All Day Every Day
(This is the last in a four-part series of ideas about leadership…through the eyes of a basketball point guard.)
Our rubric was one thing, two ways, three times. Keep the message simple and clear, deliver it so that it can be both heard and seen, and don’t be so naïve to think that once will be enough. In the throes of a fast-paced basketball game, little is more important than the sharing of information. Accurate intel has to get in, come out and be constantly passed around. Everyone has a hand in it, but the point guard is the one most responsible for making sure the word moves up and down the chain.
Communication is studied like a science but in practice it’s an art. Anybody can learn how to do it. Everybody can learn how to do it better. Nobody ever has it all figured out.
We’re sending and receiving data all the time, whether we’re aware of it or not. We relay messages with our eyes, with what we do with our arms, with how we move or if we don’t. The words we choose as well as the way in which we say them arrive in boxes, bows, and ribbons that color what they mean. Unfortunately, with so many avenues for news to travel along, a lot can get lost in translation. That’s why a myriad of decoding “systems” exist-- flow charts, processes, best practices, rules. Effective leaders keep communication at the top of the priority list understanding that it is the lifeblood of anything with moving parts. And yet, there is no one way to do it or to guarantee that it gets done.
Except for dogged determination, that is. Absorbing and dispensing are all-day-every-day things.
Courtney Vandersloot by John Mac, CC BY-SA 2.0
Effective communication begins with words that are clear, concise, and sticky. If messages can be relayed quickly, are easy to remember and hard to misunderstand, the chances for collective progress improve dramatically. Most healthy environments pulse with intentional phrases that play on a loop inside team members’ heads. Purpose-driven phrases like “trust the process,” “row the boat,” “remember the why” drive the way a group of people thinks and acts together. Technically-borne phrases—or teaching points as coaches often call them-- like “near foot, near shoulder,” “go-bump-go” and “help the helper” are catchy ways that act as reminders of the details that ultimately determine quality. A common language can improve an outcome by warding off confusion while simultaneously sewing folks together toward a common cause. Sticky words make it easy for teams to move as one and hard for a unified collection to forget what it is they want.
The multi-faceted interchange is a constant two-way street that hinges not only on what we say and how we say it, but also on what we hear and how we hear it. Effective leaders listen every bit as well as they speak. They hone in on what’s important, pay attention to what’s repeated, and suck out what’s wrapped in packages that sometimes take intensive time and energy to tear apart. Like a dog who hears the whistle a human can’t discern, the most effective communicators are tuned in to the details that many don’t even know are there. They hear their people’s hurts when they don’t cry, their fears when they don’t scream, and their frustrations before they manifest themselves because a proverbial hand is always cupped to their ear. They know the stuff that matters. As well as the stuff that doesn’t (at least not at the moment anyway.) Leaders understand that their effectiveness depends, in part, on what they can decipher from the silence in-between the lines. On what they keep and what they wisk away.
Impactful leadership relies on dialogue, whether it rides on words or not. To maneuver around obstacles, to carve a leaner path, to solve problems and create, a team must engage in the kind of “serve and return” that is grounded in intention. Talking and listening require a lot of purposeful try. A leader’s charge is to model the volley while keeping the doors and windows open. A big-time-all-the-time job that’s harder than it seems. It’s not easy to be clear or to keep the conduits clean.
Communication is an art. It’s a science. It’s the foundational bedrock of leading a team.