When leadership teams describe their biggest frustrations, poor communication is usually near the top of the list.
“We need to communicate better.”
“People aren’t keeping each other informed.”
“Important information isn’t reaching the right people.”
These observations may be true. But after facilitating more than 800 full-day sessions with leadership teams, I’ve found that communication is rarely the underlying problem.
More often, poor communication is a symptom of something deeper.
The vision isn’t genuinely shared
A leadership team can have a written vision without being truly aligned around it.
People may agree with the words but interpret them differently. They may have different ideas about the company’s priorities, ideal customers, direction or definition of success.
When the vision is unclear, communication becomes harder because every leader is operating from a slightly different version of the future.
The solution is not another communication channel. It is getting the leadership team completely aligned around a clear, shared vision.
Accountability is unclear
Many apparent communication problems are actually accountability problems.
When nobody knows who owns a decision, responsibility moves between people. Important conversations are delayed, duplicated or avoided entirely.
The team then concludes that it needs to communicate more.
What it usually needs is greater clarity:
- Who owns this?
- Who makes the final decision?
- What outcome is expected?
- When will it be completed?
- How will we know it is done?
Clear accountability removes an enormous amount of unnecessary communication.
The team is avoiding an issue
Sometimes everyone knows what the real problem is, but nobody wants to say it.
Perhaps a leadership-team member is not performing. Two departments may be working against each other. A decision may have been repeatedly postponed because the consequences are uncomfortable.
Instead of naming the issue, the team talks around it.
Meetings become longer. Emails multiply. Conversations happen outside the room. Frustration grows—and the team labels the problem “communication.”
It is not a communication problem.
It is an issue that has not been identified, discussed and solved.
Decisions are not being captured
A leadership team can have an excellent conversation and still leave the meeting with five different interpretations of what was decided.
That is why good meeting discipline matters.
Every decision should result in one of three things:
- A clear conclusion
- A measurable priority
- A To-Do owned by one person and due within an agreed timeframe
If the conversation ends without one of these outcomes, the team will almost certainly need to have it again.
Leaders are communicating inconsistently
After the leadership team makes a decision, every leader needs to carry the same message back to their department.
If one leader communicates the decision enthusiastically, another questions it and a third says nothing, the organisation receives three different messages.
That inconsistency creates confusion and weakens trust.
Healthy leadership teams disagree openly while they are making a decision. Once the decision is made, they leave the room united and communicate it consistently.
The meeting pulse is weak
When meetings are irregular, frequently rescheduled or poorly structured, communication naturally deteriorates.
Issues wait too long to be raised. Priorities drift. Decisions get made in corridors or through fragmented email conversations.
A strong meeting pulse creates a dependable place for information, accountability and problem-solving.
The objective is not to spend more time in meetings. It is to make meetings useful enough that the business needs fewer conversations outside them.
Before adding another communication tool
When teams experience communication problems, the instinctive response is often to introduce more technology:
Another messaging platform.
Another project-management system.
Another report.
Another recurring meeting.
Sometimes a new tool is helpful. But technology cannot repair a leadership team that lacks alignment, accountability or the willingness to address its real issues.
Before adding another channel, ask:
- Are we genuinely aligned around the vision?
- Does every important responsibility have one clear owner?
- Are we avoiding a difficult issue?
- Do our meetings consistently produce clear decisions and actions?
- Are leaders communicating those decisions consistently?
- Do we have a strong weekly, quarterly and annual meeting pulse?
The answer is usually somewhere in that list.
Communication improves when the business becomes clearer
EOS® helps leadership teams strengthen Vision, People, Data, Issues, Process and Traction®.
As these Six Key Components™ become stronger, communication generally improves—not because the team has been told to communicate more, but because there is less ambiguity to communicate around.
Everyone knows where the business is going.
Everyone understands their role.
The right information is visible.
Issues are discussed openly.
Core processes are clear.
Priorities are established and tracked.
If your Perth leadership team believes it has a communication problem, resist the temptation to begin with another tool or meeting.
Find the source of the confusion first.
The goal is not more communication. It is greater clarity.
To learn more about implementing EOS in Perth, visit:
https://www.samkeats.com.au/eos-implementation-perth/
You can also view my official EOS Worldwide profile: