team communication Archive - The Art of Communicating

Thanks for your effort

It’s a family tradition for us to say thanks to our children at the end of each school year, not for the marks they brought home but for the effort they put in …

… most importantly for embracing the opportunity to learn and have fun with it.

I think that’s a good habit in business, too, especially for ambitious teams.

When we’re constantly busy cracking the next challenge, it can be hard to hit pause for a moment and celebrate how far we’ve already come. It’s easy to take the effort for granted. But taking a moment once in a while to appreciate the effort and say thanks to the team should be just as easy.

What traditions do you have to celebrate efforts? In your family or in business?

The next chapter

When leadership announces the script for the new year, you can often feel their excitement. The CEO bursts with pride and it’s fair to assume that they truly believe in that new script.

And justifiably so as it might really be a great script. You’d be thrilled, too.

But for the team, it can feel very different. They are still heavily consumed with wrapping up the conclusion of the current script and before they get proper appreciation for making it a hit, they are now expected to cheer leadership for writing the next hit.

Especially when it’s a reset or an entirely new script, this can feel incredibly frustrating for the team, creating a sense of instability and disregard for past efforts. When things are constantly shifting, it can disrupt the momentum and erode the sense of purpose and continuity, leaving team members feeling disconnected and undervalued.

But what if you viewed your journey not as a series of annual resets but as chapters in an ongoing story, building upon each year’s triumphs and trials?

That, in my experience, is a much more satisfying story for the team – and quite likely a more respectful one, too. This approach transforms the collective effort into a shared legacy, where each new year adds depth and meaning to our unfolding story.

The goal is to evolve together, blending past achievements with future aspirations, making every member feel like an integral part of this continuous narrative.

In your business, will the new year unfold as a standalone blockbuster, or as the latest episode in a hit series?

Different answers

If you asked every member on your team where they think you’re headed, how many different answers would you get?

When was the last time you asked?

If they asked you, what would you respond?

PS: May I ask you a favor? Respond to this post with a single number, the number of sentences it took you to answer that question.

Aligned on a common path

This week, I’m asking one simple but important question each day for you to ponder (on your own or with your team):

As a CEO, it’s important that you find simple answers to all of these four questions about your business:

What you do
For whom you do it
Why you do it
How you do it

Now, if you asked every member on your team for their answer, how many different answers would you get?

Ambitious vs. satisfied

“I’m satisfied with what I have. I don’t need more.”

It can be a huge source of frustration when ambitious leaders clash with this kind of a team member.

The leader wants more, but the team does not. They are satisfied.

Which, of course, means that the leader has failed to inspire the team to want more. There is no strong reason for them to want more. And so, they rightfully choose to invest their energy in other activities outside of their work life.

A natural reaction for some leaders would be to exchange the team and ask HR to find more ambitious people for their team. But that will only last for so long.

Unless … there’s a strong reason for team members to want more. If you want your team to be more ambitious, light them a path that’s meaningful and fulfilling for them.

“Can all of you see my brilliance?”

Status updates are supposed to quickly inform everyone about the status of a project.

Too often, though, these updates are much rather about the status of the people in the project and carry double meanings along the lines of “I’m not to blame for the delay.”, “This is my kingdom. Don’t you dare to invade it.”, “I’m smarter than her.” etc.

In many cases, this happens when the team can’t see how the project is about something bigger than themselves. And so, they lack a sense of belonging to a team that achieves more than anyone could achieve on their own.

Which means that, effectively, everyone’s on their own team.

Which is why they need to protect their status.

Great project leaders create that sense of belonging. They light the path by communicating with irresistible clarity where we’re going as a team, why we’re going there and why everyone belongs.

Where, why there, why us?

Three pillars of super clear leadership communication:

Where are we headed?
Why are we going there?
Why does each of us belong here?

Too often leaders stop early in that list. Some stop as early as no. 1 and think that it’s enough to set the goal: “We want to double our revenue over the next 3 years.” But when no-one understands why they are chasing that goal, it can lead to frustration or quiet quitting.

It’s crucial for the team to see the why.

Some stop there, though. They think that it’s enough to have a strong why. But if it’s not a team who’s after the goal but only a bunch of individuals (or worse: a bunch of egos), it can lead to struggles and disputes which will slow you down or, worse, force you to a halt.

It’s crucial for the members of the team to see why they belong.

PS: A great book on the power of that idea is Belonging by Owen Eastwood.

How do we get our team on track?

Here’s a more useful question to ask: What would make them choose the track if they had the choice?

Great leaders understand that brilliant people are self-motivated. You don’t need to “get them on track”. They are the first to jump on the track if they believe that it’s the right track – one that allows them to do meaningful work they can be proud of.

So, what would make it obvious to your team that yours is the right track? (Is it?)

Where and why, not how

Leaders who light the path find the words to capture where a team is going and why it’s going there.

What they usually don’t do is to tell their team how to get there.

Because it’s one of the safest ways to demotivate a team of brilliant people: micromanaging them by telling them how to do their work.

Brilliant people are self-motivated. They want to do the best work they are capable of. Not only do they know very well how to do their job, it’s a safe bet to assume that they know it better than you.

Light them the path, but let them decide how to walk it.

PS: Have you read the “Leaders Light the Path” manifesto? If it resonates, please share it with someone who needs to read it.

The perfect job reference

Job references are issued at the end of a work relationship, sometimes in between, in regular intervals.

They are usually a judgement of how well an employee has performed during the period after the work has been done. You are the judge. You evaluate their work and you write your verdict up in a reference. It makes it seem like the responsibility for an employee’s performance would be totally theirs, not the leaders.

This relationship changes dramatically when you write a job reference at the beginning of your relationship and keep it in your drawer.

How would you like the employee to perform? What would the ideal job reference for that employee look like if it turned out to become a perfect relationship?

Really, write your employee the best reference you can think of – in advance!

Here’s the crux: Make it your responsibility that they live up to it, not theirs.

Provide them with the environment and the support they need to thrive. Don’t blame them if they don’t deliver the results, ask yourself how you can support them better.

It forces you to be more considerate about whom you hire. But more importantly, it forces you to do everything you can to get the optimum out of your relationship.

And in that sense, when you finally write the real reference, the one that gets handed over, it’s much more a verdict about your performance as a leader as it is about their performance.

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