Guest newsletter by Leslie Hansen, Applied Wisdom for Nonprofits
In last week’s newsletter Jim Morgan discussed how messages about organizational values, strategic priorities, and your confidence in your staff’s abilities to deliver, need to be communicated not just once, but repeatedly and consistently.
I’d like to consider his advice in the context of implementation.
When leaders are uncomfortable with being seen to be “bossing” people, they sometimes hesitate to give clear directives and instructions. This creates confusion and uncertainty. Without clear direction, your team wonders who’s in charge and what success looks like.
You may brainstorm with your team to decide on solutions and specific steps, but it is your role as leader to state and repeat the decisions made and to hold your team steady and focused in one direction.
If you don’t, your team is likely to become distracted, and you will lose the power and momentum that comes when a team is moving forward in one clear direction. People remember things differently, and memories of a discussion or a decision change over time. That is why it is an important service to your team when you, the leader, continually remind them of decisions made, and of who is accountable for which part of the implementation plan.
It’s a good practice to remind your team many more times than you believe is even necessary, and through different channels. Look to the marketing “rule of 7” that says people need to hear the same message at least 7 times before it sinks in. Make seven your minimum.
Communicate the same message in different ways — verbally in a group, in writing to your team, and then bring it up in one-to-one conversations, and in individual written messages.
When decisions are made and plans put in motion, people naturally wait to make sure that whatever it is will really happen. If the decision is not reinforced and over-communicated, they may stay too long in wait-and-see mode before moving into action. It’s up to you to create clarity and security through consistency and repetition.
One of the biggest challenges of leadership is moving ideas to action — implementation. Clear and consistent messaging is your foundational tool to coordinate action.
Watch this short video, when Jim Morgan discusses the importance of implementation.