Leadership Update 18 of 2017

You are about to address your employees to discuss the new direction your company is embarking on. In addressing them, you are aware that there has been some growing disenchantment among employees who were upset at not being paid any bonuses the past year. There has also been talk that there may be retrenchments coming. Some other companies in your industry have in fact recently embarked on a reorganization scheme, resulting in some employees being laid off. Hence, the general mood and morale within your company is one of anxiety and perhaps even distrust.

Your goal in communicating to your team is to allay their fears, unite them and motivate them toward this new future you are envisioning for your company. However, you expect some resistance from some employees and are concerned that this group may end up quietly unravelling any positive intent behind your message. Hence, how will you handle them?

The Law of Three’s Explained

The law of three’s basically state that you can divide your employees into one of three equal groups. The first group will be the resisters. Let’s call them the naysayers or negatives. The second group will be those staying in the middle or the undecideds. Let’s call them the neutrals. The third group will be your supporters. Let’s call them the positives.

I didn’t invent this law but this reality of the law of three’s is a fact in life. You see this play out in politics in as much as it does in the boardroom.

The Mistake We Tend to Make

When delivering a message to a crowd, the mistake commonly made is to focus our efforts on countering the negative arguments of the naysayers. Hence, we spend a disproportionate amount of time, energy and effort focusing on this negative group of people. While this may appear to make logical sense, it in fact has the opposite effect. When focus in placed on allaying the fears of the negatives, counterintuitively something unexpected happens. The second group, the neutrals sense that the naysayers are getting all the attention and unconsciously shift toward this direction as a means to also gain attention.

When this happens, your supporters, the ‘positives’ feel like the minority and one of two things happen. Half of them move toward becoming either lukewarm/neutral to your message while the other half (who are usually your staunchest allys and typically good performing staff) leave the organisation.

What We Should Do

As uncomfortable and counterintuitive as this may feel at the start, you have to craft and focus your message toward the positives. Energy should be focused on this group at the initial stage. When you do this, the neutrals, in realising that this is the place to be if they want to command attention, will join forces with your positives. Now you, have two thirds of your team behind you. You will even be able to pull half of the naysayer crowd over to the neutral crowd. The beautiful thing here is that you find the other half of the ‘naysayers’, who are often time the poisonous elements within the organisation, leaving as they feel their voices being drowned out by the positives.

Key Message

Over the years, I’ve often been asked by CEO’s and Heads of Departments for any advice I can give them just before they address a group of employees, I believe an awareness of this Law of Three’s is the most important insight you can have when dealing with such situations.

This update is sent as part of our Leadership update series. I hope you enjoyed this update.