“You can observe a lot just by watching,” said Yogi Berra, one of the great thinkers of our time. Your team is watching you all the time.
Yes, your employees are messaging each other about your mood. They observe you because you have power over them – in the same way that farmers watch the sky, looking for clues about the weather. You have great power over them and they cannot control you. Is today going to be a gentle rain that encourages everything to grow, or a torrential deluge of destruction? It all shows on your face when you walk in the door . . .
At the same time, you can and should observe your employees when you communicate with them. This is the best way to see how your message is being received. Just looking around the room after you drop your new strategy on your senior team will tell you what you need to know. Are they looking at each other and shifting nervously in their chairs? Suddenly super interested in their phones? Finding any way to avoid eye contact with you? That’s a bad sign. Are their eyes bright with enthusiasm, are they sitting straighter in their chairs, leaning forward to nod assent to each other around the room? Yup. That’s a good sign.
After you and your senior team have thrashed out the right strategy, your next opportunity to observe is your All Hands Meeting. When you’re presenting to the larger team, it’s not so much about assent as it is about comprehension and conversion. Watch them the same way you’d watch a reporter in an interview – are they fidgeting? Looking confused or panicked? Looking right at you and drinking in every word? Probably all of the above if it’s a typical group. Keep watching as you encourage Q&A. Ask your team leads to keep watching as they have their own meetings with their teams about the new strategy. Keep communicating, keep converting, keep watching. Both verbal and non-verbal communication is a two way process. Great communicators embrace being both the watcher and the watched!
Communication is the essential last mile in finding and motivating the right teams, acquiring strong allies, powerfully bonding with customers, and capturing mindshare with compelling stories. Nothing will serve you and your vision better than developing exceptional communication skills. If you’d enjoy finding pragmatic communications advice in your inbox every month, please click here to receive poseycorp’s newsletter.
