3 Steps To Help Ensure You’re Consistent With Your Message

A few nights ago when my wife and I went out for dinner, I decided to order this very appealing appetizer which I soon found out was a lot trickier to eat than one might think. In fact, this particular plate was so messy that a few drops from the dish’s sauce ended up as a stain on the front of my shirt. After mocking my predicament, my wife reached into her purse and handed me a “Tide to Go” pen and, in a moment that seemed scripted from a TV commercial, the fresh stain disappeared with just a few strokes of the pen. While I was clearly impressed at seeing how well this Tide pen worked, it also got me thinking about how this product still allowed the brand to stick to its core message.

Although the Tide brand has made recent changes to its line, such as moving toward a concentrated liquid format to reduce waste and creating this portable, quick-fix stain remover, these changes haven’t taken the focus away from the key message of their brand – that Tide will help to make your whites their whitest. Despite making some obvious changes and additions to their product line, a concerted effort is clearly being made to make sure that they remain consistent about the message associated with their brand.

While it’s easy to understand why a consistent message is important for the management of a product brand, what’s often overlooked is how it’s equally critical to the process of leading a team toward a shared goal. In today’s turbulent economic environment, it’s only natural that leaders are becoming more reactive in attempting to put out the various fires around their company, than being proactive in reflecting and reviewing what messages they are sending out as a result of their actions or conduct.

But it’s in these very moments that leaders need to provide a consistent message and sense of direction to their team to help them feel like they are rising above these challenges that stand before them.

So how can leaders make sure they remain consistent in their message to their employees while in this state of flux and uncertainty? Here are three steps that will help you to find your anchor.

1. Define what you want your leadership values to be
Most companies have a set of corporate values that defines the organization’s culture and how it operates as a whole. These values – when actually put into use and not simply paid lip-service to – help to not only provide a framework for an organization’s efforts, but also defines how they engage and interact with their customer base.

Similarly, it’s important that leaders also establish a set of values that will be used to not only provide a guide for your efforts, but also to help define how others will view your leadership. For example, you might want to be a leader who promotes collaboration among departments in order to fuel your organization’s growth. Or maybe you see encouraging innovation and creativity as being the keystone of your leadership platform. Regardless of the approach you take, defining what values will represent your leadership is an important starting point to ensuring that you provide a consistent message to your team.

2. Put these values into actionable steps
Now that you have a clear sense of what values you want to define your leadership, the next step is to put these values into action. Again, if we look at corporate values, the benefit from formalizing such attributes comes not from relegating them to a page in the employee’s handbook, but to using them to guide the purpose and objectives of your organization. Likewise, leaders cannot simply state that their leadership values are to foster collaboration or promote innovation. Instead, these values should be used to help you assess what measures you should take to actually encourage such thinking and approaches within your team.

For example, if collaboration is one of your leadership values, what are you doing to break down existing silos among the various departments? Are you inviting other departments to participate in project planning or decision-making processes? Are you keeping other divisions informed of your actions and targets, seeking their insights for issues you might not have anticipated? By making the effort to put these values into action within your organization, you will not only have a clearer sense of what direction you want to take, but your team will also be able to anticipate which issues they should focus on resolving in order to help the team reach their shared goal.

3. Monitor and review how your team perceives your leadership
With your leadership values defined and being used to help provide some ideas on what measures you should focus on, it’s easy to think that the message you’re sending to your employees is clear and consistent. However, as I discussed in my piece “Do You Know How Your Leadership Is Perceived?”, how a leader interprets their actions and conduct can often be very different from how it’s perceived by their employees; differences that can have a tangible impact not only on how effective you are in leading your team, but also on your organization’s ability to reach its objectives.

That’s why it’s important that you communicate on a regular basis with your team, seeking feedback from them on how they perceive the actions being taken and how it reflects on your leadership. Taking the time to listen to your employees about how they perceive your approach will offer some much needed insights into whether your actions are in fact reflecting the kind of leader you want to be for your team.

Looking at some of the companies that are skillfully riding the waves found in the choppy waters of today’s global economy, it’s clear that effective communication between an organization’s leadership and their employees plays a critical role to their success. Unquestionably, the ability to effectively communicate your message to your team is largely dependent on how well you can manage the unplanned challenges and issues that will cross your plate, while ensuring you remain consistent about the message you relay to your team.