Leaders: Intentionally build your communication infrastructure

We all want to be told when we're messing up as early as possible. Are you making it safe for your employees to try to help you?

As leaders, we’re tasked with planning on broader time horizons, considering more complex variables, and working with more incomplete information that our reports in our organization. It’s our job to steer them in a direction that we think is most likely to be successful based on all of this, while building and maintaining trusted relationships with everyone who works for us and with us. As teams grow, this gets increasingly difficult to do. It can be easier to let communication and trust building fall off your priorities list as you’re needed on the next fire.

It’s so important to find ways to build that trust into your own leadership and strategic processes. Your whole organization will be better for it. Experiment to see what might fit in with your current style.

You need communication to move to and from you and each layer of your organization. You should have a way to make sure that feedback can come to you directly as well as make it’s way up the chain, especially for when the feedback might be about the chain itself. Sketch out your org chart, and see if you can identify how each layer or group has an opportunity to understand your thought process and how to get you feedback in a way they’re comfortable with giving it and you’re comfortable with receiving it. More often than not, this exercise will help you find gaps. Let’s talk about how you might fill some of them.

Photo by Ilyass SEDDOUG on Unsplash

What channels do you have available for feedback?

It’s not enough to just say “my door is always open” or “please give me feedback any time.” This isn’t something you can just tell, you have to show. That means giving plenty of opportunities at first, and when someone does seize the opportunity, make it a good experience and keep it visible.

Ask Me Anything Sessions

Regularly give some open floor to just come ask you questions in a group setting. Collect questions ahead of time if you can. It’ll let folks edit themselves and more introverted folks might prefer to not have the spotlight on them in the moment. You’ll get better and more thoughtful questions this way, with the added bonus that you then have time to prepare for them and gathering information that will help you answer those questions.