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If you don’t communicate regularly, when something goes wrong, don’t expect understanding

Tags: Be interesting | Meetings | Impact | Leadership | Influencing

28th August

“If you don’t communicate regularly, when something goes wrong, don’t expect understanding.”

I heard this quote on the radio recently.

And it’s so true.

And it’s one of those sentences that – when you hear it – makes perfect sense. And it also makes you think…

  1. Do you communicate regularly enough?
  2. Does your team see your face enough – and not just your emails?
  3. Does your team know what’s going on with the business? With the team? With you?
  4. Do you publicly recognise and praise good performance?
  5. Do you privately step-in if people don’t display the behaviours you expect (remember, if you ignore bad behaviour, you empower it)
  6. When you do communicate with them, is it two-way where you listen to their views too? Or do you deliver one-way downloads?

Ask yourself these/similar questions.

Better still, ask your team what they think.

Because, if you don’t communicate regularly, you won’t get the understanding from them that you want.

But if you do communicate regularly, you will.

And you’ll also get more engagement. More discretionary effort. Less concerns/grumbling. People will go the extra mile for you. There’ll be more buy-in to what you’re looking to achieve.

So the question again: do you communicate enough?

Action Point

Reflect on these six questions. Ask your team what they think too.

And if you need to communicate with them more, do so.

Yes, it’ll take you a bit more time. But the benefits will be instant, dramatic and lasting.