As researcher Ed Salas notes, “communication acts as the glue which links together all other teamwork processes.” When the glue isn’t strong enough, teams fall apart, leading Salas to conclude that communications-related problems of a team are one of the top reasons for project failures. Salas’s work with airliner crews further suggests that such communications failures are also a leading cause of airline crashes.
We’re not proposing some new theory of communications. Yet effective communication must be based on delivering a message you want to deliver and delivering it in such a way that it is heard and understood by others. Message content and tone need to reflect how the recipient currently feels, and these feelings will be directing their attention toward, or away from, the message.
Inspiring a shared vision is part of the communication process of effective leaders. Without the ability to understand how others are feeling and to empathize, leaders will have difficulty encouraging others to buy into their views of the future. A starting point for articulating a shared vision is, of course, understanding others’ current concerns and attitudes.
The Vision as a Guide
Creating a vision for an organization is relatively simple. The difficult part is communicating it so it does what it is intended to do: to motivate, direct, and energize an organization toward a meaningful objective. The vision has to make sense for the business, and its message has to be sent so that people understand it, feel it, and make it their own. This is where the abilities of the emotionally intelligent manager play a role.
Consider a product vision of the Sony Corporation, “digital dream kids.” It’s a cute phrase, but it communicates a meaning at several levels. This vision recognizes the changing nature of Sony’s customers—the kids who are growing up in a digital world. The phrase is also delivered as a challenge to Sony employees to get them to think like kids in a digital age. The person credited with the vision, Nobuyuki Idei, chairman of Sony, exhorted his employees to “become dream kids to continue creating new products that will meet our future customers’ expectations.”
The Use of Fear
There are, of course, many possible alternative vision statements for Sony and any organization. It is common to read about some CEO threatening the end of the world if his employees don’t wake up and smell the coffee. This is a vision of fear, where the message is, “change, run faster, or die,” or some similarly soothing and subtle proclamation. Fear is a terrific motivator, a lifesaver, literally, but fear doesn’t work all that well in the long run. Fear just burns us out after a while. Fear is not forward-looking; it is a here-andnow emotion.
The emotionally intelligent manager must manage the fear of uncertainty that employees and customers experience. Fear will focus all parties on potential threats. But once you have everyone’s attention, it’s time to refocus their attention and direct their adrenaline toward an objective. This is where your vision comes in.
The vision has to feel right and make sense to people. If you understand your employees, customers, and stakeholders, you will be able to try out alternative vision statements using your emotional theater of the mind and emotional what-if analyses.