It is amazing how we can spend so much time trying to communicate to our team and yet there can still be disconnect. Do you feel like nothing gets through and that you are talking to a wall? Or even worse, you ask and nothing happens? According to Dr. Eunice Parisi-Carew, a Founding Associate at The Ken Blanchard Companies, over 60% of work teams fail! Does it make you wonder if you are even speaking the same language? Before you pop a blood vessel from bad memories or experiences, let me offer a thought to potentially help stop an unfortunate trend.
The goal of a quality leader is to develop their team to predict rather than react. Yes, the proverb of teaching someone how to fish comes to mind, but this is really important. You do not have time to answer every question or review every detail within a process. Your job is to ensure a task is accomplished well and will benefit the team. Here is a suggested framework to improve the communication of your team and will help create an environment of accountability and a clear communication path to increase team effectiveness and productivity. As a task or assignment is given, review and state it in the following manner.
- Introduce and Define the Task: What are the actions your Direct Reports, team, employees must take?
- State the Purpose: Why is the task important?
- Explain your Intent: As the leader, what are you thinking? Do you have a strategic direction of the task or goal? This allows the team flexibility to pursue the goal even if events do not unfold as expected.
- Define the End State or Result: What is the desired end result, what do you want to happen?
- Seek Confirmation: As your team what is their understanding of the objective as a member of the team? This is a verbal description from your team as to their understanding of the assignment and its role for the benefit of the company. This is where you ensure that everyone is on the same page and where accountability comes into play (I said it, you heard it, we do it).
- Debrief: After the task has been completed hold a Debrief or Action Review to understand what actually occurred, hold individuals accountable, celebrate wins, and implement improvements for the future.
If the task is more complex you can run through a rehearsal that would include every key participant and their part:
- Restate the objective and the leader’s intent
- Outline the critical phases of the project or assignment
- Provide or identify the needed resources to accomplish the project
- Each phase of the project should have an owner and they should verbally run through their part of the objective
- Discuss how communication will occur and with whom you will need to coordinate
- The leader can ask “what would happen if (enter a problem) were to occur?” Identify the challenges, all can help to address the challenges, but the one that owns that part of the task will execute and have the main responsibility. If it is a reoccurring issue, build the new response into the next time you accomplish this task.
This process allows testing of the plan and enhanced learning almost like testing a hypothesis:“In this situation, given this objective, if we take this action, we will accomplish this outcome.” There can be multiple Debriefs or Action Reviews through the process if it is a large task. They can be after every critical phase, even a 10 minute run-through and are facilitated by the leader.
So, before you go back with your team, think about these steps and how they can improve at least the communication of your team. Remember, conditions change, but results should not, and your team deserves to succeed.
