Dialogue and Roles in Leadership as a Conversation
The second element of leadership communication is interactivity. In the book Talk, the authors note, “The pursuit of interactivity reinforces and builds upon intimacy, but employees need tools and institutional support to speak up and talk back.”
At Intertech, we’ve institutionalized “speaking up” thru:
A yearly town hall where employees share insights on the business without leadership present
- A yearly survey, via a “Best Places” to work competition, where employees rank the firm on the major areas of engagement including benefits, job satisfaction, feeling valued, trust in senior leaders, manager effectiveness, trust with coworkers, individual contribution, alignment with goals, retention risk, and teamwork
- Quarterly review of an employee’s Key Result Areas where they can note tools or training needed
- Yearly reviews
- Informal conversations at social events
We also encourage inclusion. Inclusion in the sense of leadership as a conversation means expanding employees’ roles as industry leaders. At Intertech, this has means members of our firm are:
- working with Microsoft’s product groups to give them feedback on our use of their products in the field;
- starting user groups at the forefront of technologies like Java and Windows Azure;
- participating on sites like StackOverflow, DevX, and CodeProject;
- being named a Microsoft Valuable Professional (MVP) for their elite thought leadership;
- speaking at conferences and user groups.
Up next, the final post in this series: The Agenda