Category: Communication

One factor attributed to the disastrous outcomes of the Gallipoli landings was the rapid loss of contact between the troops when the rugged terrain forced them to split into small groups.

In the dark.

Scrambling up the cliffs.

With no maps or battle plans.

What they lacked in support from their leaders, the Anzacs made up for with a concentrated, determined energy.

That’s what got them up and over and into legend.

How can 21st century leaders generate and channel that kind of energy with today’s workforce?

The answer is in the Communication Energy Equation.

It’s about looking at communication as the energy, the life force that invigorates teams.

Because teams need energy to move, to act, to have an impact.

Energy is what is released when entities interact. That’s how we get sound, warmth, light, smell, sensation, movement and change.

Sound energy

Humour me and clap your hands once. 

I bet that small burst of sound energy sounded lonely and ineffective.

Now, imagine you’re in a theatre and it’s the end of the performance. Everyone around you is clapping too.

That sound energy has soooo much more impact, yes?

It reverberated because acting together we release powerful energy.

The performers are in no doubt about how much the audience enjoyed the show.

Communication energy

I’ve spent a lot of time working with scientists, so naturally I found myself consulting a couple of famous ones to help me explain communication energy.

Einstein declared that energy is E=mc2 – or the potential energy of an object is equal to its size, times its size.

Newton’s second law of motion says F = ma, or that the force on an object is what will make it move faster and faster.

If the force is weak and the object is heavy, it takes ages to increase the speed.

But if the force is strong and the object is light, then it will move a lot faster very quickly.

So how do you optimise the potential energy to take your team where you want them to go?

How do you generate a force that is strong and a team that is nimble?

By applying the Communication Energy Equation: E + E + E + E = empowered.

Pentland’s key elements of effective team communication

Professor Alex Pentland and his team in the Human Dynamic Lab at MIT  identified what they believe to be the three key elements of effective team communication:

1. Energy
2. Engagement
3. Exploration

And if we add Equip to the mix, you’ll have an even more effective team.

Energy (frequency + volume)

Let’s look at energy.

The charge of the young Anzacs up the cliff face and the charge of the lighthorse brigade so often represent that energy of our youthful identity.

In business, energy is the frequency and volume of interactions.

The greater the frequency and the stronger the volume, the more energy your team will have.

If you want more energy from your team, you have to communicate effectively more often.

But there’s a tipping point – too much too often and the energy will have nowhere to go. You’ll all become frazzled and explode or implode.

(Too much talking and not enough work getting done, as my teachers always seem to say to me!)

Legendary leaders understand the energy ebbs and flows of their people and the interactions of those people.

Think of hydropower and dams – like the Snowy Hydro, built in post-World War 2 from the sweat and determination of the hundreds of displaced and willing migrants who came to Australia to start their lives over after that war.

And like the Snowy Hydro, you’ve got to get the levels right of the inflows, the outflows and storage – the potential energy – for it to be a power for good, rather than a flooding force of destruction.

Awareness – of the self and others – is a key leadership skill.

You have to know who you are leading and how they might respond to your direction.

Self and team awareness activities like True Colors profiling, are extremely valuable.

Legendary leaders recognise the differences between how team members operate and interact, to harness and channel that energy.

Engagement (energy distribution) 

A military engagement is a combat between two forces, like the Anzacs and the Turks.

In organisations, engagement is the distribution of energy.

Legendary leaders keep a check on that activity and interactivity to make sure it’s shared evenly.

Developing some rules of engagement with your team is important, so everyone invests in the outcomes.

Some of these rules or guidelines might include:

• The type of interactions – how you communicate, e.g. by email, meetings, sharing documents and cloud-based project management tools, video conferencing, etc.
• How often do you consider necessary and reasonable for the team to communicate – weekly, daily, monthly?
• What protocols will you put in place around the communication to support it?
• Can you stick to a set time for every meeting and agree to always start on time? (Just one meeting per day starting 10 minutes late can add up to almost an hour of lost time every week and a whole week by the end of the year. None of you will get those 40 hours back).
• Does everyone have to attend every meeting? Who has the capacity and capability to coordinate the communications and chair the meetings?
• What’s a reasonable turnaround time for responding to emails, and how long can emails be before they become attachments or phone calls?
• How will technology be welcomed and used?

