How Do You Enable and Engage Your Line Managers in Asia Pacific?

Not All Managers Have the Right Skills Sets to Communicate Change

Managers are good in what they do in their chosen business roles. Depending on their previous experience and expertise, they might have a special knowhow or skill in additional areas.

A manager who received communication training in his previous job, but now managing a team of employees in a quality control function in a garment plant would be able to bring some communication best practices to his current team’s work and make communication more efficient and effective.

A manager who has a sourcing background now working as a line manager in a automotive production plant would be able to bring his sourcing knowhow to draw up sourcing requirements and meet with suppliers and collaborate with the sourcing department when his production line is restructured to increase production volume.

However, if the managers do not have any of these special knowhow or skills, they will only be as good as what their normal roles require them to be. The quality control manager will be good in his quality control job and the production line manager will be good in managing his production line. They would not know anything special about communication best practices or about driving change. Therefore if you want managers to take up these tasks, they need to be enabled and engaged else they will find themselves short-handed for the task.

Not only that, they would probably feel uncomfortable and might want to do a quick job to get a tick in the box or in a worst case scenario, might misunderstand the task and get it all wrong and then you have an additional mess to clean up in a department.

If You Do Not Enable and Engage Your Manager, He Cannot Carry Out His Change Task – A Continuous Improvement Example

Now lets look at a quick example. It is known by different names in different companies but has the same roots in Kaizen – “continuous improvement”. This topic is especially huge in companies with production facilities and normally attracts the personal undivided attention of the company’s President as well as the HQ’s Kaizen experts. And there are always various kinds of programs, projects, campaigns and trainings running all the time in all locations, all departments and all function levels. Its a huge topic.

Now imagine if a company feels that there is a high quantity of continuous improvement projects carried out by the staff each year but somehow the quality of these projects are not optimal. The company might decide to install a change program to help to shift staff mindsets to target quality and not quantity with regards to continuous improvement projects.

And the topic is communicated top-down to all middle management and to all line managers asking them to support this change project. They all start getting invitations for meetings and briefings, couple of emails get exchanged, some workshops are organised and a few PowerPoints decks are distributed. Eventually the task starts landing on the table of every line manager in the company (at least in the direct areas).

Now, of course the line manager is the right person to implement this change with his team. Not the company’s core team for continuous improvement or the middle management or the company’s board.

However, if he does not have an in depth knowledge of continuous improvement concepts and does not have a solid grasp of the required tools and processes or does not know how to communicate what is quality and why it is better than quantity, he would not be able to get this task done well.

And that is why you need to “enable” and “engage” him. I know that you may have heard of these words many times before. But these two small words describe something so incredibly difficult to achieve and in fact holds the key to any change campaign’s success.

I have used a continuous improvement example here in a direct area. But the situation is similar for other change projects in other functions in direct areas such as assembly, bodyshop, printshop etc as well as in indirect areas such as HR, Finance, IT etc. Its always the same scenario. Something big happens right at the top that requires mass behaviour change or a mindset shift and then it eventually gets cascaded down to the senior manager managing a team and he has to get it done. Some senior managers manage that and some senior managers don’t, depending on whether they were enabled and engaged for the task.

There are 3 Types of Managers

People are not all the same and therefore managers are not all the same too. They do not think or work or are driven in the same way. As such, I would divide the type of managers I have seen and worked with in Asia Pacific over the past twenty years into 3 categories.

The “Tell Me What To Do” manager. The “I Can Do It Myself” manager. And the “I Don’t Want To Do Anything” Manager. And then there are hybrids in between them and managers do also change hats according to the topics and situations. But lets stick to these three basic types first.

The “Tell Me What To Do” Managers

These managers need their bosses to tell them what to do most of the time. I know this might seem surprising if you are looking at it from a western point of view, but this is quite a common working culture in the Asia Pacific region, maybe with the exception of Australia.

Well, why not? After all, its demonstrates respect, loyalty and obedience to his boss which is great for the relationship development. Short-time wise it offers him preferential treatments and perks and long-term it promises postings, promotions and career developments.

