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Three Super Easy but Important Communication Strategies for New Leaders
Learn how to walk the stairs!
“I don’t know how to get the team to understand. They don’t seem to get it”, she said to me while sitting in the partially sunlit room overlooking the park in our second story meeting room.
“It seems like every problem they come to me with needs to be explained, then they are coming straight back with the next thing they don’t understand. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong”, she says with exasperation.
We had been having these mentoring chats since Kelly had been promoted to a team lead role, and she was struggling with the team and how to help them understand what they were trying to achieve. Kelly had previously made similar comments about her own manager, Jane, not really understanding the technical detail enough to make good decisions (in her opinion).
“Even when I think Jane gets it, she looks like she understands, then she says something that confuses me, and we spend the next five minutes going over old ground”, she says, finishing with a sigh.
I had heard this type of frustration from new leaders before. They seem to have to spend their time always translating. Taking information from their leaders and turning it into information for their teams. Then taking…
