Do you know what is being discussed around the water cooler or coffee machine? Is it benign, like the football, or is insidious like office politics and gossip? Do you feel in touch with your team and what they’re actually talking about? And, are they all hearing the same message from you?
Nature may abhor a vacuum, but gossip loves a vacuum.
When people don’t have the necessary information to make sense of what’s happening around them, they will create their own meaning from what they see and hear. When rumours begin in an organisation, people will look to the leadership to confirm or deny what is happening. If the leadership won’t (or can’t) provide a narrative, a communication vacuum occurs. Individuals will create their own interpretation of the meaning behind events and those interpretations are likely to vary from person to person. This can create multiple versions of the same ‘story’, all because the message isn’t being appropriately communicated.
As a leader in your organisation, how are you going to ensure that the story being told is the story you choose?
We are all shaped by our pasts, our beliefs and our experiences. These factors combine to provide our perception of events. For example, one person may hear “reorganisation” and fear redundancy. Another may hear “reorganisation” and be excited for an opportunity for promotion. Both viewpoints understand the likelihood of change, but their perceptions are dramatically different.
As a leader, how do you share essential information to your teams? Do you rely on a hierarchical chain, where one layer transmits the information to the next? For anyone familiar with the game Telephone (in the USA), or Chinese Whispers (in Australia and the UK), you would appreciate how information could be translated or morphed in each iteration.
If you do choose to share the information in a direct way, do you rely on email? Try this out for me – pick any email in your inbox and read it aloud in first a confident and positive tone, then a condescending and patronising tone. Even the amazing offer from that Nigerian Prince sounds reasonable if you read it in the right ‘voice’. The opposite is also true. A written message can be interpreted in a range of ways, regardless of how carefully you may compose it.
Ideally, you will always communicate important or critical information face to face, in the same room with all the people that need to hear the information. Certainly, any information that holds any potential for an emotional response from the recipient needs to be delivered in person and not through text.
I hope this has given you some food for thought!
Tim
