Worry and Communication

Nature abhors a vacuum, the saying goes. The most common vacuum in organizations is communication. No matter how much we think we communicate, it’s never enough.

Whenever there isn’t enough communication (which is all the time), people fill in the blanks themselves. A meeting which is called with the title ‘Project X update’, some people will fill in as ‘it’s good news’ and others will fill in as ‘it’s bad news’. If you’re one of the ‘good news’ people, it might come as a shock to you, but not everybody – including not everybody on your team - thinks that way.

If there’s people in your team worrying about what that meeting title means, you’re not getting everything you could from them. Worry is like reving an engine without putting it in gear. It takes a lot of energy but it doesn’t produce any result.

So what can you do? Don’t call meetings with the title ‘Project X Update” :-) Or when you do, tell your team what to expect. Tell them: I want to update you on project X. We’re doing great, and I want you to know the details of just how well. Or: I want to update you on project X. We have some concerns, and as a team we’re sure we can come up with some solutions.

If you're thinking that looks a lot like Bottom Line UpFront (BLUF), you're right. Don't make people wait for the important part, in any conversation.

Even when it’s bad news, your people don’t need to worry, if they’re good people and their roles are not at risk. You can tell them: I want you to update you on project X. It’s not where it needs to be and we all need to be doing better. No-one is at risk here, but we’re going to work out together how we can meet the targets we agreed to.

The flip side of this, of course, is that you have to be clear when people are at risk. Mark usually starts with ‘this is not feedback’ which means, ‘we’re past that and this is your one chance to change’. When you’re people really are in trouble, they need not be worrying about it. They need to know and know what they have to do to be out of trouble again.

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