Today we have more ways to communicate with one another than ever before. Of course, we have face-to-face spoken communication which we have had for thousands of years (although we seem to be doing that less and less). We also have old-fashioned written communications such as letters, newspapers, magazines, books, etc. These too we’ve had for a very long time. But now we have a whole host of other communications tools available to us . . . radio and television, obviously, but also email, texting, and Skype. We can blog, we can tweet, and we can post all manner of stupid stuff on Facebook. We can host webinars. With cell phones, we can communicate with one another whenever and wherever we want to. Yet all these wonderful communication tools have nothing to do with the quality of our communications, only the quantity and frequency of them. Poor communication is still poor communication whether it arrives by email or by pony express. For those of us in business, that’s important to remember because honest, complete, timely, effective communication is at the heart of sound leadership, building trust, accountability, and effective delegation. For more on this, please continue reading below.
“What we have here is a failure to communicate.”
That is a famous quote from the movie Cool Hand Luke. While the movie was about a prison chain gang and had nothing at all to do with business, the quote itself is still instructive for us. Why? Because when our plans don’t quite unfold the way we want them to, when a project or a new initiative struggles to get on track, there is probably a “failure to communicate” in the mix somewhere.
Effective communication is a starting point, of sorts. It’s an essential tool for building trust, and if we can’t build trust up, down, and across the organization, it will be very tough to get anything done. So honest clear communication builds trust, and trust allows strong leadership to flourish. After all, who’s going to follow someone they can’t trust. Strong leaders will bring accountability to the organization. They understand that if we can’t hold one another accountable to honor our commitments, the trust that we worked so hard to establish starts to crumble. And finally, company leaders can delegate work confidently, knowing that the person to whom they have delegated the work will “own” it and will hold him or herself accountable for completing the work successfully.
If we were to graph this sequence of events, it would look like:
Good Communication → Trust → Strong Leadership → Accountability → Effective Delegation
OK, so let’s look at what distinguishes “good” communication from communication that is less than optimal.
- It’s well targeted. That is, it goes to everyone who needs to know. While that may seem obvious, this is the birthplace of “unintended consequences.” Somebody’s ox gets unintentionally gored because that somebody should have been included in the communication loop . . . but wasn’t. When in doubt, send it to everybody.
- It’s honest and complete. You may think it’s a kindness to shield others from the unvarnished truth (particularly if the unvarnished truth is ugly), but it’s not kind at all. Tell it like it is. Don’t “spin” it, don’t color it, don’t make it unduly pessimistic or overly optimistic. Just tell it like it is.
- It’s clear and concise. There’s a fine line between providing too much information and not enough. If your communication is too brief, your message may not be fully understood. If it’s a “brain dump,” your message may be lost in the details It’s important to get this right, so if you doubt your ability hit the right balance between too much information and not enough, get help.
- It’s timely. Whatever the message, give your organization as much time as possible to digest it, to react to it, and to take appropriate action. If your people feel they are constantly being blind-sided by last-minute communications, they will be unnecessarily stressed and probably not as productive as they would otherwise be.
Effective communication is not complex, but it can be hard work and it can be time-consuming. Still, if the payoff is a culture of trust, strong leadership, and accountability, I’d say that’s a pretty good ROI.
Rock Solid Business Development
Phone: (847) 665-9134
andy@rocksolidbizdevelopment.com
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