioned bosses we think we are requires enormous courage.

We know a highly competent and caring manager whose people had to spend several late nights completing an important project. Though the work didn’t require her presence, she stayed late, too, as a way of sharing their burden and showing her support and appreciation. Weeks later, only after she thought to ask, she learned that those who stayed late resented what she did. Rather than seeing her presence as a sign of her support for them, they took it to mean she didn’t trust them to complete the work on time. Her presence thus weakened the bonds among them all and achieved the opposite of her intentions. She found this out only because she happened to ask casually.

How many of us blithely — and incorrectly — go along thinking that others see us as we see ourselves?

Another manager thought he was a good delegator, that in fact he may have been delegating too much. But his people considered him an overbearing micromanager. He was shocked and hurt by this revelation, which forced him to rethink much of his relationship with them. Yet another person we know thought he was communicating clearly how much he cared about the group he headed and its work. But many of his people thought he only cared for how he looked and his own career.

To understand why this is so important, think for a moment about what you do as a boss. To fulfill your responsibility for the work of others, you strive to influence others. You attempt to make a difference in what they do and in the thoughts and feelings that drive their actions.

There are several ways you can do this but, except for coercion — “Do it or I’ll fire you!” — all forms of influence begin with trust. People must be willing to be influenced, and that willingness comes only from trust.

Do the people you work with — your reports, colleagues, and superiors — trust you? By breaking trust into its two core components, we can ask the same question in a more useful way: Do people believe you’re competent — that you know what to do and how to do it as a boss? Second, do people have confidence in your character — your intentions and values, what you want to do and what you care about most? Trust is about the future and people’s ability to predict what you will do. For that, both your abilities (competence) and your intentions (character) to do what’s right are critical.

Perhaps you’re thinking, “I’m basically competent and, heaven knows, I mean well.” If you think that, beware. Lots of research (including Linda’s own, as well as Kent’s experience) makes one thing clear: most bosses overestimate how positively others see them. The fact is, you don’t know how others see you or whether they trust you, if you don’t somehow ask.

How do you ask? It’s not easy. If people don’t trust you, if they hold a low opinion of you as a boss, they’re highly unlikely to tell you outright. Even when others hold you in high regard, they will still hesitate to be candid about those areas where you need to improve. And it certainly doesn’t help that incompetent, insecure bosses often ask for people’s opinions. “You can tell me the truth,” they say, but everyone knows they’re looking for praise, and that criticism will only anger them.

How to proceed given these obstacles? That will be the subject of our next blog because it deserves and requires more space and time than we can give it here. Our point now is that you must work proactively to find out what others think of you as a boss. Few of your colleagues and direct reports will volunteer such information.

Whatever you do, however you do it, you will need courage just to seek such feedback, and even more to digest and take action based on it. But there’s no other way to become a great boss. No wonder there aren’t more of them around.