Sharing Information with Our Team

Sharing information is an important subject.

What do we share?
What do we not share?
How do we share?
How do we find the time?

This is so very important because sharing information is a sign of trust, and trust is critically important to our relationships with our team members.

Of course, there is some information we cannot share, and everyone appreciates that. But for people to feel appreciated and important members of a team, we should make the time to share what we can. That sounds obvious.

Yet in today’s world with all the demands, pressures, and stress, all too often we use a style that is viewed as command and control and, honestly, most of the time we are not even aware of how we are perceived. We are busy and we act in our urge to get things done.

The problem is that when we have this mentality, our actions may be short-sighted. Sure, we may get the things done that we want done today or this week, but at the expense of our relationships with our team members. We may lose their hearts and minds. If they do not feel we trust them, that we view them as teammates, they’ll very likely lose their passion and shared commitment for achieving outstanding results as a team year in and year out.

I tend to believe we can share more information than we might first think. And if we do, people will feel respected and pleased that we have done so and will likely be committed to achieving our goals and be ready to go the extra mile for us.

Yet there is more to it. It’s not just what information we share; it’s how we share it.

On this blog, we speak a lot about conversations, and with good reason. Conversations are key to trust, to feeling important, to relationships, all these essential elements of highly effective leadership. We must make the time. Sure that is easier said than done. Yet, if we realize how important it is to have conversations, then we can rethink our priorities and how we should be investing our time and energy.

We must understand that results and relationships with our team members are both vitally important, and the trust we show our team members impacts both results and relationships. And so, we have to find the time.

It need not take a lot of time. For example, one client, just this morning, a very capable, and good person, said she just does not have time for conversations, even phone conversations with her people.

While I must get into this issue deeper with this client, try to help her, on the surface, I feel there must be a way she can gain control of her time and priorities. Why can’t she have even quick conversations, explaining that she happens to be crazy busy but wanted to touch base, share information, ask how the person is doing, ask if she could help, is there anything she should know, even suggest a quick email if there is little time to speak in person or by phone. Just let that person know that they are important to her. A two or three minute conversation is better than no conversation.

Today, people certainly understand the busyness we all face. Even the reaching out for a brief conversation will be appreciated.

Here, we just want to make the point that sharing information may be way more important to others than we may realize. We know this, as in our work, we all too often hear that “my boss doesn’t trust us, that he is command and control, that he is self-absorbed,.“ Fortunately we also hear the opposite, that “our boss is great in sharing what we need to know and more so we may do maximize our effectiveness in achieving the results that are needed.” Let’s make the second one more frequent than the first!