How should the adaptive leadership toolkit be communicated to the
organization's leadership to help gain buy-in?
The most important part of the adaptive leadership toolkit will be
buy-in from the top down. However, gaining buy-in from the
organization's leadership level is perhaps the greatest challenge. The
C-Suite leadership has very busy schedules. To the point,
communication is the best avenue for senior leadership. Senior
Leadership does not read long emails and skims through any
newsletter put on their desk. The toolkit should be communicated
with a ¨What, When, Who and How to the Why¨ approach (Jakubiec,
2019). This approach is to the point, but gives the why to the
leadership of the organization. This approach has to highlight the
negative trend within the organization. Upper management consists
of very successful individuals who feel they already have this
leadership thing figured out. The concise communication has to sell
the idea that the organization has a problem. Then the ¨Why¨ has to
relate the Employee satisfaction survey to profits and overall success
of the organization. For the middle management in the organization's
leadership structure, the use of a Newsletter via Email could be an
effective way of continuous communication in regards to the
Adaptive Leadership Toolkit. The adaptive toolkit should be forced
into quarterly review of supervisors, forcing supervisors to put
consideration in how they utilize the toolkit.
How can you ensure this communication strategy is sustainable
long-term, more than two years?
The newsletter approach coupled with quarterly review input and
town hall like meetings with middle management and employees will
be important to keep the adaptive leadership toolkit as a topic of
discussion. This company does not have a vision issue, employees
showed in their satisfaction survey that they believe in the
organization as a whole. Therefore, to have sustained success with
the adaptive tool kit, upper management will have to be invested into
the toolkit as well.
As previously mentioned, upper management, whether true or not,
believe they have the leadership thing figured out. A quick brief from
the Director of Leadership to them, only makes them feel as if we are
putting a toolkit into place for our employees but that it does not
apply to their leadership styles. The best way to get involvement
from the upper-level management is having a good feedback
mechanism. ¨Feedback is the means through which the sender is able
to ascertain the extent to which messages have been successfully
received and the impact that they had on recipients¨ (Jakubiec,
2019). This call-to-action approach in communication is needed to
capture interest from leadership who more than likely have large
Egos. Asking for their input on changes to the Leadership toolkit,
engages them into the discussion, draws their interest into reading
the established toolkit, and allows them to provide valuable
feedback. If these leaders feel they have given input, they will be
invested in the success of the toolkit. Their investment into the
toolkit will have an impact on the entire organization.
References
Jakubiec, M. (2019). The Importance of Internal Communication for
Management of an Organisation. SILESIAN UNIVERSITY OF
TECHNOLOGY PUBLISHING HOUSE. https://eds-p-ebscohost-
com.ezproxy.snhu.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?
vid=1&sid=83fb9f84-e608-4201-92cd-48c0284d0168%40redis
