Communicate Openly on the Path Forward to Work

Communicate Openly. That’s Step 5 on the Path Forward to Work.

It could be called, “Everyone Keep Communicating!” because we all need to continually engage in communication for our relationships to be healthy and our efforts to succeed.

Now, one might wonder after all the emphasis on connection, participation, and collaboration in the previous four steps on the Path Forward to Work, does communication really need its own step?

After all, if we’ve been inclusive in all the previous steps, then everyone has been involved and knows what is happening and why, right? Everyone is invested in those co-created outcomes, right? Surely everyone is paying attention, everyone is on the same page, tracking progress, right? Surely communication will flow naturally and easily. Right?

Are you laughing yet? Yeah, me too.

Let’s not kid ourselves: Communication was hard before the pandemic when we had every advantage of being together in person. And in all that time, in all the employee engagement surveys I’ve ever seen, I’ve NEVER seen strong communication scores. Ever. From ANY organization. They might be out there somewhere, but they are the rare exception.

Communication was hard before…

·        Even when sitting beside each other at desks in cubicles or on the same floor in the building.

·        Even when we sat across from each other live in 3D in meeting rooms observing body language, even when we could see a lifted eyebrow or flicker of concern, even when we could sense a shift in energy, murmurs of excitement, or a room falling deadly silent.

·        Even when we could all gather in the same auditorium for a collective experience, or when we could talk through an issue face to face in real time.

·        Even when we organically built relationships and trust walking at lunch or going for coffee or stopping by someone’s desk.

·        Even when we lingered after a meeting to discuss our excitement or concerns about a new project.  

When we had all the advantages of presence, proximity, convenience, and time, we still struggled to communicate.

Today’s circumstances are even harder on communication.

Now we are faced with a whole new set of structural, social, emotional, psychological, and temporal challenges. We work in different locations and on different schedules. We have been and may still be traumatized and significantly stressed impacting our attention and ability to listen, think clearly, and learn new information. We are frequently interacting as mere head-and-shoulders images in tiny 2-D boxes with backlighting that masks our facial expressions, mostly muted – that setting itself a potent indicator of the challenges to communication, with little sensory information to enhance our understanding of each other.

We have to schedule conversations rather than spontaneously meet; these delays mean our conversations are not timely. Our trust-building time is spotty and electronic. We have few chances to linger.

So, of course communication is hard now. And because we are committed to making work more human, this communication challenge requires our loving attention and committed action to meet the needs and hopes of team members, to fulfill our shared values and commitments to each other, and to make our mutual plans come alive.

It means we make a commitment to thoughtful, active, open, robust communication. Does this take time? Yes! It admittedly takes a lot of time.

But you know what takes more time? Dealing with the impacts of poor communication:

·        Repairing the trust that comes when people feel disillusioned, left behind, confused, or put upon takes more time.

·        Rebuilding engagement when people are burnt out and demoralized takes time.

·        Fixing the mistakes that come from people acting out of concert with the decision, the plan, the vision, the timeline, etc., takes time.

·        Replacing people who got fed up and left the organization takes a ton of time, with significant costs financially, reputationally, and on our ability to deliver.  

The impacts of poor communication take a lot more time than communicating well in the first place. So first, we need to commit to communication. Plan time for it. Invest resources in it. Staff it. Develop our skills for it. Set expectations for it. And then keep doing it, reflecting, learning, and improving.

The Mutual Responsibility of Communication.

A word about mutuality. In our work, as in many other spheres of life, we are in relationships with each other, significant relationships that takes the majority of our waking hours. In these relationships, we are all responsible for communication. And it is on each of us no matter our roles to embrace our responsibility. Not accountability, responsibility.

If we focus on “holding people accountable for communication” then we are invoking a punitive, fear-based mindset that assumes that people don’t want to communicate. I believe and have seen that most people do want to be responsible and want to communicate, but they become disenchanted, disenfranchised, and uncommunicative when trust is broken. And as in any relationship, things deteriorate, and we revert to fear-based accountability. Accountability is a construct that focuses on compliance, blame, and finger pointing. This is a poor foundation for a relationship. Instead, our emphasis should be on honoring our work relationships as we would other relationships by being trustworthy and responsible for participating in healthy, loving, open communication.

In these professional relationships, with our co-workers, leaders, and our organization, we are each mutually responsible for cultivating those relationships through excellent communication. In a loving, committed relationship, which is what we are trying to cultivate, we don’t want to let each other down, we care, we each aim to do our part. We should focus on being the best communicator we can be for each other, not on holding each other “accountable” and watching for failure. I strongly encourage us each to embrace our responsibility to communicate, that is if we are aiming for a loving and human workplace characterized by respect, trust, kindness, belonging, appreciation, compassion, and meaning leading to performance.

You can read more here on my position on the primacy of responsibility over accountability.

“I’m ready to strengthen my communication. What do I do?”

In the next post, I’ll share suggestions, tips, and insights for exactly how to communicate to uphold our commitment to love, respect, and belonging and to successfully achieve our goals.

Meanwhile, what communication challenges have you faced? What’s your commitment to communication?