Leadership: Communicating Direction
Employees in knowledge-based business environments are purpose-driven, comfortable with change and uncertainty, and work best when assigned responsibility for achieving outcomes with the freedom to determine how. It is important for leaders to consider these qualities when communicating direction.
Leadership provides purpose, direction and motivation. If you missed my blog about purpose, you can read it here, Leadership: Communicating Purpose. Of the three core deliverables of leadership, every leader I’ve worked with has been confident in their abilities to provide direction. However, when speaking with their team members, direction is always the first thing mentioned as something that needs improvement. This disconnect is worth exploring.
Providing direction or giving directions?
A manager’s perspective when giving guidance to others is often based on how they prefer to do things, how they performed the same task, or the way they managed a past project. With that experience top of mind, leaders often jump right to delivering directions, detailed instructions on exactly how they want something done.
We appreciate detailed instructions when bringing something home from the store labeled “some assembly required.” However, a knowledge-economy with an information-age workforce prefers direction, not directions, and this requires leaders to communicate more intentionally.
What’s your 20?
If you encounter someone on a street corner who asks you for directions, you will likely give them specific instructions on where to go. E.g. head this way for a block, turn left and you’ll see the sign for the restaurant on the right.
If a friend calls you, their navigation system malfunctioning, and asks the same thing, you will begin by asking them where they are. In the 21st Century business environment, leaders will be well-served to think about where their team members are before giving direction.
Consider who is receiving your direction, what is their current workload, and what is their level of competence and confidence to perform the assignment. Inherent to everything we do as leaders is developing others to be more--one’s reach should exceed their grasp. Beyond understanding our team members’ capabilities, we should have a clear picture of the next several steps in their development. Provide direction that stretches them beyond their capabilities and be available to encourage and support them when it gets challenging.
Effectively communicating direction
Military organizations are known for their discipline and standardization. However, the US Army communicates orders with surprising flexibility, especially among seasoned professional soldiers. Army leaders apply a standard thought process as they provide direction to others, the military decision-making process. A key output of this process, important to communicating direction to subordinates, is the “mission statement” and it has two foundational components, a task and objective.
The task provides what must be done and the objective is the overall outcome to be achieved. Notice the absence of how the task is to be done. This structure for communicating direction gives the person assigned the task the ability to determine how, which is a powerful leadership tool.
The value of communicating task and objective
By using a task and objective approach for providing direction, the person assigned the task takes greater ownership of the work because they can determine how to do it. Giving them that freedom also offers a development opportunity. As a leader you can examine, with the person completing the task, how it was completed. If there were challenges and setbacks, that can be discussed in order to learn. Perhaps the person came up with something innovative that worked well, resulting in growth for them and the team, and you have an opportunity to praise their efforts and highlight the value they contributed to the organization.
Providing an objective, result or outcome for each assigned task is key. When circumstances change, and you can be certain they will, the person has been empowered to do what is needed to support the overall objective of their assignment. This directional tactic passes authority to the person who is best able to affect the outcome. It also offers a development opportunity related to reasoning and exercising initiative.
Leadership provides purpose, direction and motivation. When providing direction for an information-age workforce, it should be communicated in a way that gives flexibility for how tasks are completed, encourages ownership of assignments, offers personal development opportunities, and increases the chance that intended outcomes will be achieved. Leaders who provide task-and-objective style direction can accomplish extraordinary things for their organizations.
At Mungadai, we help organizations develop leaders who confidently communicate purpose, direction and motivation for amazing results. Contact us, we would love to speak with you!