Conscious Leadership Scenario:
You’ve got a big vision for your company (usually established by your Board of Directors), and you’re building a team to get you there. When your senior executive team gathers, there’s bound to be some misunderstanding. No matter how hard you work or try to improve communication, you wind up having to repeat yourself. Slowing down to better your communication costs time and wastes momentum.
Why does communication have to be so hard?
Leadership Fail:
We live in a “never enough” society, therefore this pressure to hit goals and supersede the expectations of investors becomes daunting.
You start to lose your mental balance and the emotions roll down to other team members killing momentum.
Negative Affect on Culture and Organizational Performance:
Then the whipping begins: work more hours, push harder, exhaustion sets in, and the entire organization goes into cold eye analysis and change exhaustion-killing morale and rendering business divisions flat.
Conscious Leadership Solution:
Nearly every communication breakdown can be traced back to one of two problems. Unstated and vague communication – you must achieve a shared communication that ensures understanding.
Communication Fails:
1) No Communication: Thinking it without communicating is vague and not expressed. This allows your team members to develop their individual interpretations. Develop action points and agendas in each email and verbal communication. This will boost team alignment and morale. Leaders own their communication-you can never over-communicate.
2) Garbled Communication: Lack of clarity in your communication/message. Be precise in your messaging specific to numbers, dates, and timelines. Start taking the time to define what you’re thinking clearly. Please write it down. Come back to the message and reread it, ensuring your communication is crystal clear.
3) Implied Communication: Your communication is clear to you, but you’re not conveying your thoughts in a manner so that others can understand your message. Team members need clear, precise, expressed communication if they’re going to meet your expectations. The solution is always to over-communicate. You’re dealing with the “Knowledge Curse” you continually think that because you fully understand the situation, everyone else shares your knowledge-not true. Always communicate the “Why” then close the communication loop by slowing down and asking your team members to share their interpretation of your message-report back to me.
Excellent communication is a skill any leader can learn. Continue to develop and refine your communication skills and reap huge rewards.
We are here to help. For us, our purpose is leadership for a better world, and we are here to help you in showing up as the We-Team leader you need to be. We are here to support you globally. We are on this journey together. This is an invitation, an invitation to join us in creating a collaborative movement: the movement that is leadership for a better world.
Live2Lead/OneTribe
Travis
Vice President of US Technology Practices at 