Some stock phrases meant to promise open communication are spoken so frequently, I think it’s time to officially designate them as communication clichés. Some examples:
Everyone understands that candid communication is essential to organizational health. No one argues that you can build High Commitment and High Performance without honesty.
Yet in practice, full disclosure and organization-wide transparency are rare.
Managers still choose to share information selectively, thinking that some employees either don’t need to know, don’t want to know, or that they’re better off in the dark.
Seeing so much of this and the damage that follows in its wake, I created the 4 Ups to give leaders a simple and easy-to-use tool to combat the killer silence.
I call it Killer Silence, because I’ve found that promoting the benefits open communication can be less convincing than pointing out the danger of not communicating. Here’s how it works.
At first, holding back information encourages silence, followed by Questions, and finally, Rumors.
Employees take their cues from management, and so silence breeds silence. When leaders fail to Bring it Up, Talk it Up, Wrap it Up, and Follow it Up, employees follow suit. The result is an information vacuum.
In the absence of information, questions arise. What’s going on? Where are we going? What’s my role in this?
Finally the absence of answers breeds rumors as natural curiosity causes employees to fill in the blanks for themselves and each other. As you naturally expect, the answers and the rumors are seldom accurate.
Could they use the 4 Ups? Or has candid communication become one of their leadership habits? If not, what could they do to relate more openly and honestly with others? I invite you to get the answers to this question.
Learn more about the 4 Ups in my paper 4 Ups Intro. For more about Align4Profit programs designed to help leaders to communicate effectively—including recommendations for delivery, rollout strategies, and pricing—please feel free to reach me at info@align4profit.com or 972-608-0400
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