Leaders: Share the News From the Top
Quick Leadership Tips #4
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Updating your team weekly on the latest news from the senior leadership suite is a great way to keep your team engaged.
It demonstrates trust, transparency, and authenticity on your part.
“Communication is a skill that you can learn. It’s like riding a bicycle or typing. If you’re willing to work at it, you can rapidly improve the quality of every part of your life.” — Brian Tracy.
I’m not talking about trade secrets, just sales & budget updates, progress on KPIs, and what’s going on generally.
If your team is committed to their jobs, they will be interested to hear how the organization is doing. Finding out the latest news in the lunchroom instead of from you can be highly frustrating.
Not enough communication from the top is a common complaint in engagement surveys, so tell your team everything they are allowed to know.
Your team may need to know certain information to do their jobs, especially if activities in other teams affect what your team is doing.
For example, if your team run payroll and they don’t know that the Operations Manager has arranged an overtime allowance for a special event, they can’t ensure people are paid on time.
The safe rule to follow is if you can tell your team, do so.
Hold team meetings the day after senior leadership meetings to update your team.
And if you get asked tricky questions like, ‘Is it true that Customers Services are being re-structured?’ ask what they’ve heard, tell the team you’ll get back to them, and let your peers know the cat is out of the bag.
I write about leadership & training, and I’ve designed The New Leader’s Starter Kit to help leaders better communicate with their teams. Get your free copy here — The New Leader’s Starter Kit takes you through how to run One-to-Ones and Constructive Feedback sessions & develop professional listening skills — a printable one-to-one form, feedback form and listening skills checklist included.
