I just sat in on a very inspiring, compelling and dramatic presentation from a brilliant president of a Fortune 100 organization. He has driven his team to deliver incredible sales results over the past 5 years, in spite of some serious distracting situations. I sat in while he was acknowledging members of his team and also challenging them to achieve greater accomplishments over the balance of this year.
Though a great presentation, there was something amiss. Instead of firing people up, in reality, he only added kerosene to a brewing firestorm. The reason? As he was showing his people how they have exponentially improved sales and profits and made shareholders a pretty profit, he neglected to address why they recently received a significant haircut on their compensation. Now, instead of feeling pride for their accomplishments, they are asking themselves, “Why am I killing myself performing, yet making less money, even though we’re currently outpacing our best year ever?” It became a distracting message for some people, even though it was intended as an inspiring “thank you”.
As a leader or speaker, it’s so important to realize where your audience stands and how your message will be received. Be mindful of what’s going on in the world of your listener. As a rule, compensation issues always make people crazy! They never think they are paid enough and understandably, are very threatened by any changes to their compensation. It would have been helpful in the case above to add something that addressed the changes to compensation and why (and not with the standard corporate response).
The president referred to in this note has already overcome the oversight mentioned above. He has surrounded himself with an executive team that relentlessly overcomes challenges and he is remarkable at cutting through nonsense and getting to the heart of what needs to be said and done to produce results.
