Employee communication: Four reasons why your employees no longer listen to you

Floor gossip determines communication, motivation in the team has reached its lowest point and a joint happy hour would be the last thing employees associate with a relaxing Friday evening? Many employers have problems finding qualified and talented employees - keeping their own team thus becomes a decisive competitive advantage. But keeping talent for the long term requires more than high salaries and fancy company cars. Inspiration and vision, intuition, self-reflection, and an authentic demeanor create a lasting emotional connection between employees and their own brand. It's time to turn the key screws of successful leadership. Here are four reasons why things can go wrong in employee communication and how managers can remedy the situation in the long term.

1. lack of empathy

Living an empathetic leadership style means recognizing the personality of individual employees and responding to it appropriately. In concrete terms, this means empathizing with the individual in certain situations and not questioning his or her character traits and personality. If the boss lacks empathy, this causes injuries and sometimes aggression, which makes cooperation almost impossible. To counteract these blockades from the outset, managers must do one thing above all: listen and show empathy. Because only what is exemplified "at the top" will quickly make the rounds among colleagues. The health app Clue, for example, has taken a close look at the idiosyncrasies of each individual employee and is using these stories for its own recruiting (video under: Clue):

2. lack of self-reflection

Everyone talks about "learnings" and how everyday work is becoming more and more efficient. Managers quickly tend to give priority to the development potential of their company and often demand that their employees continuously work on themselves. The look in the mirror to reflect on oneself often turns out to be rather poor. For employees, however, this harbors enormous potential for frustration. Particularly if the employer itself has been treading water for years. But if you continuously work on employee communication, question yourself and train your self-awareness, you will score points, especially with your colleagues. It is obvious that this cannot be achieved with one or two management training sessions. A small tip: weekly, anonymous employee surveys can quickly and easily capture the mood in the team. If there is a need for optimization, this can be done immediately.

3. lack of authenticity

A boss who receives compliments like "She's on fire for her job!" or "He means what he says! The secret recipe that generates such enthusiasm is authenticity. Being authentic is consistently rated higher by employees than professional competence, empathy or resilience. It's no secret that genuine people and unadulterated emotions are always better received by colleagues. A manager who is authentic possesses emotional intelligence. She knows how to deal with her own and unpleasant feelings and what of them is brought out into the open. A manager should know how to switch into certain "sub-roles": sometimes colleague, sometimes friend, sometimes father or daughter, and yet always employer, without acting.

4. missing stories

Scott Harrison spent ten years sleeping his way through New York nights as a club promoter. At first it might have been quite amusing, then it became rather sobering and led to his mental, emotional and moral breakdown. A new beginning was needed. So he spent two years in Africa, saw the effects of polluted water on the ground, and returned home with a mission: to bring clean drinking water to disadvantaged regions of the world with charity:water. So much vision inspires: The former startup has already supplied seven million people with safe drinking water.

Whether in the consumer sector or in the B2B segment, for marketing, communication or employer branding: Storytelling is on everyone's lips. But as Scott Harrison in the half-hour company portrait While the management of a company relies on storytelling, the concept is still largely unknown as a leadership skill. Yet it is precisely here that stories are suitable for creating motivation and meaning, so that employees are once again burning for their job. To captivate an audience with a well-told story in your own company, you only need a few simple parameters:

• Originality: What makes your own company special and sets it apart from the competition? The tools of brand storytelling help to find the common thread in the company story. Whether it's the founding story or a great vision, employees also need to be told about what makes the brand unique.
• Continuity: Internal and external communication must become one, because employees are naturally influenced not only by internal measures, but also by the external image. For example, if certain values are defined, these should run through all channels, media and platforms. In doing so, it is important to define a unique voice and a certain tonality. If a relaxed tone prevails in the office, stiff business language can also be dispensed with in the external language.
• Humor: Every good story deserves a good laugh. If a company doesn't take itself too seriously, it comes across very authentically to the audience. Here's how the founders of the Berlin social startup tell their story unicorn in funny videos in their very own way stories from the company and from the specially created values "fairstainable", "unicornique" and "fug: fight and hug". Humorous anecdotes from teambuilding trips or the Christmas party are sure to be found in every company.

(Video at: Unicorn)

• Emotionality: If you want to inspire your audience, you have to arouse emotions. A good story is not only written with highlights and successes; it is precisely the defeats and conflicts that make it authentic and emotionally connect one's own team with the company. Managers who also provide transparent insights into milestones reached and hurdles encountered in the company's history, which is being written every day, can be sure that they are really being listened to.

Conclusion

Today's managers need a wide range of leadership skills that are far removed from performance, pressure to succeed and professional competence. A boss or manager who listens to his or her employees, opens up and shows that he or she is pulling in the same direction as his or her colleagues, makes his or her voice heard and thus ensures long-term success for the company. And you're sure to be invited for an after-work beer by your colleagues.

About the author: Nora Feist is, together with Miriam Rupp, managing director of Mashup Communications (www.mashup-communications.de), a PR and brand storytelling agency in Berlin.