leadercommunicator blog

Welcome to my weekly round-up of the best-of-the-best recent leadership and communication blog posts I've seen over the past week. Given the current state of business today and how much has changed because of COVID-19 and calls for racial justice, I'm continuing to use the Weekly Round-Up as a place to share some of the best resources I'm seeing to help leaders and communicators navigate these challenges with their teams. 

This Week's Round-Up of Leadership and Communication Blogs:

• Lessons From the Front Line: What Communicators Can Learn From the Unrest in Minneapolis
  By Paul Omodt, ABC, APR, Fellow PRSA, MBC, SCMP (@PGOmodt via @IABC), IABC
  
  Paul Omodt and his team of communicators offered a plan and recommendations to the Minnesota governor's office after he noticed a lack of communication from the local and state levels in the days following George Floyd's death. Their plan laid out 10 simple concepts in crisis communication.
  
  “The eyes of the world turned to Minneapolis on Monday, 25 May 2020, and witnessed the shocking murder of George Floyd. This was not the first time the ugly face of racism and a city’s inability to address a systematic problem appeared. What followed were days of large and mostly respectful and peaceful protests, as well as riotous behavior that saw hundreds of Minneapolis buildings burned and destroyed. As a Minneapolis native, those first few days and nights after George Floyd’s murder were a mix of emotions ranging from anger to sadness to disillusionment. And from my perspective, as a communication professional, Minneapolis and the Minnesota state government needed to make significant improvements in communicating direction, management or strategy in the days after Floyd’s death...”
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Feedback – usually for the purpose of motivating or directing behavior change in the person receiving it – is a key element in career relationships from mentorship and coaching to supervision and education. But it doesn’t always work as intended. Research published recently by faculty members at Australia’s Melbourne Business School shows which types of feedback conversations lead to better outcomes.

The Future of Feedback: Motivating Performance Improvement Through Future-Focused Feedback, published June 19 in the Public Library of Science (PLOS) Journal, documents the experience of hundreds of managers on three continents who participated in a written survey and two role-play studies related to feedback.

4 key findings from the study on future-focused feedback include:

Since the beginning of the pandemic, we’ve heard many anecdotal stories about things that worked and things that didn’t – from communications strategies to leadership styles. We’re about six months in and have learned a lot in many cases. As you begin to plan for the next six+ months, now is a good time to reflect on what’s worked (and what hasn’t), so you can make the adjustments needed to be even more effective going forward.

As you begin to reflect on internal communications, push yourself to move beyond the anecdotal and test your experience so you can think through how you want to rebuild.

Think of this as your “after action review.” It’s important to be as brutally honest as possible. We propose taking this 3-step approach:

Welcome to my weekly round-up of the best-of-the-best recent leadership and communication blog posts I've seen over the past week. Given the current state of business today and how much has changed because of COVID-19 and calls for racial justice, I'm continuing to use the Weekly Round-Up as a place to share some of the best resources I'm seeing to help leaders and communicators navigate these challenges with their teams. 

This Week's Round-Up of Leadership and Communication Blogs:

• How to Think Differently About Leading and Managing
  By Art Petty (@artpetty via @SmartBrief), SmartBrief
  
  Think differently about leading and managing with these ideas to help when it comes to solving new problems in new ways.
  
  “It wasn't long ago when the phrase "think differently" evoked images of an Apple advertising campaign or the call to action from the cool kids in our corporate and startup playgrounds telling us how to innovate, to cope with the change that was going to disrupt everything. Oh, for the good old days when all we had to do was think and talk about thinking differently. It's incredible how a crisis turns squishy, abstract concepts into quick-setting concrete...”
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Our 60-minute, complimentary webinar, Rebooting Communications: Creating Your Path Forward Communication Plan 2.0, is returning September 15th and 16th.

During the sessions in August, my colleague David Wright and I talked with attendees on a number of topics, including:

Something I often hear from leaders is, “I don’t have time to communicate.” It seems this statement comes from a perception that either there isn’t enough time to draft a plan or that more could be done in the time saved from drafting or sharing a plan. As a communicator, you likely hear this too.

If your leader believes that there’s no time to communicate, you may hear him or her say things like:

Sharing feedback with colleagues is a critical part of working together successfully. Yet many people I talk with feel they could do a better job giving feedback, whether by being more prompt or direct, or simply by ensuring a conversation happens. Giving feedback can feel uncomfortable, maybe even more so when it has to be delivered virtually.

Personal discomfort aside, the truth is that most of us could be significantly more effective at work with regular input on what we’re doing well and what could be better. Timely, frequent and specific feedback helps everyone improve. We can better recognize blind spots, know what to keep doing and when to change course, and benefit from building relationships with those who give us the gift of their advice.

So how can we give feedback that gets results?

Last week we conducted a series of webinars for communicators, focusing on a model we recommend to reboot internal communications through crisis for greater effectiveness long-term, called the 3Rs: Reflect, Reimagine, Reboot.

The sessions brought about fruitful discussion, sharing of best practices and challenges from attendees that allowed us all to engage in a dialogue about how best to approach what’s next.

Welcome to my weekly round-up of the best-of-the-best recent leadership and communication blog posts I've seen over the past week. Given the current state of business today and how much has changed because of COVID-19 and calls for racial justice, I'm continuing to use the Weekly Round-Up as a place to share some of the best resources I'm seeing to help leaders and communicators navigate these challenges with their teams. 

This Week's Round-Up of Leadership and Communication Blogs:

• Four Skills That Revolutionize Team Communication
  By Randy Conley (@RandyConley via @leadchangegroup), Lead Change
  
  Teams that can master the "sweet spot" of conversation are more productive and innovative. Find out what that is and how to get there.
  
  “Conversational capacity is the ability to have open, balanced, non-defensive dialogue about tough subjects and in challenging circumstances. Teams that have a high conversational capacity know how to stay in the “sweet spot.” The sweet spot is where candor and curiosity are in balance. Dialogue flows freely, people share their input willingly and listen to the feedback of others without judgment. Good work happens in the sweet spot...”
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