A couple of days ago, I talked about your role as a leader in bridging the gap of culture and context in communication between departments in your organization. Well, that same responsibility exists when you communicate upward, much like I shared several weeks ago in my Clear Upwards, Kind Downwards musing.
When you communicate to those above you in your organization, you need to translate culture and context. Yes, it’s true that you have a context that they don’t have. But it’s also true that they are probably looking for a different context than the one that you live in.
To translate that context, you want your upward communication to be clean, calm, and clear.
🔵 To be clean, remove any unnecessary back story, defensiveness, posturing, or blame. The details from that kind of context is often just noise that distracts from the key facts the senior leader needs to make their decision.
🔵 To be calm, replace emotional, inflammatory, or trigger words or characterizations with neutral, factual descriptions. Part of your context may be the fear or frustration you feel. Translating those emotions into objective risks can help close the context gap.
🔵 To be clear, let them know up front what kind of response, if any, you need from them and what will happen if nothing changes.
There’s a lot more that could be said about clean, calm, clear upward communication. If you’d like to explore your specific situation in more detail, let’s talk. Visit stevedwire.com/talk to start the conversation.
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