Every company has a tone that resonates throughout the whole organization. Broadly, the tone is the general atmosphere created in the workplace for the team, through speech and action. Is the tone in your company adversarial where there are constant monumental turf wars or quarrels over mundane company property such as staplers or chairs? Do some of your managers and employees go through long periods of malice where name-calling and the blame-game is the order of the day?

Have you ever worked in an organization that is openly confrontational, where loud talking and the merchandising of ‘forty-shilling’ words are par for the course? If you have, how motivated were you to get out of bed and don your battle gear for work each day? On the other hand, are you one of the lucky (perhaps mythical) ones who work in a well-adjusted cordial workplace where there is mutual respect between employees and managers and differences are thrashed out constructively? Setting the right tone in on organization is important partly because it impacts on performance and production and provides motivation for employees. What is the tone of your organization and who sets it?

Traditionally, in a top-down organizational structure it is the chief executive officer and his senior management team who sets the tone for the rest of us in the company. They offer to us through their communication and action what is clear and acceptable behaviour within the office. As team members we take our cues from the people at the top to whom we report. They lead, we follow.

So, if for example, your manager turns up to work on causal Friday in flip flops and cut off jeans, you can bet your bottom dollar next week the rest us us will try and best this fashion guru. And so, without a doubt, Tony in accounting will turn up next Friday in equally outrageous threads and will not expect any raised eyebrows, because the previous week, ‘the bossman’, the ‘bigger head’ had set the trend. It might be ridiculous and perhaps futile to attempt to un-do this tone you have already set with your staff by trying to save face by sending around an e-mail or memo stipulating what is acceptable Friday wear. You would have already established that by your action.

Unfortunately, there are business leaders who walk among us who perennial say one thing and do another and yet expect the members of the team who they lead to operate at the highest levels possible. This is called double-speak, or the ‘do-as-I-say-but-not-as-I-do’ syndrome so common among us human beings. As a manager, is that the tone you set for your employees?

Nature certainly abhors a vacuum and if your manager is lackluster and does not move to set a positive tone for your unit or organization, then you can be sure that there are other members of the team who will gladly, unasked, step up to this plate. Unfortunately, these forces are not always positive or in the best interest of the growth of your organization. If you do not move quickly to set company’s tone, for example, the whiners and complainers will move in, taking with them their assorted ‘bag and pan’ of gripes and complaints about easily solved issues. These moaners and groaners will bring the rest of us down if their voices are louder and more compelling than yours. They will act to de-motivate and de-rail the team.

Good managers set the tone where hard work comes with a commensurate reward and he or she walks the talk. Set the tone in your organization by telling everyone what you stand for, and what they can expect from you. This will put you on record with a public commitment that you won’t soon break.In this atmosphere, promises are honoured to the best of our abilities and as the circumstances within our control dictates. Employees admire and tend to desire to emulate managers who behave authentically and this resonates throughout the organizational structure.

Setting a good tone also has a very powerful impact on how customer service is delivered by your company. When the organization’s tone is positive, hopeful and productive, your employees tend to treat your customers well. This tone oozes from the interaction between the public and your employees. However, when the tone set by senior management is negative it will de-motivate and is reflected in how we treat our customers, impacting on the profitability of our businesses. What is the tone of your company today?

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