And Under-Communication is Bad

(Photo via Red Shell Partners)

Time:  4 minutes 42 seconds

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In a Nutshell

There are 5 reasons why transparent over-communication is a good thing.  In fact Catherine Winder of Rainmaker Entertainment reminded the shinobi about a similar experience he once had.

Transcript

Hey there, it’s me Sunny, the Shinobi Career Coach and welcome back to the website. Today I’m here to talk to talk to you about the reasons why you can never ever truly over-communicate. No, I’m serious. You really never can.

And I got thinking about this because of Catherine Winder at Rainmaker Entertainment, who recently did an interview about leadership and vision [with the New York Times]. And to be honest, I can definitely go to a point about you can never truly over-communicate. Because I’ve been in situations where either I under-communicated, someone else under-communicated, or everyone else has under-communicated.

How Over Communicating Worked Wonders

There was only one awesome situation where one of our inspiring figures of the team was an over-communicator. She made sure that everyone knew exactly what was going on. And she made double sure. And thank goodness, after several painful experiences, that her lessons should finally ring true with me, so that when I saw the interview with Catherine Winder, I thought it was so true. You can never truly over-communicate.

You have to continually communicate. Which is why communication is such a major skill in today’s work place.  Employers, or whoever you want to work for, look for communication skills, the ability to write and talk and present effectively.

I’ve been in situations where I’ve done my communication job right, I’ve been in situations where I’ve completely screwed up. And to be honest, it’s an awesome learning experience.

Over Communication Is All the Time

You can truly over-communicate, and that’s the thing. You want to make sure that you’re always on the ball, talking with employees, especially if you’re a small business owner or business owner or CEO or something like that. You always want to communicate, you always want to be firm and be a great person at the same time. And communicating the tasks and make sure everyone’s on the same page, and making sure everything is all good.

Catherine Winder’s most elegant example or more interesting example was the fact that she wrote and emailed people at 2 in the morning. [Catherine] doesn’t expect them to reply, they always run over and think that she’s like… this is crazy, do we have to get this done at 2 in the morning, then she says, “… Of course not”. She just wants to make sure that everyone knows what’s on her mind and what’s going on and the communication is totally clear.

And there’s a whole other case which I have to talk about. About where a successful urban food project, really hammered in the value of over-communication and transparent honesty to achieve success. Better than any other case, urban farm projects or otherwise (or even non-farm businesses or non-profits), they do it very well. And I’ll leave that for another post or presentation.

Get Everyone On the Same Page

And so you realize, over-communication is so key, just to make sure that people are

• A: they’re on the same page,
• B: they know what’s on your mind,
• C: that everyone is exactly clear about
  
  • the goals, the vision, the principles that actions to reach those goals;
  • the feeling of what you will achieve when you get to those goals, that’s from a previous post or an upcoming post.

And of course, to be absolutely sure that everyone’s got the information that they need to make clearly informed decisions.  And hopefully to avoid any sort of craziness, utterly murderous politics in the workplace.

If you’re all honest and clear about your communication, it’s ideal, work at it, make it happen, be a leader, inspire this sort of communication where you work.

PS. Tell me about a time or share your stories about times when you have successfully over-communicated and made sure that your project “shipped” and ran on time.

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