Also most importantly it spares the manager from taking any kind of blame if anything goes wrong because it was his boss’s decision to do anything. This is also a common mindset in Asia Pacific that people do not feel comfortable to take up responsibilities for decisions. Its better for the bosses to make the decisions and then to simply tell them what to do. “Do not make your own decisions. What if you make a wrong decision? You might lose your job!” are voices that most Asian managers hear in their heads and this is common and natural and coming from the “Protecting The Rice Bowl” mindset I mentioned before (refer to Change is About People).

Reaching these kind of managers is relatively easy and straightforward: through his direct boss. Regardless whatever communication activities you do, whatever workshops you organise, whatever posters and brochures you might print and distribute, whatever speeches and appeals you make, these managers will be indifferent to you and your campaign and they will not hear you. Your communication efforts may have however created an awareness that some sort of change is happening in the company, but it will be not sufficient for these managers to make any kind of decisions or efforts to support the change unless their bosses tells them so.

The “I Can Do It Myself” Managers

However, there are some managers in Asia who do not feel the need to seek their boss’s permission for every single decision and prefer to impress their bosses with their work performance, professional ethics and bottom-line results.

They think for themselves, they make independent decisions and they stand by their decisions, right or wrong. Really awesome. However, unfortunately there are not as many managers who belong to this category as we would like in Asia Pacific, relatively speaking. Mostly because the dominant working culture in Asia Pacific does not really encourage a manager to think freely and independently.

Now to reach these kind of managers, you need to present your case to them and appeal to their decisions and judgments. Briefings, meetings, workshops, FAQs, Q&A sessions, one-to-one discussions, websites etc are all good and great methods to engage this kind of managers. And if he agrees with your change cause, he will not only support you wholeheartedly but will also rally his boss and his team to support the change cause. And in time, you will realise that he will also become one of your first influencers.

The “I Don’t Want To Do Anything” Manager

Now the third and final category of managers are actually the bad managers. Due to favouritism and nepotism which is quite widely accepted in Asia Pacific as well as the lack of proper HR quality processes, some companies in Asia Pacific have a proliferation of bad managers in many roles, even in MNCs.

In most companies, there are always some form of weeding mechanisms that weeds out this kind of inefficient managers regularly to ensure that you have high quality managers and also to ensure new and fresh talents are taking up leadership positions. But in some cases this is really not easy to do because these managers are normally “protected” and could continue to stay in their positions from 5 to 20 years.

For these kind of managers, no amount of communication would be useful to reach them. The simple and effective solution would be similar to the “Tell Me What To Do” – just talk to their bosses to activate them.

Types of Communication Activities to Enable and Engage Managers

No one communication activity will be able to reach all of your managers in one single stroke. Firstly managers might not be “physically” available, for example for a face-to-face change communication activity such a leadership forum, because they were on a business trip or on annual leave.

Secondly managers might have been physically available for the communication activity but not “psychologically” available, meaning they were unable to receive or understand or commit to a change message because of mental barriers. And this is precisely why you need a proper stakeholder analysis in your change management plan supported by a solid communication plan that utilises a diverse range of communication activities – to get through all kinds of physical and psychological hurdles in one way or the other.

I have listed down below the different types of communication activities which can help you to overcome some of these physical and psychological barriers. When correctly constructed and delivered they can serve as powerful tools to enable and engage the managers in different ways.

For the sake of simplicity, I have divided these communication activities into 3 main categories: those that create awareness, those that create a deep understanding and those that create commitment and action.

