Ice Cream Moments

The orientation instructor asked the freshman, “Are you a leader?” The nervous 18-year-old slowly responded, “No. I haven’t done anything to call myself a leader.” The instructor then explained to that student and to the whole class, “Truly you must be leaders. You managed to successfully get through 13 years of school and graduate.  Here you are in college, deciding to make something of yourselves by earning a degree and hopefully pursuing a career.  You’re setting an example for your peers and family. Give yourselves some credit. You are leaders.” Our topics this week in Leadership and Media Strategies are leadership and communication with internal, external and government groups.   

Lollipop moments and BizTweets were only a couple of the interesting topics this week.  We had a diverse and entertaining list of readings and videos which included a college administrator, a soldier, scholars and we read about a firm in South Korea. My favorite topic was “Everyday Leadership,” a TED Talks video which featured a college administrator named Drew Dudley who talked about lollipop moments, which are transformational moments that you may not even be aware of that make someone’s life better.  One of his transformational moments happened when he gave a young student a lollipop and did other memorable small things that changed her life. Dudley said that leadership should be redefined as being about lollipop moments that are capable of changing the world.  We have all had lollipop moments but we don’t always give ourselves enough credit to accept that we have done something that just might change someone’s life. The focus of our topics this week is how effective communication can be instrumental in improving the success of an organization and possibly changing the lives of everyone involved.

I vowed years ago that I would not spend a third of my day every day at work miserable.  There is nothing worse than working for an organization that does not value its employees enough to communicate with them. My first jobs in college were not the best, and now that I look back on those environments, I realize that there was a lot of dysfunctional communication.  There were a lot of student workers who received very little information about the departments where we worked.  Managers gave you pretty good instructions about your duties, but they didn’t communicate with you enough for you to get to know them or for you to get to know much about other departments. Leadership was not good because communication between management and employees was almost nonexistent. After college, my jobs got better.  Communication was better, but there were needed improvements.  Managers gave more information, but only to a point. There seemed to be managerial secrets and information on a “need to know” basis and it wasn’t as if we were working for the FBI. Sometimes we were rushed to meet deadlines because we didn’t have complete details about work orders, and this created a stressful work environment. Leadership was better, but they needed to work on internal communication.

The publication “Promoting Internal Communication” states that internal communication is communication within an organization that allows everyone to get the information they need, easily get questions answered and allows no one to be left out.  Internal communication can provide information to help people do their jobs effectively, give feedback, provide emotional support, suggest new ideas, and help share goals, vision and sense of ownership in the organization. Without it there is a huge disconnect.  My jobs early on had dysfunctional disconnected cultures between workers and management.

I have a job now where communication is free-flowing and all cultures have continuous access to vital information through daily emails, bi-weekly staff meetings and face-to-face interactions that help you stay informed. Leadership here is great! The authors of the article “Exploring Public Sector Communication Performance: Testing a Model and Drawing Implications” concluded that clear and effective channels of communication result in productive work environments.  They also state that improving communication should be a continuous, well-planned and well-executed plan. Good leaders within any organization should have a plan to address and continually improve internal communication in order to make worker relations excel and then address external communication to deal with that group.

Also this week we looked at government communications. Being left in the dark and not knowing what is going on cannot add to good morale for an organization or any government. Brooke Fisher Liu and Abbey Blake Levenshus state in “Public Relations Professionals” that a basic government duty is to inform citizens by constantly reporting decisions and actions by the media. The article concluded that the public’s trust in government communication is important because trust is necessary to effectively communicate messages with citizens. Governments have to address millions of diverse people, but modern communication tools like the Internet, traditional media and social media make communicating with citizens easier today.

Stanley McChrystal’s TED Talks video is called “Listen, Learn… Then Lead.” McChrystal looked over his 27-year military career and discussed how things have drastically changed on the battlefield and in communications.  He concluded, “A leader isn’t good because they’re right; they’re good because they’re willing to learn and to trust.  You can get knocked down, but if you’re a leader, the people you’ve counted on will help you up.  And if you’re a leader, the people who count on you need you on your feet.” McChrystal’s and Dudley’s perspectives apply to all aspects of life.  Managers, supervisors and executives cannot lead without effective internal communications to start with. Nowadays with so many amazing technology advancements, communications within an organization can easily take place and allow everyone to communicate, get the information they need and work toward success.  The improvement in leadership between my early jobs and my present one is a result of better communication through things like the Internet, email, and social media. Back then, I guess it was a task to disseminate ongoing information to every worker. Now management can simply produce one memo or announcement and send it to hundreds instantly. Management can also get creative like the South Korean company we read about. For internal communications they use BizTweet, a less formal Twitter-like tool to help workers discuss things like seminars and meetings, solicit ideas for customer problems and do feedback. Organizational leadership is about listening, informing, seeking and responding to feedback. The lollipop moments will come when management is doing everything possible to promote harmony with all stakeholders by simply keeping vital internal and external cultures well-informed and happy.

The instructor I mentioned in the beginning was me.  The student I helped to realize that he was a leader has become a great high school coach and stays in touch years later.  My pointing out that he was a leader made a great impact on his life.  That afternoon he brought me ice cream and we developed a great friendship. That, in turn, changed my life and encouraged me to always find something positive for every student to take away from me through effective leadership.  I try to always do my best to make ice cream moments.