Legendary leaders have these conversations so everyone understands what’s expected of them and the team.

Exploration (external interactions)

Like the Anzacs crossing battle lines into unknown territory, this is when individuals interact outside the team so they can bring back intelligence, news, ideas, knowledge, methods, and skills to enrich the team – to make what you’re doing even better, faster, more efficient, more profitable and rewarding.

Exploration is about encouraging your people to engage with other teams in the company and collaborate with peers from other organisations.

Networking is a key skill for exploration. Don’t assume that all your team members are willing and able to network effectively.

Observe their reactions when you present exploration expeditions to them, and coach them or provide training if they are reluctant to go out on hunting and gathering missions.

You want to build up their confidence to venture beyond the team horizon.

That includes online networking, via LinkedIn and other professional and technical forums.

Participating in online discussions also activates the exploration element and returns value to the team.

Support your team’s professional memberships. Encourage them to join special interest industry groups. You could pay for their memberships, or allow them to leave early to attend a committee meeting.

It’s something you can add to your rules of engagement – how team members share what they’ve learnt from going to meetings, conferences, and training, and from researching trends and opinions.

Another key competency for exploration and external engagement is public speaking.

Sharing your team’s expertise with an audience is another way to attract conversations about what you’re doing with people who have similar interests but different approaches.

Build up your allies and collaborations by putting your team’s efforts under the spotlight to be noticed.

Share the responsibility of leading team meetings, so everyone can practise their skills and boost their confidence.

Equip (to energise + engage + explore)

The fourth element I’ve introduced to the Communication Energy Equation is equipping your team so they can generate the energy, engage with each other and have the skills and confidence to go out and bring back new learnings.

Equip them with these 5 communication essentials.

1. Collaboration tools – the technology and opportunities to interact with each other, no matter where they are.

Offer a range of communication options so everyone in the team can communicate in ways that best suits their personalities, their needs and their job functions, while meeting the team’s goals and commitments.

(If you think team communication is tough today, spare a thought for the soldiers of WW1 – how would you cope with just carrier pigeons and megaphones?)

2. Protocols and guidelines – team harmony is most inspiring when everyone sings from the same song sheet.

When everyone knows and agrees to what the team and the company deem as appropriate behaviour for communication, it’s easier to keep the team in tune.

• This is what is expected to happen before, after and during meetings…
• This is what’s acceptable in a written report…
• This is what we do after we go to conferences…

3. Skills and capability – to do their current job and to develop their abilities to do future jobs.

Audit their job skills and see how they align with the elements of energy, engagement and exploration.

• Are their writing skills up to scratch?
• Do they know how to use the video conferencing platform you’ve chosen?
• Can they chair meetings efficiently?
• Are they confident networkers?
• Do they know how to deliver effective presentations?
• What extra training will they need?

Talk to them about their ongoing communication skills development.

4. Team skills – observe your team working together and model the team behaviours you want to see, such as effective listening and giving feedback using positive language.

What are they like with negotiation and conflict resolution?

Do they know how to behave with good grace when they don’t get their own way?

Being able to trust, show empathy and share are core strengths of a good team player.

Be sure all the members of your team know how to play nicely.

5. Permission and encouragement – to release, transfer and transform the energy.

Be clear about your expectations as their team leader. Let them know where the boundaries lie and how flexible they might be.

Encourage them to interact with each other, to get involved with their professional associations, make it possible for them to be the best they can be.

Which would you rather:

Staff who say ‘I didn’t know I could’…
OR… I’m so glad I could!

Anzac Day April 25 is when Australians pause to reflect on the efforts of our first national team, a youthful team representing the energy of their country.

Today, I hope you’ll also remember the Communication Energy Equation so your team can be heroes too, but better prepared, equipped and empowered to succeed.

This post is dedicated to my dad, Robert (Bob) Davson, an Australian Navy Vietnam veteran and a legendary man in my heart.

The image is from https://moseley-society.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Lieutenant-Baron-Collingwoode-Seymour-Underhill-1.pdf

If you’d like to energise your team’s communication…

Book a Tell Me More Call

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And it’s a common one.

