Continuing our series on High-Achieving Women, we follow Elizabeth on her quest to overcome her communications challenge:

Elizabeth, having started her new job, is ready to make a huge impression in her new organization. She’s ready to face whatever challenge they throw at her; and she hopes it’s a juicy one! She remembers the difficulty she had in her last job; how difficult it was to work with her manager, who didn’t seem to be able to communicate his vision very well, and never failed to disregard her stellar accomplishments. And her staff! Those who weren’t deadbeats were totally off the wall, more concerned about their next bonus than about doing a good job.
Elizabeth feels that this new job will be her chance to really make a difference. But after a couple of weeks, she realizes that she’s facing many of the same challenges she had in her old position:

• Her manager seems more concerned about how her presentations look than on their content
• Her new staff seems unimpressed with her drive to get results
• Her peers don’t seem interested in her new, radical ideas for improving the work process.

“Is it always like this?” she wonders. She expected the new position to give her the opportunity to really shine, to move up and exert more influence on those around her. However, the signs are there that she will need to figure out how to improve her communication upwards, downwards and sideways to make any impact at all. As she analyzes her biggest challenges, she realizes that improving her communication will make the biggest difference in her new job.

Elizabeth decides to start at the top. Until she coordinates her understanding of the organization’s vision to that of the executives, she will be flying blind. She is concerned about her manager’s seeming need to ensure all communications are perfect before they go out. What exactly is perfect? And how much time should she be spending on polishing her communications, relative to ensuring the content is correct? For that matter, exactly what does this manager expect from her?

She schedules time to sit down with her manager to clarify their expectations of each other. She asks, “What is important to you? Do you know what is important to me? And how can we align those needs to best satisfy the vision of the organization?” As her manager starts to speak, Elizabeth notices that her mind is busy formulating her reply to his points. In fact, she missed the last thing he said, because she was so busy thinking about what she was going to say. After sheepishly asking him to repeat his last point, she resolves to quiet her mind to really listen to what he’s saying.

This time she starts to get a glimmer about what is driving the man. He had been criticized in the past for lackluster presentations, and eventually discovered that the more polished the communication, the more likely the message will be heard in this organization. Now he insists that all communications be reviewed, edited, re-reviewed by peers and even given as a heads-up to executives before officially released. He is currently known for his eye-catching presentations, and, more importantly, has been very successful at getting his voice heard.

After the meeting, Elizabeth is conflicted. She feels better about understanding her manager’s motivators, but is dismayed by the need to waste time on polishing up communications. Obviously, in this organization the outer wrappings are more important than the inner content. This goes against her belief that content is critical. She feels important information is important information, no matter how it is presented. Well, she just started this position so leaving is not an option. She must figure out how to work within the current culture. If she is to make an impact in this organization, she will have to get inside the upper manager’s skins, to understand how to present her ideas in a way that they will understand, rather than in a way that she likes to communicate.

She decides to meet with her peers to see how they handle it. She’s gratified to find out that they all seem to be wrestling with the same puzzle. In fact, they are surprised to have someone articulate the particular challenge they’ve not been able to put into words. Elizabeth and her peers decide to meet to work out an approach that will help all of them. In this meeting, Elizabeth starts off by presenting the issue: “How do we communicate our ideas and accomplishments in a way that will influence upper management to listen?” Everyone in the meeting has ideas, and they brainstorm to come up with an approach. As it turns out, some of Elizabeth’s peers actually love polishing up presentations, while others are more concerned with content. They end the meeting with an agreement to meet regularly to help each other with their upwards communication. As she walks smiling out of the meeting, Elizabeth wonders why it had never occurred to her before to reach out to her peers in this way.

Now for her staff. When she first met with them and told them her vision for the group, one person was excited, others seemed bored and a couple looked downright dismayed. What was she going to do to motivate them? She remembered a previous staff member telling her “Not everyone wants to be great like you!”, and she realized that while she is very results-oriented, some people have very different drivers and needs. It amazes her that people are not motivated simply by a need for results, to get the job done, to work hard for the sheer joy of reaching the outcome. However, she remembers how much it helped to understand her management by getting inside their skin and finding out what they needed.

Elizabeth decides to sit down with each staff member to find out what motivates them. From this she can determine their strengths, and play to those strengths. It might seem like manipulation, but then she realizes that what she is really doing is finding the sweet spot to the win/win situation. Her staff members will each be doing what they are good at doing, and she will be getting the results she wants.

After several meetings, she is again reminded of the importance of good communication. In one meeting with a particularly uncommunicative staff member, she had to take a moment of silence to stop her growing frustration. “Why won’t he voice his opinion instead of giving her one-word answers?” she fumed. She looked at the man, and tried to think of his strengths. She remembered that he was particularly good at details. Maybe he was someone she could rely on to gather the details her own manager craved in her upward communications? When she asked him about being able to dig out details to support her upcoming presentation, the man came alive. Together they came up with an approach that would really help her ensure she was giving upper management the content they needed, supported by the necessary data. They both left the meeting satisfied.

At the end of the third week in her new job, Elizabeth took stock of her situation. She felt that she better understood how to make her voice heard by upper management, because she took the time to understand what it would take for them to listen. She was also much more comfortable with her direct manager, as they were aligned in their expectations. She had discovered an unexpected support in her peers, having created a strong symbiotic relationship. And finally, she had been able to convert her frustrations with her staff members into opportunities to help them excel at their jobs, while supporting her vision. Simply by changing the way she communicates to the people around her, and by understanding what motivates them, she was able to change her perspective from one of “Let’s all do it my way” to “Let’s all do what we do best to get the job done”. She was a little shocked at how well her staff responded!

She still has many challenges to overcome, but she was feeling much better about this job. And the best part was that it wasn’t so much the job that was better, as it was her approach and perceptions. She resolved next week to tackle her next challenge, one that has stymied her in the past: getting the recognition and rewards she deserves for her hard work!