Seven Culture-Shifting Communication Hacks

'Culture is what people say about you when you are not in the room,' said Brian Halligan, the CEO of Hubspot. I think that is the fruit of a culture that you are trying, or not trying to create.

My wife Liz runs a charity – Onelife Leaders – raising up young people to lead. Within the team they have a culture of vulnerable leadership. That means every Monday morning meeting they do 'winning and losing' – a few minutes where everyone in the team shares something from the weekend where they were winning and something where they were losing. It’s not a therapy session, but a quick communication exercise that keeps people open, honest and real. It creates an atmosphere of sharing without any form of judgement or comparison and that is how Onelife live out 'vulnerable leadership'. And the fruit of that is that if you speak to anyone who has come into contact with Onelife, they will say about the team that they are honest, real, approachable and so welcoming. That is vulnerable leadership. And that is what people say about them when they are not in the room.

It starts with habits, practised regularly and consistently. To do that you have to work out what those habits are and at some point those habits involve deliberate communication. Below are seven steps that you can take to start your own culture-shifting communication exercises. It doesn’t happen by accident. It is deliberate, consistent, time-consuming and sacrificial. But it’s worth it. And you will know it has landed when people say wonderful things about you behind your back!

Create a standard

Hundreds of years ago, when in battle, armies had no uniform to identify between the enemy and their own troops. They would look for a flag – a standard that flew high above the fighting. They would rally to that standard because that’s where safety was. It’s the same with culture. When no one has a uniform, when it is messy and noisy and confusing out there, what is the standard you want to raise? Make it very specific. Here are some ideas around communication:

• Do you want to have shorter communication - one minute update in your town hall meetings? 
• Do you need a system where people can interrupt and ask questions?
• Do you need a way of stopping people from consistently interrupting? 
• Is your company bad at listening and needs to get better?
• Do you want your people to turn their cameras on in a meeting?
• Do you want to end a meeting 5-minutes earlier so people can summarise and do a call to action?

Write down no more than five things you want to get better at with internal communication.

Understand your people

People rarely get to say what frustrates them about the bad day-to-day communication habits of their bosses or their peers. Do a survey (it can be anonymous or not) of your people and find out if they agree with the standard you want to set. Find out what they need. You could be surprised. Once you have their answers, you can adapt your standard and get ready to raise it high.

Learn

Whatever standard you set, learn the skillset to reach your team. Otherwise it is like asking people to jump off a cliff and fly. Practice makes permanent so practise well. If you need your team to get better at listening, then learn about listening. Watch this video to help you get started.

If people speak for too long, you need to show them what good short communication looks like.

Watch this second video which will help you to communicate more effectively with your team.

Trial

Now try out these new standards for two weeks. Don’t allow people to ignore or avoid doing it. You need to see if it works. Name that and ask for their help in living this out. Lead in the new skillset first, and keep people accountable to it. This is where it gets costly and you might even ruffle a few feathers.

Understand again

Two weeks in, it’s time to take stock – where are people winning and losing with these new potential habits? Where do they find it hard but need to accept it as it is bearing fruit? Where does the standard need to be adjusted? Do people need two minutes to speak instead of one? Are people pretending to listen but are in fact interrupting? You can bring challenges as well, as long as the team feels they have been heard. 

Repeat

This time you have more buy-in and more conviction. So repeat, repeat, repeat for another month. And regularly check in with people to make sure they reach the standard. 

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See it like spinning plates. You have to get one spinning, know what you need to do to keep it spinning and then you can do a couple more plates. Some things land, some things don’t. But after a month you will see fruit. All you have to do is keep doing it and then, when it is embedded, start another series of communication exercises you know you need to do. Avoid introducing too many at once or all the plates will come crashing down. This is how you build confident cultural change – through the day-to-day actions that create space for good communication to thrive. And when it is thriving, then you will see your people released more and more to bring the best, unhidden version of themselves.  

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