Remaining committed to company values when you don’t feel valued yourself – because what you value isn’t respected – means generating value for the business is going to be tougher.

Company ‘core values’

People can be drawn to work for an organisation because of its promoted values.

And they stay because they feel, hear and see those values in action.

Or they leave when the promised values turn out to be just words on the website.

Company and team values are often ideals about behaviour, like ‘professionalism’, ‘integrity’, and ‘people before profit’.

Or slightly less abstract and subjective concepts like ‘innovation’, ‘collaboration and other ‘tions’.

Whatever values or types they may be, the key is for the values to have shared meaning: every employee understands exactly the same definition of the value’s concept as their boss and their colleagues.

When people on the same team have different ideas about what ‘success’ looks like, what ‘passion’ sounds like, and what ‘safety’ feels like, a problem’s already brewing.

What we actually value

Then there’s what matters to people, what they value and need to have respected to be able to give their best to a job, which often doesn’t show up in those lists of nouns about company values.

I created this list ⤵ from posters people make in my True Colors workshops. In one of the group activities I ask, ‘What do YOU value?’

💚Time
🧡Space
💛Clarity
💙Self-expression
💚Quietude
🧡Independence
💛Autonomy
💙 Friendship

Did you know these are just as important to your people as ‘teamwork’, ‘trust’, and ‘transparency’?

They’re what workers appreciate when provided because they enable people to then generate value for others.

So…

✔ Check that your team has a shared understanding of your common values.
✔ Check in with each person about what they value and if it’s being acknowledged.

Because when you know and understand what others value, you can do something about it.

If you sense or know a problem’s brewing in your team, maybe it’s a misunderstood values issue.

And, if you want to get to know what matters to your people sooner, tap the button below to book a complimentary and unconditional Tell Me More call.

Book a Tell Me More Call

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Effective leaders can ‘read the room’ and ‘take the emotional temperature’ of a group interaction. They can figure out when to enthuse and how to diffuse.

Their social awareness skills make it possible for all voices to be heard and everyone’s contributions to be noticed.

Being attuned to the team dynamics amplifies their trust factor and therefore other people’s willingness to follow their guidance.

Social awareness is about understanding others’ behaviours, motivations, thinking processes and emotions.

It’s also about knowing how your words and actions affect others.

Social awareness is a leadership ‘must-have’ in the emotional intelligence (EI) skillset.

Whether you aspire to the 4, 5 or 12 elements of EI, social awareness always appears in the top 3 of every list.

And it’s a key step in the transformation to team effectiveness.

Daniel Goleman describes socially aware leaders like this:

“They’re the ones who understood what was going on with their teams, not just on the ‘what work is getting done’ level but on the ‘how is the team working together’ level. Those same leaders likely were skilled at interactions with others, able to present themselves well and powerfully influence their team.”

He also suggests 4 ways that socially aware leaders ‘get’ others:

1. Primal empathy – sensing nonverbal emotional signals like the facial expressions and gestures that say more than the words.
2. Attunement – listening attentively and being receptive to what the other person is saying or suggesting.
3. Empathic accuracy – clearly understanding another person’s thoughts, feelings, and intentions.
4. Social cognition – understanding how the social world works beyond individual interactions.

Could you say that you practise these often?

How about the 4 components of social awareness that sports psychologist Eli Straw offers:

1. Empathy – being sensitive to and showing concern for the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of others.
2. Perspective – looking through the lenses of other people and seeing that what’s happening is not the same as it is for you.
3. Respect – for opinions, beliefs, motivations and values that are different to yours and therefore prompt different responses to yours in the same situations.
4. Compassion – taking action, putting yourself out so that others can benefit.

If you don’t, then add developing them to your next professional performance plan.

The Greater Good Science Center at Berkeley University studies the psychology, sociology, and neuroscience of well-being. It promotes social-emotional learning (SEL) and lists these as social awareness skills:

• Identifying social cues to determine how others feel
• Understanding and expressing gratitude
• Recognising others’ strengths
• Identifying diverse social norms, including unjust ones
• Recognising situational demands and opportunities
• Caring about and being motivated to contribute to the well-being of the group

But even when you already have these skills, it can take many months to learn about someone and reveal yourself to them when you just take turns in the ‘walk a mile in my moccasins’ approach.

