Inspiring your team with effective communication
As a Founder with ambitions to scale your business and become CEO, it is hard to overstate the importance of effective communication on that journey.
As a Founder, you will have had a small knit team who could turn their hand to almost anything to get your product to market. In the early stages of finding the product, market fit in your early beachhead markets, communication just worked. You knew each other well and, in some cases, will have almost felt that you could communicate by osmosis with that small, well-knit team.
As the business proves its validity, attracts investment and grows the team, you need to become more structured as a business, and the need for a CEO becomes real.
Either one of the Founders needs to upskill and step into the CEO role for growth and scale, or you need to consider hiring a qualified CEO to guide your growth, and the Founders can take an Exec role in their technical area of expertise and value.
If you choose to take on the CEO role with backing from your team and investors, with all of the things you have to think about, communication is often one of those things taken for granted.
Your team are the number one asset your business has. Investors are putting their money and faith behind you and your team, but no team will perform to their potential without good effective communication.
So here are a few thoughts on why it's important and how you can improve the effectiveness of your communication.
Why Is Communication Important?
There are many different audiences you will need to address as CEO. While each tends to require a different approach, their impact and importance to your business are no less critical.
The different stakeholder groups that make up a successful business, your team, your customers, your board, investors, suppliers, and support agencies all have a part to play. They may all need slightly different forms of and approaches to communication; however, they need to understand your vision, and their role and have regular engagement to make the business a success.
So clear communication, generally from one source, the business leader, is crucial to keep everyone on track to the end goal.
Company Culture
The company culture established within your business is vital to its success. But it is hard for people, especially from these different stakeholder groups, to align with that culture and immerse themselves in it if they don't know what 'it is.
We've all heard that "The Culture of any organisation is shaped by the worst behaviour it is willing to tolerate" – Gruenert and Whitaker.
As the CEO, you are responsible for setting the tone in the business. Along with your team, and through the values you've agreed, it should be clear what it means to be part of the business, what it stands for, what good looks like and any red lines.
It is crucial that you not only understand the culture but that you embody it. So much of communication is nonverbal; it's as much, if not more, about your actions as your words.
Staff Engagement and Collaboration
No business thrives without input from its staff. As leaders, it is impossible for you to know and fully comprehend every aspect of your business. But being a good communicator is two-way. It isn't just about speeches from you; you need to establish the vision and promote clarity around this.
Then your role is to remove the obstacles to achieving this, and you can only do this by listening. We think listening is more important as without it, your speeches are likely to miss the mark and turn people off rather than further engage them in delivering the vision.
Strategic Goals
Very often, the feedback from staff in failing organisations is that they had no guidance or direction. A critical element of leadership communication is ensuring everyone, all the stakeholders linked to your business, know the key objective.
Good leaders make sure the team knows precisely the company objective and how it relates to that North Star Metric.
Builds Trust
One of the benefits of excellent communication from good leaders is the trust it establishes. Your staff and other stakeholders will respect and follow someone who is transparent and honest. They will go the extra mile and feel greater ownership over their work if they trust their leader.
The impact of bad communication
We know the benefits of good communication, but what is the potential impact of poor communication.
Some insight from Gallup suggests that disengaged employees cost the UK £52-70 billion per year in lost productivity. This is one of the worst in Western Europe. Those disengaged employees are 2.3 times more likely to take a sick day and are at increased risk of leaving your company.
Another study highlighted that 33% of employees said a lack of open and honest communication significantly impacted employee morale.
Most importantly, however, is the stat that suggests 52% of employees said that poor communication leads to higher stress levels.
The financial impact on a business is evident, but the effect that poor communication could have on your team's mental health is more troubling.
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What does good look like?
There is no ''one size fits all'' when it comes to communication.
A crucial element is the audience you are addressing. You will start to understand what works best with your team and how not to present ideas to your board. You certainly won't get it right the first time or every time, but you will start to understand what works, what doesn't and build on this learning.
Here are a few common themes that work best for some successful communicators.
Be honest
Honesty and transparency are essential. Trust is earned, and employees, investors, your board will all follow a leader they can trust. But if they feel you are holding back or being less than open with them, you will quickly erode that trust.
There will always be occasions when there is certain sensitive information you can't share, but in the main, an open, honest style is always the best policy, even when it is challenging.
A little vulnerability can go a long way in building trust. You don't know everything at this stage – you hopefully realise you never will, so asking for support when you need it and leaning into the experts you bring in can foster trust and respect.
Clarity is Crucial
As a leader, it is up to you and your leadership team to set the company's direction and ensure the rest of the business knows what that is.
Communicating that vision and direction needs to happen in a fashion that your audience can relate to. Drowning your employees in a barrage of stats and figures might not quite hit the mark. However, you will likely lose their support if you don't have the statistics to back up your vision when you pitch to investors.
44% of employees in a survey in the Economist said they failed to complete a project because of poor communication.
Listen, don't tell
Communication is always a two-way street. While you are setting the direction and the agenda, it is vital that you have an open communication style and that you listen to your audience.
Inclusive leadership, which inspires innovation, welcomes feedback and thrives on debate. You are showing strength as a leader by listening to and engaging your team. If you are confident in the direction and comfortable with your position, you should feel relaxed about discussing any issues and welcome hearing these.
You are not trying to change their mind but to understand their point of view. It will help you establish a personal relationship with your team, appreciate their position, and consider it.
Understand your impact
As a Founder, people knew you well, and you felt like one of the team. You didn't need to overthink your communication and certainly not its impact.
As you move into the CEO role and your team grows, the impact of what you say and how you say it becomes more significant, which most Founders moving to the CEO role find quite unnerving a first.
You may think you've asked an innocent enough question of an engineer as you try to get a handle on something ahead of a customer meeting, and your Engineering Lead or CTO is on holiday.
However, when the CTO returns from holiday, you discover that you've lost three engineering days on your critical project. The engineer you spoke to thought you made a request and relayed this to his colleagues, who diverted their efforts to get you the answer to resolve the problem of customer X, as that's what they thought the CEO asked for.
Frustrating, we know, and we also know that you can't quite believe that you've had this impact. As the CEO of the business, you need to understand that people react to what you say. You'reYou're no longer one of the gang!
You're the person everyone is looking to for a clear sense of direction. You're also the person that has a significant impact on the lives of your team; their job, satisfaction at work, salary and, therefore, their family. They want to follow you; they want to be successful and for the business to thrive. However, to do this, they need you to be considerate and deliberate in your communications and reflective of your conversations and impact.
Communication is vital to success.
When leaders look at their own or their team's personal development, the importance of effective communication is often dismissed in favour of more tangible skills. It is often taken for granted.
But getting it right is a challenge. It can and will have a profound impact on your business, both financially and for your team's confidence to act, engagement level, and overall wellbeing.
So spend some time honestly assessing your communication skills, challenge yourself to take on a few of the lessons, and who knows, you might find the difference you are looking for.
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