If It's Not Important, Don't Say It

Or how to not cry wolf.

Are You Sending the Right Message?

Whether you are a leader in an organization or an employee on the front lines, it's always important to be aware of the signals you send to those around you. Does your team have crystal clear priorities? Does your manager know your most critical task? Seemingly slight mix-ups in the messaging you send out to your network, whether they are literal messages like email or subconscious ones through your body language or the emotional responses displayed on your own face, can cause confusion, lack of direction, and wasted time and effort. Knowing the impact your communication has is the first step to unlocking its power!

What is Valued is Communicated

We all have experienced the phenomenon of our own view on what is important being warped by what is communicated to us through the media. During election season in the United States, people are bombarded on all sides with information on candidates, their platforms, and judgments of their relative value or likelihood for success. It’s a twenty-four-seven blitz on the country’s collection attention span and nothing (apparently) is more critical. Meanwhile, life-changing and generation-defining events may be occurring all around the world and they get a mere few minutes of airtime on the evening news before a return to political coverage. The media is stating by the sheer volume of communication what they think you should value and pay attention to. And if we're not careful, we listen.

This happens in all aspects of our lives, especially in our professional spheres. If you want to know what a company cares about, listen to what is discussed. What does leadership talk about? What do they share with the public? What do they communicate to their employees? If all you hear is profits, sales, and revenue, you know exactly what they value. If an organization has a constant stream of communication about impacting the public good, taking care of their employees, or optimizing their impact on the environment, you similarly start to understand what they value.

At a lower level, you can suss out what a team leader or manager values by what she talks about. Is every team meeting about sales volumes? Is every one-on-one about how you're meeting the schedule (or not)? What she spends her time talking about reveals what matters to her.

You Manage What You Measure

A corollary to the relationship between communication volume and importance is the relationship between what is measured and what is managed. If a company reports on the number of first-time customers and nothing else, you'll soon find that company manages its day-to-day operations to optimize for maximizing first-time customers—even if it means losing more valuable, returning customers. The fact that the first-time customers are being reported on inherently includes a statement of its value. That value is communicated whether it is explicitly stated or not.

Too Many Messages Get Muddled

If what is important to a person or organization can be uncovered by examining what gets repeated over and over, a problem can arise when there is no repetition or pattern to what is communicated. Suddenly, you can’t identify what that most important thing is. This happens when too many messages are shared. If your manager tells you on Monday that your report on a recent failure mode should be your number one priority, then on Tuesday asks you to complete a modified design for a part asap, only to then check in with the entire team on Wednesday and say that design reviews are critical to the next phase in the project, which one should you focus on? It’s almost impossible to know from what has been communicated to you.

Over-Communicate the Point

Whether you are a people leader or an individual contributor, if you want to clearly convey a message and its priority, don’t be afraid to use repetition to drive the point home. You may have heard of this type of outline for a presentation:

• Tell them what you are going to tell them

• Tell them

• Tell them what you told them

This may seem unnecessary or redundant, but it’s effective. People are easily distracted and may latch onto small and seemingly insignificant details in a presentation or report. But if you relentlessly highlight the most critical point, it will eventually sink in.

This method can be taken too far. If you are communicating with an individual or a small group, for example, you can simply check for understanding by asking appropriate questions to gauge if they are following along. If they get your point, don’t repeat yourself and lose their attention or respect. Just circle back to the understanding check when you’re wrapping up the conversation or meeting you’re in.

Explicitly Lay Out Ordered Priorities

If you’re receiving mixed messaging from your leaders, you can communicate clearly back to them what you are hearing. In the case where you are given three separate critical tasks, tell your manager what you assume to be the highest priority and make it unambiguous that the next two may have to wait until the first is done. By force-ranking the tasks and outlining what order they will be executed in, you’ll quickly find if you are on the same page and your boss will also get to double-check if they gave you the right list of priorities. This is managing up 101.

If It’s Not Important, Don’t Say It

Now that you are communicating the most important information repeatedly for emphasis and clarity, you can do the inverse at the same time. Cut the fat from your communication to further illuminate the critical few items that your team should focus on. It’s a way of clearing the workspace of your mind of anything that isn’t immediately necessary. By reducing the amount of extraneous information shared with your team or your manager, you are effectively increasing the importance of the remaining points. Without adding any additional communication repetition for the crucial work, you have amplified its importance.

Wield Your Power

With these tools in mind you are now prepared to improve the clarity of your communication, whether you are communicating down to your employees and team members or up to your management or leadership teams, the principles are the same. Being deliberate about what you communicate means you are simultaneously being deliberate about the priorities of your own work and the work of those around you. It’s enabling and empowering, no matter what you do.