Make Sure Your Employees Have Good Things to Say About You

The stories they tell behind your back about what you do as a leader are more powerful than the things you say.

Powerful, inspirational leadership can only happen if employees develop an emotional attachment to the boss. The best executives know this. But how do you foster this kind of attachment in a big company where people are scattered all over the world?

If you’re like most senior leaders, you try to bridge the distance via email, internal social media postings, occasional in-person meetings, speeches and videos. But these are not great ways to develop relationships — employees tend to tune out official messages.

But there’s one form of communication they don’t tune out: the genuine, spontaneous story about you that they hear from their peers.

Our research into leading from a distance shows that stories told informally by what we call “leader surrogates” — individuals who have developed admiration and respect for you and actively share favorable information about you — are more powerful in helping you to inspire your people than the formal communications you crank out.

Here are a few suggestions for cultivating surrogates:

Get out more: You have to reach beyond your inner circle, taking care wherever you go to make contact with people at lower levels of the organization. Spending time with employees in extracurricular activities — softball games, barbecues — is one way executives can let their employees get to know them.

Let spontaneous things happen: Bear in mind that surrogates are primarily storytellers, and the best stories are those with unexpected, unscripted incidents. An unplanned interaction with an individual might make you late to your next meeting, but it is the kind of thing inspiring leaders do. That’s why it’s a good idea to build a cushion into your schedule, especially when you are traveling to other corporate locations.

Don’t strive for perfection: You probably won’t be able to cultivate surrogates who believe you excel on all the leadership characteristics. But a leader’s strength in one area can compensate for weakness in another. So as you attempt to work with surrogates, choose one or two areas to highlight.

Less can be more: It’s more important to have authentic, meaningful interactions with a select group of individuals than empty interactions with hundreds of people. Connect with one person, and he or she can promote you to hundreds of people, causing a ripple effect throughout the organization.

Doing beats talking: One of the most effective ways you can display your relatability is to help out with menial tasks. These are simple ways to communicate that you are no better than anyone else.

Identify voids: Assign a trusted assistant to find out what stories are being told about you in which locations (and don’t be afraid to hear a little bad news). When you identify voids, you know where to focus your surrogate-development efforts.

Nathan T. Washburn is an associate professor of management at the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University. Benjamin Galvin is an assistant professor of management at the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University. This article was originally published in September 2016.

Copyright 2017 Harvard Business School Publishing Corp. Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate.