Show of hands: how do you want to hear from your company’s CEO? Do you prefer to hear from him in a face-to-face medium; as a disembodied voice over your company’s PA system; via print through the pages of your internal publication or on the internet? Yes, I hear the crickets chirping in the direction of those of us, who would rather sign on to the “we would rather never, ever hear from the CEO” posse.

When it comes to CEO communication, depending on your corporate culture, there tends to be a Great Wall of China, a huge barrier of silence separating us, the staff from the company’s head honcho. Perhaps for many, many good reasons, both company leader and I, the staff member, have chosen to build this wall higher and chisel out only a very small opening that we can each peek through and communicate only when absolutely necessary.

I read a very interesting article in the Harvard Business School’s on-line Faculty Research resource ‘Working Knowledge’ (published April 1, 2011) about ‘When Power Makes Others Speechless: The Negative Impact of Leader Power on Team Performance’. The paper looked at the idea that power actually has a detrimental effect on leadership, especially with regard to how it affects open communication with a team.

The research was conducted by Leigh Plunkett Tost of the University of Washington, Francesca Gino of Harvard Business School and Richard Larrick of Duke University. Some of the key concepts noted that: “Members of teams with high power leaders are likely to keep quiet in meetings, both because high-power leaders talk a lot, meaning there is not much time for others to talk and because of the perception – fair or not – that powerful people aren’t interested in anyone else’s ideas. This can result in a dearth of ideas during brainstorming sessions.”

I don’t know about you, but in my past lives I have had occasion to look on in absolute horror and amazement as company leaders come to meetings with their personal agendas and leave no room for anyone else’s input. Some of them have taken the ‘brain’ out of brain-storming.

The article further says that: “Leader power has a negative effect on team members’ perception of the leader’s ability and desire to engage in open communication. Because open communication is vital to any project, these perception can hurt team performance,”

However, regardless of how we slice it or dice it, love him or hate him, the person who leads our company, your CEO, the head honcho, ‘Mr. Big’ is a part of our lives, pretty much like death and taxes. And it is mutually beneficial to both of us that we stay in touch with each other. Perhaps not in the way of courting lovers, eagerly awaiting each new encounter but, at least with open countenances, expectantly anticipating each exchange. We don’t always have to love each other passionately every day of the 40-hour work week, but because our fortunes are so inextricably bound we definitely need to talk. We do not need to even see ‘Mr Big Cheese’ every day (and some of us chorus that we would rather not anyway) but we certainly need to feel his guiding hand on the wheel of the ship that steers our ‘little much’ into the bank accounts come month end.

Within any strategic plans that s/he has for the company to succeed and thrive, there must exist an equally smart and effective plan for him to communicate effectively with the employees who are ultimately the engine of CEO success. This is regardless of who or what may have propped him up into ‘leather-swivel-chair’ power-position within which he currently resides.

The sad fact is that once they ascend the throne of company leadership, there are some executives who get so caught up in tending to the bottom-line, attempting to quite rightly, earn their keep and positions, not to mention staying abreast of the competition, they lose sight of communicating effectively with the foot-soldiers, generally those good employees who ensure that the company stays in the black. Bogged down too by policy-making and the operational side of the business, communicating with staff becomes a painful and avoidable chore that they usually delegate to a trusted side-kick, the ‘Chatter-in-Chief’ whose job description seem to defy specific explanation but includes the grey-murky area of “nuh have nutten fe do”. The option to delegate opens up a messy can of worms as everyone prefers to hear company announcements, reassurances straight from the ‘horse’s mouth’ even if he is lame, and so second hand information usually never cuts it right.

CEO’s, Managing Directors and those chosen to lead businesses must accept the responsibility and importance of an internal communication plan for themselves. A properly effected plan drives employee engagement and will help to improve the company’s transparency and internal communication.

Yvonne Grinam-Nicholson, (MBA, ABC) is a Business Communications Consultant with ROCommunications Jamaica, specialising in business communications and financial publications. She can be contacted at: yvonne@rocommunications.com. Visit her website at www.rocommunications.com and post your comments.