snippets #11 - 12.9
On effective communication
Recently I’ve been spending a good amount of time thinking about effective communication.
My job as a founder is simple enough. I need to:
Ensure there’s enough gas in the tank (don’t run out of money)
Make sure the right people are on the bus
Make sure the directions are clear and we’re on the right path
Without solid communication, it’s impossible to do any of those tasks.
Below are some stories about communication - things I’ve done well and things I’ve completely botched. Hopefully they help you think about how you can communicate better with your team.
Core Values
Early in our company’s history we knew core values would be incredibly important for us. They help align the team around a set of principles, which makes operating the business that much easier. Why? Everyone has a clear expectation for how scenarios should be handled.
We didn’t want generic platitudes that could be found on inspirational posters or in businesses presentations from the 80’s… you know what I’m talking about.
We wanted a framework for how our company would make decisions and treat people. This also impacts how we, as teammates and leaders, communicate.
For example, one of our values is: we trust each other to do our work with excellence. This means a few things. One, we believe you will do what you say you’re going to do. Two, the output you present will be high quality. Three, you are the most qualified person to produce your work. Four, you have the right information to do that work with excellence.
When we hire, we look for those qualities. We try to find the right person for the job. Then, we ensure we’re providing you the right information and tools you need to actually execute. And last, we let go. We are not micromanagers. We believe if we do our job when hiring and training and communicating vision, you will be able to do your job effectively and don’t need heavy oversight. It’s what’s enabled us to be a remote team since inception and allows us to move incredibly quickly.
We also value direct feedback over passive aggression. All of our one-on-one meetings include bi-directional feedback. I also hold skip levels (one-on-ones with non-direct reports) each week to get a real-time pulse on how things are going, how people feel about company communication and vision, and to receive feedback.
I’d rather know, in the moment, when something isn’t working so that I can work on fixing it. No sugarcoating. And that’s worked really well for our team.
Exclusion of Information
As the CEO, it’s my job to determine how much information to share and when. We value transparency at our company, so I’ve always tried to provide both information and context.
Without context, information is relatively useless.
The absence of context kills a culture of transparency and creates a sense of uneasiness and/or paranoia. It’s something I think everyone’s probably felt at some point. It’s that gnawing feeling that something’s happening in a closed room and you don’t know what it is, so inherently it might be bad.
For example, imagine receiving startup financials in the early years (hint: almost all are losing money for a long time) without the knowledge of how to read financial statements. It would derail any confidence in the company’s success.
Our team holds a weekly leadership meeting. At one leadership meeting, we had some items we needed to discuss as only part of the leadership. I offered to the team that we could meet as a whole and then the manager we didn’t need could jump off the meeting so we could wrap up and discuss the other items. I gave no other context.
I had a conversation with that manager later and it was awful. I didn’t realize that inadvertently I made them feel incredibly uncomfortable. Like they had done something wrong and we as a leadership team needed to discuss it behind the manager’s back. Or that we were sidestepping them on a big decision.
In reality, I knew they were on a tight deadline for a big project and didn’t want to waste their time with something that was only relevant to another department. Because I had failed to give context, they were left to derive their own conclusions.
Always try to give clear context.
Board Expectations
We have very clear expectations at the company level of how we want to communicate. We prefer direct frequent communication and transparency with context.
Something I never did with our board was walk through our core values. I’m not sure why I didn’t, but it never happened. As a result, we had a framework for how meetings would go, but we didn’t have that same level of alignment around communication.
This meant we had different personalities and communication styles at the board level than we did at the company level. We had people who value more passive styles of communication, some who valued open feedback, some who actively participate, others who don’t. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it can create inefficiencies.
I should have reviewed our core values early on and set the same expectations for our board that we do at the company level. This is something we’ve since rectified and it has dramatically improved communication. I highly recommend setting a clear communications framework with any stakeholder you work with.
Communications Framework
Here’s what I mean by communications framework. Remember effective communication is the art of taking something you have a lot of context for, and giving enough of that information to someone with limited, if any, context so that they can use it in some way. That’s certainly not easy. Below are a set of questions you can use to help align folks to make this process easier.
Speaking of communicating, I’m on clubhouse now. It’s a pretty fascinating concept around communication (even though I have no idea how to use it yet). You can jump into live conversations led by anyone on any topic.
Are you on clubhouse? Want to engage in a conversation? Let’s do it. Follow me and let’s start a discussion! @allisonkopf