My latest enewsletter - to be delivered to subscribers soon - touches on the topic of leadership and personality, and their impact on effective communications within organizations. This is the essential ingredient - how well you connect, how much your employees trust you, and how good you are at inspiring the potential of others has the biggest single impact on quality of the workplace, and accordingly, productivity. If the culture in your workplace is less than ideal, the root is most often a bad decision or poor communication, fed and watered by the suspicion and distrust of others. Coincidentally I read an article today by Thomas J. Lee from Arceil Leadership on the three voices of communication and the toxic workplace.

Here’s an excerpt:

Overcoming cynicism is a tall challenge for any leader. But overcome it, you must. The engagement and cohesion of your people can mean the difference between survival and collapse. Ignore cynicism, and you allow its corrosion to undermine the organization you have worked so hard to build.
 
By cynicism, we mean a toxic attitude among would-be followers that assumes the worst of your intent as a leader. Instead of embracing the nobility of your intention, instead of granting you the benefit of doubt, the cynic sees only manipulation and control. He is quick to do the math on the cost to himself.

If you want to read more of what Thomas has to say click here.

This is the time of year every professional journal, magazine, and other media is full of articles on resolutions, predictions and tips on goal setting. Yawn - is there a new angle?

Within the communications sector, popular blogs and networks are full of articles on employee engagement, developing strong internal cultures and building networks. There is good information out there, if you are willing to wade through a whole lot of theory and professionals within the networks commenting on each others’ theories.

The problem is, most of the information is written by professionals working in the profession for other professionals in similar roles, and not of much use for the human resources manager, executive director, communications or marketing officer, or professional fundraiser looking for practical information.

Employee engagement is, and always will be a most important challenge for any kind of organization. Without staff who understand the point at which their personal goals, talents, abilities and purpose intersect with that of others, and the organization, no organization can hope to succeed. With all the chatter about the need for innovation, the big question should not be how, but why?

Most of the time, the temptation is to try to persuade - by sharing numbers, projections, and lately - threats - that jobs will be lost, etc. without the commitment and boot-pulling of staff. This doesn’t work. This is data. Data is logical. Human passion and drive is emotional. There is a hierarchy of needs and emotion at work that has nothing to do with organization structure.

Start with why? Think about why this is important. Put yourself into a staff member’s shoes. What’s in it for them? What hopes and fears do they have? Is there common ground between their’s and the organization’s? How can you help?

I realize this may seem oversimplified - but as with many things in life, simple works. Start there in 2009!

When it comes to social media, there seems to be two distinct camps: those who embrace it, and those who dismiss it entirely.  For those of you who fall into the category that think it’s a time waster,  and for college kids and teens, here are some facts that might get your attention.

• Facebook is the 4th most trafficked website in the world
• It is the largest photo sharing platform in the world
• Facebook has 125 million users now and is predicted to reach 500 million by 2011
• The average age of Facebook users is 35 yrs old, and the demographic is mature, university educated people with higher income.

Another little known fact: you can collect email addresses from Facebook friends, as you would on your own organization’s web page. Simply install the application called Profile HTML and then paste the optin code from your website into your Facebook page.

You could use this for a promotion, for an alumni or employee club or association, or to offer information about your organization to potential customers or staff.

Many of you are leaders, managers or consultants with at least 20 years of experience. Like me you cut your teeth in the days of fat communications budgets, power suits and decidedly top-down modes of communication.

Old habits are hard to break. If you tend to think of dealings with staff as “telling them what they need to know” you have the equation only partly right.

Here are the new rules:

1. Listen then talk
2. Ask what they want then provide
3. Don’t write anything until you talk to real people who you want to reach
4. Get to know their interests, what’s keeping them up at night, what gets them out of bed in the morning, and what makes them want to stay home
5. Think of yourself as the United Nations instead of the Vatican - representative vs. traditional authority
6. Forget trying to sell your organization’s message - focus on sharing information and a two-way relationship with the people that are part of it

The old way of cascading, top down information does not work (if it ever did…). We all expect and deserve more. We want connection, answers and most of all, to be heard.

Here’s an excerpt from an interview with Marcel Lauzière. Current president of the Canadian Council on Social Development and the new president and CEO of Imagine Canada. In a few sentences Marcel captures what true leadership is. Read the rest of the article here. A great introduction to the week ahead!

