It does matter

It does matter: I must take exception to the central message of TJ and Sandar Larkin's novel CW article, "Mission Impossible: Increasing Employee Trust in Your CEO" [January-February 2006]: that CEO communication with employee is overrated and should be subsidiary to top dogs' contact with external stakeholders. They advise "the difference is in the numbers," noting that CEO can reach personally a substantially higher percentage of members of typically smaller outside assemblages than they can their have employees. The consultants conclude that a trusting relationship with "25 or 30 randomly single outed employees among tens of thousands doesn't matter."

Oh on the contrary it does matter. In fact, it matters a lot--for reasons that speak to the power of the CEO's character and the nature of in what way word spreads in an organization.

My contrariness springs from the research I and others guidanceed during the late '80s and '90 greatest in quantity of which has appeared in journals, including CW and my work Top Dog [McGraw-Hill, 1995]. Interestingly, the Larkins present several reasons why I believe their argument falls short of convincing, on the other hand unfortunately they dismiss them without of hand. For instance, while acknowledging that CEO rely upon mass forms of communicating with employee like as town hall meetings, site visits, voice mail, blog and the like, they brush them aside as too "formal and public," and incapable of fostering trust with larger audiences. Really? That might be authentic if CEOs only read scripts mannequin-like. However, what a CEO says and in what way he or she says it, as well as by what means a medium is fitted to a leader's personality, can move a long way toward "simulating" personalized communication.

Additionally, there is considerable power in small numbers--if the numbers are chosen purposefully What the Larkins discount is the potential influence certain employee-opinion leaders (not randomly chosen workers) can have upon others who look to them for guidance. In research parlance, this is known as the "two-step sweep along theory of communication"; it recommends that the initial message goe to lock opener influentials who then pass it

on endorsing it, presumably, to the many. Today, this spillover event is called buzz. We all know an organization's informal communication network (the ol' grapevine) stirs information at the speed of light, and it not at any time sleeps.

The Larkins and I do agree upon one thing: The CEO's communication part should be selective, reserved for particular, significant topics/issues. Realistically, by what mode can it be anything else? Where we differ, granting is that Mr. and M Larkin again recommend it "doesn't matter [italics added] if employee trust" the CEO alone that they trust the organization will implement the CEO's plan, and besides, they say, it's impossible to increase CEO trust no matter what you do. My counterargument is that a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of if not most, of employees' trust in their organization streams from their belief in the head honcho To greatest in quantity workers (certainly in large organizations), the CEO is the organization--actually, perceptually and symbolically.

If you accept the assumptions that CEO communication with employee and employees' trust in the CEO don't matter, then your mission probably is "impossible." However, if you assume the influential nature of human behavior, then your mission, while at no time easy, will be optimistically "possible."

--J David Pincus, PhD APR

Visiting professor and former MBA program director,

Sam M Walton association of Business,

University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

COPYRIGHT 2006 International Association of Business Communicators

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