Is Communication Overrated?
We praise communication as the cornerstone of leadership—but is it delivering what we expect? In this candid post, Dr. Marion Mouton questions whether the constant focus on messaging masks deeper issues like misalignment, lack of clarity, and poor execution. Explore why communication without connection, context, and consistency might be doing more harm than good.
9/20/20172 min read
As I zoom down the freeway, usually at higher than posted limits, I think about the importance of communication. I am constantly monitoring the traffic around me for speed, police, and lane changes. I notice many drivers merge into lanes without any type of signal. This practice has caused many accidents, road rage events, and tickets. Most drivers fail to communicate their intentions when driving. As I observe this phenomenon daily, I begin to wonder how well those drivers that fail to signal intention communicate in their personal/professional life. Many times we assume people know what we are going to do so we don't feel a need to communicate our intent. One of my mentees calls this term 'assumicide'. We tend to judge others on their behavior and ourselves on our intention.
I have a mantra that 99.5% of any problem can be attributed to miscommunication or no communication. When we really get to the root cause of most problems there is usually a communication issue. The cause of frustration is typically unmet expectations. As leaders we have to ask ourselves did we communicate the expectations clearly or did we leave the interpretation up to chance? During my leadership tenure I have evolved and attempted to master the communication to my staff. I recall saying 'remember like we did this in the past' and would forget that I had new staff and they didn't know how things were before. After a staff member brought this my attention I no longer say that phrase and I go over everything like there is a new staff member listening. The art is balancing communicating repeat information when you have many veteran staff members but being thorough enough for the new staff members.
Is communication overrated? I think not. I don't feel you can ever over communicate information. There are many factors to consider when you are communicating items. The receivers state of mind, the atmosphere/climate of the venue, your state of mind, the list goes on. You can under communicate and this is when you leave the door open for people to fill in the gaps with the information they want.
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