Razor Boomerang

Why Can Sincere Communication be a Problem ?

 Sincere communication can have the intent of honest, pure truth, HOWEVER, the derivation of the word sincere is ‘sin’, which is the archery term to miss the mark, to miss the target.

I believe that when Elon Musk intended to communicate in a way to ‘rally the team and work hard’, HOWEVER, what is said and what is heard can be wildly different

A few profile points, a good forty percent of the human population despise being micromanaged and controlled, not only that, they can have a visceral response to this intended or unintended communication, they can detach, ghost and disengage with quiet quitting.

An even larger percentage of the human population with loyalty or learn attributes, hate feeling patronized or marginalized when a leader communicates in a blunt manner. So ostensibly the first broad communique to the team, increases disrespect, compromising the leaders brand and intimates a flight mode from team members. 

STRATEGIC COMMMUNICATION

Lastly, this one communication to ‘rally the team’ had the opposite effect. It had appearance of a chaotic, uncaring leader cluelessly minimizing the lives of his remote or hybrid team members and doing the most triggering issue for the human population and that is whiplash upheaval. Not feeling heard, seen or destabilized by brash, blunt disrespectful communication, triggers the fight or flight of the recipients and chaos ensues. Communication like this is cutting to the team members but ironically perhaps the most cuts lands on the leader, more chaos, more inefficiency, less engagement and perhaps negative scrutiny and humiliation. 

Bottom-line, when sending out ANY communication to your team do a final edit on how you want to be heard, what you want the team members to focus on and strategically how are you POSITIVELY creating buy-in, engagement and cooperation.