How bad could under communicating really be?

Ahoy,

Everything we say as leaders is under scrutiny.

But more importantly, the things we don’t say to our teams often lead to the biggest problems.

Everyone knows that communication is important, whether you’re at home with your family or in the office, communication is key.

What we often fail to realise, is that it’s not just about the things we say or the way we say them, but also about the things we don’t say. The gaps we leave in sharing information, more often than not, can lead to greater problems than the information we did share.

Today we’re going to talk the effects of under communicating and how we can combat that through the aptly named “over communicating”.

It was months since our initial sailing date.

Having had our plans pushed back yet again, with little understanding of when we were going to actually be leaving our friends and families for the foreseeable future, frustrations were at an all time high.

The submarine was undergoing a routine maintenance period and that was scheduled to only take a few months, before she would return back to sea with her crew of over 100 submariners.

But as the weeks went on, more and more issues arose, challenging the planned timelines.

And as sailing dates came and went, the information sharing slowed.

What happens when there are gaps in people’s knowledge?

They start to fill those gaps with false information.

• Gossip spreads.

• Confusion grows.

• Moral begins to drop.

Overall the stress levels rose and people began to spread incorrect rumours about what was happening.

All because they didn’t receive information.

To be clear here, this was not because the leadership team were gatekeeping any key information. They simply didn’t know either.

That’s the problem with fixing emergent defects with systems, it’s never clear if the proposed solution will work straight away.

The problem here is that lack of knowledge wasn’t communicated either.

And so people assumed there was information, that wasn’t being shared with them. - Not true, but that’s what under communicating leads to.

Clearly under communicating doesn’t lead to a healthy culture and will ultimately end up hurting your team.

But how do we combat this?

The approach I like to take is the idea of “over communication”. The idea being, if you feel like you’re communicating the right amount, you’re probably under doing it. So aim to over communicate and you might just hit the mark!

And this doesn’t just apply to when things are going wrong, but with business goals, organisational culture, and strategic guidance.

So what does over communication look like?

A simple test to tell if you’re communicating correctly, is to ask questions at each level of leadership to see if your messages are being received properly.

In a typical “chain of command” the person at the top gives their direction to the people below them, they pass it on to the person below them and so on…

If you’re at a point in this chain with people below you, every one of them should be comfortable with the goals you’re setting, the guidance you’re delivering or any information you’ve tried to have shared.

If they’re not, then you have an issue.

It may be that there is a broken link in the chain, or it may be that you’re not communicating those messages clearly enough.

An excellent example of this employed was when I was deployed to Germany.

Our commanding officer would host a call each week where they would reiterate their aims and objectives, and any changes to them. And then provide a breakdown of what has been happening over the week within the “top corridor”.

On one occasion this was taken a step further. They took the time to highlight what they didn’t know. This prevented people falling into the thought process that information was being withheld and highlighted the concept that we were all on the journey together.

So how did this help?

• It ensured everyone was on the same page with regards to what the priorities were.

• It helped build everyone’s “buy in” to the plan and the direction we were moving in.

• It put a stop to any unhelpful rumours before they even started.

This is one example of how over communication can be implemented.

It certainly isn’t the only way. There are many ways you can enforce this habit of over communication, and it’s important to remember that this isn’t just for when thigs are going wrong but at all points.

You need your team to trust you, so tell them what’s going on.

Remember, try and over communicate and you’ll probably only just hit the mark.

If you got anything out of this email, make sure to share it with your colleagues and friends.

Any as always, if you have any comments, questions or queries, or if you want daily bites of leadership tips, feel free to get in touch through X (Twitter).

Have a great rest of your day.

Reece