Grey Areas

Clear communication always cuts through the fog.

It was grey in Los Angeles this past week.

June Gloom, only in April.

The thick and murky skies got me thinking a bit about the ambiguity that often creeps in and hovers over work environments.

That moment when folks don’t know what’s going on. When leaders don’t speak with employees. When team leads don’t inform team members. When falcons can’t hear falconers.

When I became a CEO, someone gave me some very good advice. She said:

“When you don’t communicate with your team, your team assumes the worst.”

Don’t blame your team. They’re just being human.

In fact, research has shown that human beings have a natural negative bias. It’s an innate tendency to respond more strongly to negative stimuli than to positive stimuli.

This bias is thought to have evolved as a survival mechanism, as it helps to identify and avoid potential threats in our environment. (For more on this evolutionary/anthropological stuff see the work of Roy Baumeister, Jonathan Haidt, and more here. )

Human nature aside, there’s also a financial cost to not communicating.

“Oh, have I got your attention now?” as Blake (Alec Baldwin) says in the film Glengarry Glen Ross

Yep, according to research, the average loss from inadequate communication is $62.4 billion annually for companies with 100,000 employees. (See David Grossman's work.)

A step down and a step further — miscommunication — can cost $420,000 a year for companies of 100 employees. (See Debra Hamilton's work)

Human nature and money aside, not talking with people is also costing you in terms of disengagement and outright resentment.

Talk, on the other hand, is cheap.

In a good way.

And the pathways to connect are plentiful: 1:1s, txt chains, huddles, weekly meetings, emails, all hands, company-wide Zooms, you name it.

How ever you do it, the most important thing is to talk.

Let people know what’s up.

I know, it seems like common sense. But as you well know, common sense is the least common of all the senses.

That, however, is a subject for another day. A sunny one, perhaps.