Managers Suck At This

It continues to baffle me how ill-prepared leaders are…

Now it takes one-to-know-one, so as someone whose been in leadership roles since college, critiquing leaders is fair game.

Logic says if you deal with people on a consistent basis you need to be a better than average communicator.

But that’s just not the case.

The complaints I hear about how poor of a communicator my manager is continues to rise.

Poor communication leads to the following:

• Low engagement and morale

• Misunderstanding/lack of clarity

• Project failures

• Unclear goals

• Little to no feedback given or received

Yet besides stating the obvious and beat a dead horse, let’s focus on what to do about it.

When dealing with a manager that exhibits poor communication skills, here are 3 ways to combat the problem:

1. Ask for clarity 

The initial and most important part of communication is active listening. If that goes wrong, it’s nearly impossible to make things right.

That means asking follow up questions to make sure what you heard is what’s being said.

Once you can agree on the goal, you can move towards completing it.

2. Request specific feedback (via 1:1’s)

If you’re not getting feedback regularly from your boss, you have no idea where your performance lies.

This can rear its ugly head when 1:1’s are inconsistent or cancelled often. This screams, “meeting with you is not that important to me.” (whether its true or not - that’s how it feels)

Think of feedback like steps in a GPS towards your destination. You need to know if you’re going in the right direction and what adjustments to make if you’re not.

3. Be proactive about sharing your progress

I can’t stress how important taking initiative is in any role.

The more ownership you take, the better (for now and the future).

So make sure you’re informing your supervisor what you’re doing and how you’re doing it (this actually welcomes point #2).

Showing you’re self-motivated and responsible bodes well as a candidate for future leadership roles!

Like I’ve said before everyone has experienced a bad manager (aka micromanager), but not everyone has been under great leadership.

That’s unfortunate, but the reality is most of the time the root case is poor communication.

Regardless of good intentions, a manager’s job is to communicate clearly.

Most failures and setbacks at work stem from a lack of information (not too much of it).

So if you’re a leader (or know of one) and can’t honestly rate yourself an 8 out of 10 or higher as a communicator, you know where you need to improve.

According to Grammarly and the Harris Poll, poor communication in the workplace costs U.S. companies as estimated $1.2 trillion annually. 😳

There’s a reason why communication is the #1 most requested topic from clients when they hire me.

I hope you understand the magnitude that communication plays in the workplace.

So in case you’re wondering what skills you should prioritize now with current and future leaders, improving communication is a great place to start.

God Bless,

Scott

P.S. If you found this helpful and you’re looking to improve your soft skills as a leader, here are ways to work with me directly:

• 🗣 Hire me to speak at your company or next event (watch my speaking reel here)

• 🎤 Invite me to lead an interactive training workshop, remotely or in-person (depending on location)

• 🤝 Start 1:1 coaching with me as a new manager, current leader or executive (I once managed 30 people 1:1 weekly❗️)

Also, you can help me out by forwarding this to friends whom would benefit from it! Thank you!