The topic in my leading change class today was integrity and its impact on a leader’s ability to effect change.  Integrity was defined as honoring your word and doing what you said you would do by when you said you would do it and if you are not going to do what you said, to communicate fully to everyone affected as soon as you know you won’t be going what you said so that they can make the appropriate and necessary accommodations.  During the discussion, several students told of job situations in which projects they were working on were not going to get done when promised, but were told by their immediate managers not to tell the project clients.  The reasoning was that if the clients were told before the due date, they would question the manger’s competence.  However, once the deadline was missed, other factors could be blamed.

Although managers may think this “don’t tell them” strategy protects them from looking bad, it actually undermines their integrity and reputations.  Each of the students involved in these situations said they lost respect and regard for the managers involved.  This is unfortunate since all the managers needed to do to maintain their integrity was to have closure conversations with their clients.

Having one closure conversation, even if it may be a little uncomfortable, seems like a small price to pay for keeping one’s integrity and the respect of others.

The impact of failing to have closure conversations is indicated in a study of mergers among Canadian hospitals.  According to the authors, credibility was central to the ability of leaders to take actions and get the support of others in making the mergers happen.  When leaders kept their promises and did what they told people they would do, their credibility was enhanced and they were able to do more.  However, when they didn’t keep their promises, or did things contrary to what they led their followers to believe they would do, their credibility was diminished and they became less effective.

What is interesting is that the leaders who did not keep their promises apparently did nothing to “clean up” the broken promises and unfulfilled expectations.  The research on trust indicates that closure conversations, in which people acknowledge they betrayed their promise and authentically apologize, rather than blame circumstances, and then commit to changing their actions in the future, are every effective in repairing broken trust.  Had the leaders in the merger study had closure conversations, they would have been able to reduce the negative impact that resulted from not doing what they said.

Leaders depend on credibility and credibility depends on authentically “owning up” when things don’t go as promised or expected through closure conversations.

Unfortunately, in none of the recommendations offered for improving “soft skills” is there an explanation of how project managers translate these personal capabilities and understandings into other people taking effective and appropriate action in a timely manner.  Rather, it is assumed that having these capabilities will somehow magically translate into project managers do the right thing, at the right time, in the right way.  Now that’s a big, and erroneous assumption.

Getting other people involved, engaged, and continually contributing requires communication.  But not just any communication.  I recently led a training program to a Master Black Belt group in which we explored why they were having difficulty getting projects accomplished.  Interestingly, none of them ever said anything like “I am having problems because I am ineffective in my communication with other people.”  However, by the end of the class, they began to see that one reason they were having difficulty is because they were either using the wrong type of conversation or the conversations they were using were missing important elements that reduced their effectiveness.

It would be nice if there was a direct link between personal qualities and attributes and effective communication.  However, as such books as Difficult Conversations, Crucial Conversations, and The Four Conversations point out, there is much more to effective communication than simply talking.  Until project managers realize that the results they get are a direct product of the appropriateness and completeness of their communications, communication skills will continue to be missing and projects will continue to fail.

Based on a survey of the management experience and attitudes of 90 people from 27 different organizations, the authors found that the role of change agents tends to be poorly defined and poorly understood in many organizations.  This ambiguity is compounded by the finding that change agents are not systematically developed in the techniques and processes of effective change management.  As the authors point out “not only is a poorly-trained change agent likely to be highly inefficient at managing the change process, but, certainly in the early stages, the risks posed to the change process by change agent `incompetence’ could be serious.”

Why aren’t change agents better trained in change management?  The authors believe it is because of a perception that change management is essentially an “add on” to normal management responsibilities and thus requires no additional training or development.  Apparently, the assumption is made that if you can manage, you can manage change.  This assumption is unfortunate given the extensive literature on the skills and abilities managers need to be effective at change, particularly in the areas of communication.

We know that communication is critical to effective change and that not all communication is the same.  Not only do managers need to know when to communicate and to whom, they also need to know what types of conversations to have.  According to the respondents in this study, change managers need to be able to negotiate, influence, and persuade, all of which involve different types of conversations.

If organizations are to be more successful at change, they will want to invest more in developing the skills of those responsible for implementing the change.  Among those skills is the ability to determine what type of conversation to have and how to carry them out.

* Buchanan, D., Claydon, T., & Doyle, M. 1999. Organization development and change: The legacy of the nineties. Human Resource Management Journal, 9(2): 20-37.

Years of research indicates that managers who have authority over resources important to subordinates (e.g., pay, job assignments, vacation time) assume they do not have to persuade or convince subordinates of their assessment of a situation.  Managers are often blind to the fact that subordinates see things from a different point of view.  According to a recent study published in Organization Science, one result of this blindness is that when managers with authority confront a threat to the successful completion of a project, they engage in fewer and less immediate (e.g., face to face) communications than managers lacking that same authority.

In reviewing the results of the study, what is particularly interesting is that when compared to their counterparts without authority, managers with authority do not engage in Understanding Conversations or use complete Performance Conversations.  The study indicates that managers with authority do not explain why a particular event is a threat, explore how it might be resolved, or address subordinates’ concerns regarding the impact changing their work to resolve the threat may have on other work (an Understanding Conversation).  Furthermore, rather than get good promises from their subordinates, they assume their subordinates will “just do it”.  Unfortunately, 72% of the time the managers’ communications regarding a threat are ineffective and their subordinates do not respond as expected, requiring additional communication.  This additional communication can result in a loss of credibility and diminish their reputation.

One conclusion from this study is that managers use authority as an excuse for reducing their communication on the assumption that their subordinates will automatically accept what they are told and act accordingly.  We know from our work with The Four Conversations, however, that there is no substitute for appropriate and complete communication.

When Ed Koch was mayor of New York, he was concerned about the number of accidents resulting from bikers darting in and out of traffic. Determined to solve the problem, he had “bike lanes” painted on the sides of city streets. But instead of making things better, the bike lanes actually made things worse. Drivers, undeterred by the double yellow lines identifying bike lanes, crossed them so frequently that police could not write enough tickets, and accidents involving bikers increased. As a result, Mayor Koch had the bike lanes removed, ending a futile exercise that cost the city millions of dollars.

Plenty of editorial space was given to criticizing the blunder and Koch’s poor judgment. Reporters, looking for blood, sought interviews with the beleaguered mayor. In one television interview he agreed to, which was scheduled to last thirty minutes, the host was armed with a list of questions that were sure to make Koch look bad. The host began by asking, “Mayor Koch, you spent millions of taxpayer dollars to paint those bike lanes only to remove them. That tax money could have gone to valuable social services. What do you have to say for yourself?”

Pausing, Mayor Koch replied, “You’re absolutely right. It was a huge mistake. I made the wrong decision, and I apologize.” The host, stunned by the mayor’s response, gathered herself and proceeded through her list of questions, each of which was an accusation of some kind. To each accusation, Mayor Koch gave a similar response, admitting the mistake and apologizing for it. The interview lasted for only five of the scheduled thirty minutes after which the topic was dropped, never to be raised again.

Mayor Koch’s success in this interview demonstrates the power of what we call Closure Conversations. By acknowledging the facts that New Yorkers already knew—that the bike lanes were an idea that didn’t work—and then apologizing for it, Mayor Koch completely disarmed the issue and brought it to a close. In the process, he restored some of his credibility and the confidence New Yorkers had lost in his stewardship of the city.

Closure Conversations can restore credibility and confidence, reduce resentment, build accomplishment and accountability, add velocity to projects, and increase the engagement of participants and potential participants.  Try them – they work.

[From “The Four Conversations: Daily Communication that Gets Results”, p. 131-2]