How can I ensure that the message I give managers makes its way to employees?

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Leadership & Strategy mentor Keith Lamb responds to the following question from an inc.com user:
I'm a manager of managers. I'm also a strong believer in motivation, communication, and leadership. How do I ensure that the message I give to my managers is actually making its way to our employees without reducing the managers' authority?

Keith Lamb responds: I find that companies that worry about such miscommunication may lack an effective management development program. Think about it: Managers are often promoted to that role because they were excellent individual contributors. However, when the manager was an employee, he or she may not have had much experience motivating and leading people. It's the company's responsibility to figure out how to find and grow great managers.

If you already have a training program for new managers, maybe you just need to build a little more trust into your everyday communication with them. One book I recommend on this subject is First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently (Simon & Schuster, May 1999), by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman. In addition, here are a few suggestions to help you build trust and get the results you want.

• Converse with everyone more informally, often. Strike up conversations regularly with your managers and employees. Ask them for their thoughts about recent company initiatives or business decisions. (Examples: What did you think of our decision-making process? How could it be improved? What are the biggest challenges we face? What solutions or ideas do you have?) Be genuine, and make these conversations part of your culture. Your goal is to strive for a workplace that supports employee decision making and constant feedback from all corners of your company. If there's a lack of motivation, communication, or leadership within the managerial ranks, you'll be able to tell by the responses you get. Work with your managers to make sure informal conversation is also part of their daily routine.
• Survey employees about workplace culture. If motivation, communication, and leadership are key variables in your organization -- and let's hope they are -- there's nothing wrong with measuring them. Conduct your own cultural or organizational survey to get baseline measurements for the level (or lack) of motivation, communication, and any other attributes you choose. Surveying employees about workplace culture will help you identify your collective blind spots and strong points. Repeat the survey every year or every six months, track and communicate changes and improvements, and use the data to help set priorities based on your business objectives. Later, you can even make survey results part of managers' annual reviews.
• Develop a more robust performance management system. You can build trust into internal communications by including it in your performance management system. It's absolutely possible to evaluate managers based on their ability to motivate, communicate, and lead. Consider a 360-degree feedback system through which employees can evaluate managers. (Just be sure you give managers the opportunity to evaluate you, too.) Your goal here is to dig into the detail of a manager's unique strengths and position him or her in ways that showcase those strengths.

None of these suggestions will undermine the authority of your managers as long as you clearly spell out the reasons for implementing the initiatives and your expectations. Ultimately, your job as a leader is to help managers develop their own leadership road map -- by giving them the tools and support to help them define for themselves what managerial behaviors are acceptable and unacceptable.

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