How Mixed Messages Undermine Your Leadership

Mixed messages kill. When you as a leader say one thing yet do another, it kills your credibility. It demotivates your people. And it undermines whatever you’re trying to achieve.

What do mixed messages look like? It’s when you trumpet excellence but tolerate poor performance. When you set goals but don’t provide the resources to achieve them. When you empower people yet punish them for making decisions that don’t work out. Whenever your words and actions are misaligned, you’re sending a mixed message. And the conclusion they draw? You’re not credible. You can’t be trusted.

As a leader, you’re on stage. Your people are constantly judging you. They listen to what you say but they hear what you do. And the moment you’re inconsistent … they’re on it.

The crime of it is your people want you to be credible. They want to trust you. They want to believe you’ve got a clear vision and are committed to achieving it. Most of all, they want to feel secure in knowing you’ll set them up to succeed, not to fail. Consistency inspires. Inconsistency kills.

Earlier this year, Fortune magazine published their annual, “100 Best Companies to Work For,” edition. After 20 years of using the same, basic methodology for selecting the best companies, this year marked a major change. Why? Their research revealed the importance of consistency. How providing a great place to work for all employees all of the time results in not only a great culture, but revenue growth three times that of competitors.

Be aware of the messages you’re sending. Don’t send mixed messages. If you’re serious about culture and performance, then make sure your actions are aligned with your words are aligned with your intentions. Consistently.

One Trait You Want In Every Employee

Stuff happens. Things don’t always go according to plan. Situations change.

That’s why there’s one trait I look for in every employee.

Initiative.

Taking initiative, taking ownership when situations change. You don’t want a team of passive victims who whine about change. You want a team that quickly recognizes change is occurring and then shifts their thinking to, “How do we make the most of this?”

All of us can identify the obstacles we’re faced with, the challenges, the disadvantages. That’s the easy part. But what reaction do those trigger? Helplessness? Complaining? Surrender?

Or do they trigger a competitive reaction?

When hiring, you want to determine how likely it is that prospective employees will take initiative. Use behavior-based interviewing. Ask them to describe an actual work situation in which they took initiative. What was the situation? Why did they take initiative? What did they do? What was the outcome?

It brings to mind a story I heard years ago when I worked at FedEx. At the time, FedEx was known for service excellence, and the importance of that was drilled into every employee. Well, a courier making a late-afternoon stop found he wasn’t able to open a drop-box in which there were, undoubtedly, many packages. But if he couldn’t get the packages then they wouldn’t be delivered on time and that sure wouldn’t be service excellence.

It would have been easy for the courier to surrender. But that’s not what he did. What he did was back up his van right next to the drop-box, and push the drop-box over onto the floor of the van! If he couldn’t get the packages out of the drop-box then he was going to take the drop-box to the station. He took initiative.

The lesson? You want people who are more than just problem-detectors, you want people who take the initiative to be problem-solvers.

No, things don’t always go according to plan. That’s a given. But if you have a team that takes initiative then you’re much more likely to succeed even when things don’t go as planned.