Especially when each person has a different style (glittery gold high heels aren’t for everyone!).

What are the cues to look for? How can you show care for the group’s well-being when empathy doesn’t come naturally to you?

You may not be able to fully understand or share the same feelings as others but you can acknowledge that something is important to the other person and make choices about how you respond.

Here are some tips for tuning in:

Verbal Cues

1. Tone of Voice: A change in tone, such as a rise in pitch or volume, can tell you when someone is feeling excited, frustrated, or concerned. You can communicate your understanding by matching it or by deliberately using a different tone if, for example, you need them to express themselves more calmly.

2. Word Choice: Take a moment to really consider what words are spoken or written. Is the other person saying what they think, or what they feel, or what they want to do? If they’re sharing their thoughts they’re probably seeking yours about the same topic, not your feelings (we cover this in True Colors training).

3. Pacing and Speech Patterns: Rapid speech may convey excitement or anxiety, while slow, measured speech could signal thoughtfulness or deliberation. Like with tone, you could match it or encourage a change with the patterns and tempo of your own responses.

Nonverbal Cues

4. Facial Expressions: Subtle changes in facial expressions, such as furrowed brows, smiles, or narrowed eyes, can convey a range of emotions from happiness and surprise to confusion or distress (check out this course).

5. Body Language: Open and relaxed gestures, posture, and body movements usually indicate comfort and confidence. Closed-off postures, such as crossed arms or fidgeting, may suggest discomfort or defensiveness. How do you want the other person to feel in your presence? Your body language will influence theirs.

6. Eye Contact: A person’s level and duration of eye contact can offer clues about their engagement and emotional state. Direct eye contact may convey confidence and attentiveness, while avoiding eye contact could signal discomfort or disinterest. Cultural habits can also influence eye contact, so don’t assume disrespect or disregard.

7. Gestures and Hand Movements: These provide extra context to spoken words. For example, waving arms enthusiastically may convey excitement or passion, while clenched hands might indicate nervousness or anger.

8. Stress Signals: Often our colleagues’ SOS (signs of stress) look, sound and feel nothing like our own. When you recognise an SOS, you can stop adding to the burden and offer help. Stress can be headaches and neck pain. It can also be erratic behaviour, non-compliance, disappearance and energy drops.

Contextual Cues

9. Environmental Factors: Consider where the interaction is taking place. Noise levels, lighting, airflow, temperature and proximity to others can influence people’s comfort and consequently their behaviour.

10. Social Dynamics: Observe how individuals interact with each other and respond to social cues. Who seems comfortable with whom? Who seems to be dominating the conversation? Who is quiet? Who is laughing and what makes them chuckle? Where are people sitting/standing/hovering/ in aspect to each other? How does this scenario compare with previous ones – do you see patterns emerging?

Consistency and Inconsistency

11. Consistency: Because it’s interpreted as certainty and predictability, you need this to build and maintain trust. You want trust in your leadership.

Sometimes a person’s words may not align with their body language or tone, indicating other emotions or intentions under the surface. This inconsistency can trigger your ‘spidey senses’ and prompt you to question further, be on your guard, rethink your initial impression or change your response.

If your verbal and nonverbal cues are inconsistent, you’ll stir the same wariness in others.

Social awareness is critical for the transformation to team effectiveness.

That’s why True Colors goes beyond the self-awareness that is the focus of many other personality profiling and temperament typing systems.

After self-identifying values, joys, strengths, stressors and needs, these insights are shared to help teammates become more socially aware of each other.

In my True Colors workshops we also look at recognising the stress signals that others send out.

If you would like help exploring the effects felt in your team when some people are not very socially aware…

And what you can do to improve how differences are valued…

Plus get better at recognising and responding to different stress signals…

Tap the button below to book a complimentary and unconditional Tell Me More call.

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A sense of belonging is a fundamental human need. Remember Maslow’s hierarchy of needs pyramid?