Communication Activities That Create Awareness

• Kick-off Activity – An activity where the leaders of the company stand together and explain a situation that requires change and ask the managers for support.
• Meetings – Specific information or discussion with managers on a particular topic related to the change.
• Talks – Information, knowledge or best practices sharing by leaders, peers or subject experts with managers.
• Business Game – A powerful communication method that uses gamification techniques to transform a business topic into an interesting business game.
• Promotional Activities – Series of fun activities to arouse interest into the change topic e.g. best poster contest, freebies, quizzes, short film contest etc.
• Information Brochures – Printed or electronic brochures with basic background and information to arouse interest.
• Fact Sheets – Summary of the background and main points.
• Video Presentations – Image videos to connect emotionally.
• Launch Event – An event that lasts from half-a-day to couple of days that strings together couple of different communication activities into a management platform.
• Workshops – A workshop can be organised to present background information and create awareness and ask for suggestions and input for the next steps

Communication Activities That Create Understanding

• Q&A Sessions – Opportunities for the managers to ask questions and get clarifications from leaders directly.
• Small Group Discussions – Chance to ask questions in a smaller manager groups in more comfortable circles.
• 1-to-1 Consultation – Face-to-face opportunity to get clarifications on topics that the manager might not use the Q&A sessions or small group discussions
• FAQ – Printed or online compilation of frequently asked questions for managers
• Books & Reviews – Offering the managers business-related books and encouraging them to read it and then asking them share their understanding and perspectives in managers’ book clubs.
• Website – A password-protected online place for detailed content for the managers on everything they need know and have to get their tasks done well.
• Documentation – PDF or Word or PowerPoint documents that has detailed information.
• Change Readiness Surveys – Surveys to ascertain if the managers have the right skills and mindset to participate as well as the lead the change efforts. The results of the survey should be discussed one-to-one with them and solutions discussed on how to bridge he gap.
• Trainings – Detailed information, best practices and knowledge sharing with the managers by the leaders, peers or subject experts.
• Experiential – Organise life-changing experiential communication activities that challenges their current perspectives.
• Multimedia Courses – Online module-based learning system which serves as a guide to learn as well as with self-check tests to check their understanding.
• Workshops – Workshops can be used to discuss root cause analyses, case studies and best practices to diver deeper into the topic.

Communication Activities That Promote Commitment and Action

• Quiz – Fun quizzes that managers can take to estimate their own level of understanding of the topic.
• Surveys – Online or paper-and-pen surveys with questions to check manager’s level of understanding.
• Status Updates – Asking managers to submit status reports of their task completions related to the change topic.
• Desktop-based Application – Desktop-based applications that offer information to the managers as well as collect feedback from the managers which can be studied to understand manager’s understanding and status and some of it can be shared.
• Mobile-based Application – Mobile-based apps that perform the same role as estop-based applications.
• Recognition activities – recognising and rewarding other managers who have shown supportive behaviours are also a powerful way of encouraging commitment and action.
• Transparency on benefits and results – Sharing the benefits and results of the change efforts, the final business outcomes, can also promote more supportive actions because the managers can see that its working and its beneficial.
• Focus Group Discussions – Small group discussions where a moderator facilitates a free and open qualitative discussion to collect feedback.
• Interviews – Interviews or other assessment methods used to ascertain manager’s level of understanding, commitment and action.
• Workshops – Workshops can be used to discuss what’s happening, why it is happening and how we can generate more supportive behaviours and reduce resistances etc.
• Discussions and talks with leaders – Inspiring talks and discussions with the company’s leaders can be a great way to push the managers who have an awareness and understanding into commitment and action.

Best Practices & Takeaways

• Managers who do not have the special skills sets to support a change project will feel uncomfortable and will not be able to do a good job.
• You must make the managers feel not only comfortable but confident to support the change. This is called enabling and engaging the managers and is one of the most important criteria for a change’s success and is also one of the hardest.
• There are generally 3 types of managers: the “Tell Me What To Do” managers, the “I Can Do It Myself” managers and the “I Don’t Want To Do Anything” managers.
• For the “Tell Me What To Do” managers and the “I Don’t Want To Do Anything” managers, talk to their immediate bosses to start the process of enabling and engaging them. For the the “I Can Do It Myself” managers, appeal directly to his judgment using various change communication activities.
• Different types of communication activities reach different types of managers at different levels. The 3 basic types of communication activities that you can organise to enable and engage managers are those that create awareness, those that create understanding and those that create commitment and action.

Read more at: www.thoseinchargeofchange.com