You can never overcommunicate.
Never have I ever heard managers or teammates or boyfriends or girlfriends or parents ever complained about their teams, managers, partners or children overcommunicate.
Think when was the last time you heard from anyone – “You know what I wish my manager does less? Communicate.” – though of course, one can argue what constitute effective communication.
For the simplicity of argument here, overcommunication = effective communication.
In a professional context, this is even more important. We can probably all relate to the smallest misunderstanding across departments or teams snowballing into hours of additional work to ultimately explain our intended message or the emotional drags that go on for days if not weeks, that are all completely avoidable had we taken 5mins to write that message or initiate that call to our teammates (typically before a bigger group distribution of our work).
I’ve learnt this lesson unfortunately over and over. And watch it unfold at work over and over.
And if I have to pin down exactly why we tend to avoid proactive communication unintentionally – while it’s tempting to argue because we are all humans and that we are all optimising for working less at our very core, the reality is often more due to two things that I’ve observed across cultures:
#1, and the most common amongst those new to work in large teams or less experienced managers – simply unaware of the needs to keep XYZ in the loop or to overcommunicate to their managers or cross-functional teammates. The most impactful alternative is to ask those who we work with that have much more relevant exposure to guide us on who are the XYZ and why they’d best be kept in the loop.
#2, less common but not uncommon at all amongst those even the most experienced managers – the shared psychological hurdle to pick up that phone or send that message – because deep down, we might all worry that it might bring more questions or generate additional work that we don’t deem as necessary (for the time being). Fortunately, I find that simply allowing ourselves to be aware of the possibility that this psychology is driving our behaviour is already more than half of the battle. The rest will follow and it does get easier.
For managers with large teams, I’d argue that overcommunication is even more important than the other way around. The slightest misunderstanding of the direction we set, the goals we demand, the materials we request for etc can lead to anywhere from a complete derail from the strategy we had in mind to days of hard work (therefore dollars) by our teams that are not intended. Overtime, it leads to disgruntle at best and more likely mistrusted teams. And trust is the greatest currency we have with our teams.
All these are so much easier said than done. Guess what, as of this writing today, I can point to at least three different conversations that I wish I had been more clear or more patient whether on call or over messages. As much as I’d like to tell myself that we are all work-in-progress, I know what I could have done differently.
This post hopefully can serve as a timeless self reminder that one can never overcommunicate.
One response to “One simple rule I learnt about communication”
This is probably one of the most interesting topic to debate about for me personally as I had about 15 different direct managers before and all of them have different communications styles, some are even picky on small grammar issues. Which I thought that was too much for a second language speaker, sometimes I also struggle to have the habit to use Chinese language logic to think and communicate, that certainly brought me lots of lessons to learn about, and over communication is certainly one of the most vital point to start with to solve many communication problems!