IRI Consultants’ Director of Business Development Jennifer Orechwa says,

“Belonging is right in the middle of Maslow’s list. Belonging is a powerful human need that drives behaviors, leading people to form connections with friends and co-workers. Belonging in the workplace means feeling valued through positive connections with others and able to bring the authentic self to work. People are always looking to develop a sense of connection in their personal and work lives because that is how they validate their feelings and fulfill the need of belonging.”

It’s a pretty important need to be met when so many hours of a day, your week and the year are spent together.

Especially if your self-identity is tied to your job, how you define yourself, why you get out of bed every day.

And if you moved far away from family and existing support networks to make money and your career dreams come true.

It’s not like you all have to be friends, but it helps a lot if you feel recognised for the unique value you bring and you can understand the nuanced language.

And you shouldn’t have to modify your behaviour and views to the point of discomfort or diminished self-esteem.

What is belonging and why does it matter so much?

Workplace belonging, according to QUT psychology researchers Wendall Cockshaw and Ian Shochet, is about how much a person feels accepted, respected, included and supported in an organisation.

Great Places to Work research revealed that employees who feel a sense of belonging at work are:

• 3 x more likely to look forward to being at work
• 3 x more likely to say their workplace is fun
• 9 x more likely to feel treated fairly regardless of their race
• 5 x more likely to want to stay

Belonging is confidence to share the aspects of your authentic self that you want to.

And yet, Better Up’s Value of Belonging at Work study found that 25% of employees feel they don’t belong at their workplace.

Belonging is about whether people want to stay on the team or if they feel alien, rejected, or isolated and want to leave. So they do.

And then you have recruitment and retention distractions.

How will you fill the vacancy and keep current productive people longer?

Employers of people who experience belonging at work have a 50% lower turnover risk.

What would that mean for your HR budget?

Rejection is the antithesis of belonging. University of Michigan neuroscience studies found that the brain processes rejection like it does physical pain.

What’s mental health recovery costing your team or company?

Tony Bond, executive vice president, chief diversity and innovation officer at Great Place to Work, describes belonging as “an accumulation of day-to-day experiences that enables a person to feel safe.”

And Harvard Business School researchers believe belonging is critical for psychological safety, which improves team dynamics, decision-making, innovation and creativity.

Can you afford not to consider the impact of belonging on your bottom line?

How can you tell if a team member feels like they don’t belong?

If your people are not telling you directly how much or how little they feel they belong, a sense of NOT belonging can look, sound and feel like this:

• Empty chairs – they don’t attend meetings or other activities
• When they do, they don’t say much and avoid eye-contact
• Low productive output, delays and missed deadlines
• Avoidance of collaborative tasks
• Starting early and leaving late to avoid all the greetings and goodbyes and having to walk with others to get away
• Audible sighing in response to requests, directions, and ideas
• Always questioning the purpose of ideas or actions – trying to figure out if the ‘why’ matches their own sense of what’s important

And this:

• Bugging you for feedback constantly (to check if they are on par with peers and have your approval)
• Overpleasing, overstepping and overdoing so they are obvious and not as invisible or insignificant as they feel
• Copying the exact habits and choices of coworkers, and discarding their individuality in a desperate bid to ‘fit in’ or ‘blend in’ (sometimes to the point of creepiness)

Hult Ashridge Executive Education found a sense of not belonging at work is:

“about feeling ‘different’ to others, lacking commonality with colleagues and feeling that we are not adding value in our roles and in our teams. When these factors collide in organisational cultures, which are hierarchical, political, and lacking in trust and psychological safety, they can become magnified and people struggle to know how to deal with them.”

How do you help team members feel like they belong?

One of the reasons I love delivering the True Colors program for teams is because it’s all about creating unity from valuing differences.

Each workshop allows participants to explore and share what matters to them at work, to articulate their values, joys, strengths, stressors and needs to help bring out their best selves.

When we recognise the different values, joys, strengths, stressors and needs that matter to the people we work with, we can self-moderate our responses to their behaviours.

That’s the key to true self-awareness and emotional intelligence.

And a sense of belonging.

If you’d like your team to build a true sense of belonging, let’s talk about a True Colors workshop to get started. Tap the button below to book a complimentary and unconditional Tell Me More call.

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