We all like to hear our name spoken by others. Don’t we. Ever since Dale Carnegie championed speaking someone’s name to re-enforce a connection, the practice has become a staple of sales training.

But let me tell you one surefire way to know when an organization is in trouble: when the leader’s name keeps coming up in connection with mission and goals. It’s not good for the culture of any organization for teams to engage in the most important work of that organization “because that’s what the boss wants us to do.”

LEADERS VS. MESSENGERS
Let’s say you’ve just helped your team reach consensus on an important new initiative. You were encouraged throughout the meeting by numerous affirming nods and even a couple of high-fives afterward. This is when it feels great to be a leader. But even as they file out of the room, you wonder to what degree each member of your team really owns the decision to move forward.

You won’t have to wait long for the answer. All you have to do is listen. If your name is constantly invoked as the reason for moving this initiative forward, you are producing messengers instead of growing leaders of leaders.

Listen to the difference in the way a messenger communicates a new initiative to his or her team and the way a leader does the same thing:

MESSENGER LANGUAGE: “The district expects….”
LEADER LANGUAGE: “Our goal here is…”

MESSENGER LANGUAGE: “The Superintendent wants…”
LEADER LANGUAGE: “Our students need…”

MESSENGER LANGUAGE: “We don’t have a choice.”
LEADER LANGUAGE: “Let’s explore some ways to…”

CHANGE BEGINS WITH US
If you’re hearing messenger language in your team, first take a look at your own leadership style and habits. What are you doing that has contributed to this issue? What could you start doing tomorrow to improve the situation? Make a point to self-monitor and get the messenger language out of your own conversations.

Here are two strategies you can use to help your team get into leader mode and stay out of messenger mode when it’s time to launch a new initiative:

• Before moving to the next topic or concluding the meeting, distribute a 4 x 6 card to each team member. Ask your team to write down the language they are going to use to roll out this imitative to their teams. After they’ve had a few minutes to do this, ask each person to read verbatim what’s on his or her card. This exercise will accomplish at least two things: 1) It will challenge your team to get out of messenger mode. No (mature) team member is going to write down, “Because the boss says we have to.” 2) The whole group will benefit from hearing the variety of ways the team is taking ownership of the initiative. You’ll be capitalizing on the skills and insights of your most capable team members – who in turn will be modeling great interdependent habits for members of the team who have a lot of room to grow.
• In the same meeting have your team brainstorm 3 or 4 “pushback” points they anticipate hearing when they take this initiative to their teams. We know from experience that team members who get pushback and don’t know how to answer, or don’t “own” the decision, are likely to say things like: “Well, this is what the boss expects…” or “I can’t explain why but that’s the way it’s going to be because that’s what THEY want!” So, practice for the pushback.

If we don’t prepare our teams for tough questions from their teams, they will just become messengers. But when we take the time to help them think through how they’re going to roll out an initiative and answer pushbacks – we help transform our teams from messengers into leaders. Your team members will be energized by your investment in their leadership capacity, and that will pay big dividends in the overall health of the organization’s culture.

 

This article originally appeared as a Culture Code Letter in March 2017. If you’d like to continue the conversation,  A Conversation About Leadership is published twice each month. [Join the conversation →]