Leaders need to be passionate because it’s through passion that we actually get people enthusiastic…[wanting] to go in that same direction. That’s the case in every sector. We have to distinguish between leadership and management. You need both for an organization to work effectively. But on the leadership front, it’s very much about communicating a very clear vision and destination, doing it in a passionate way so people get excited about issues. It’s also recognizing that leadership can’t be just at the top of the organization; leadership has to be shared at various levels of the organization. A good leader will normally try to encourage people within the whole organization to play leadership roles at different levels.

Jaxon looking scary!

It can be really tempting to rush a project and cut corners to meet a looming deadline. We can get so focused on the larger goal that taking the time to properly communicate to staff seems unnecessary. It is rare to find organizations that truly communicate to their staff on changes or important directions that affect — not to mention depend on — them!

Yesterday my seven year old assistant, wise beyond her years, asked me what afterthought meant. I asked her what she would guess, and she said: “when you know you should do or think something, but you don’t until it’s too late”.

I find there are two types of organizations who need help from communications consultants like me - the group that wants to do the best job possible, and is willing to spend the time necessary - and the group that does this as an afterthought, usually in reaction to an issue.

Many smaller organizations feel that staff communications is a luxury for the mammoth corporations with massive corporate communications departments. The reality is, many large corporations face the same kind of pressures and challenges of stretched resources as do the smaller organizations, just on a different scale. 

The truth, and it’s not so scary, is that we all play a role in communications, every day. Do what you can to inspire and lead those around you - and think first of what they need to know and why!

If this man was running for office, I would vote for him. I haven’t yet read his newest release, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, but Seth Godin’s recent blog entries give a sneak peek of his sage advice on marketing and getting your message out in today’s environment.

His post Leadership is the new marketing says it all - focus your efforts on leading a small group of people and take them where they want to go.

Nonprofits and small businesses or organizations alike often fall into the trap of seeking the holy grail of awareness by the general public. This is a waste of time, and a battle you can’t win. You will be more successful with a narrow, dedicated and passionate focus. So many organizations talk about lack of name recognition in their community as an obstacle - but it usually isn’t the real obstacle. The biggest hurdle is getting specific with the audiences that matter.

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation has released a report on how to harness the power of innovation for philanthropic purposes. It looks at commonly-held concepts and practices more often used in the private sector and adapts it as “a commodity for social good.”

Much of the report talks about building and nurturing an Innovation Culture and the need for it to be systematic and outlines the five stages that are required:

• Setting the conditions required to support innovation
• Identifying the problem or opportunity about which you want to innovate
• Generating ideas to solve the problem or capture the opportunity
• Experimenting and piloting those ideas to test how well they work in practice
• Sharing the innovations with a broader set of stakeholders

Read the rest here.

Do you want to learn more about building a culture? Check out my new resource on Building a Better Fundraising Team.

Bad news sells. Most of us have become desensitized. But what happens when the story hits too close to home, for example, controversy or issues hitting the media are about the organization you work or volunteer with?

I hope for your sake that this doesn’t happen to you, but in too many cases, staff and others close to the organization find out when their phones ring and their mothers or neighbours alert them to the front page. This is wrong, and mostly avoidable.

If you are in a position of influence, ensure that you have a plan in place to manage issues and crises before and after they become public. If you’re not sure how, sign up to receive an article on this very topic, in a few weeks’ time.

As the host of this issue of the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants, I asked fellow bloggers to share their best and worst experiences, or observations on leadership.

Jane Arsenault at FIO Partners Perspectives contrasts her firm’s experience working in three distinct cities with the six essential leadership skills needed to stand the test of turbulent times.

Sam Davidson at CoolPeopleCare reinforces something I like to emphasize often - the ability to define success.

Jason Dick at A Small Change talks about what happens when you don’t have leadership and support for fundraising, and offers some tips on how to build it.

Katya Andresen at Robin Hood Marketing offers her two cents on marketing expert Seth Godin’s recent presentation to nonprofits - how to make people feel heard.

Heather Carpenter at Nonprofit Leadership 601 describes the characteristics of a learning organization, defined as one of the best models for effective leadership.

Coincidentally, my September 30 enewsletter offered a checklist for change, to measure your leadership’s likelihood for success in managing change, a key challenge in these times.