Transcripts
1. Intro: Hey there, my name is Andre. I have about 15 years of technical and
management experience in the software industry. And for the past six years, I've had my own
leadership consultancy. Look, I love writing. I wrote the following fears
edition book, go buy it, and hundreds of articles and posts and documents
as part of my work. I even wrote pointer back
in the day and I want a third place in the call stack Econ IT
poetry contest intake, which yeah, you've
never heard about it. But the point is,
I loved writing. A leader needs good
writing skills, and this is what I wanted
to teach you here. This course is not about
quick chats or fast e-mails, although I do have another
course about that. But this one is about the more deliberate kind
of written communication, the important messages, the
ones who write carefully, the ones where
every word matters. I'll take you through
several iterations, the opposite, but kickoff, the crisis management
asking for morning, recognizing and congratulating
and communicating change. I'll give you techniques
and I'll build an example for each situation, which I will also provide
as an attached document. Let's go.
2. Why is well crafted written communication useful?: As a leader, you
communicate in many ways, but there's three main
advantages to the well-crafted, carefully written
communication we're addressing in this course, it can reach many people more than it can address in
a chat or in a speech. It's complete and
clear because it's well-crafted and polished
and it's persistent. It's tastes there.
People can read it and reread it days and
weeks and months later. In terms of format,
it could be an email, it could be a post on a forum, a blog, or a document. The format matters too, but it's not that hard
to choose the right one. The message is the key. This kind of well-crafted, deliberate written
communication is not something you do daily. It's reserved for the morning important occasions or messages. Maybe you do it once in a month, maybe more, maybe less. But when it matters, when it's time for it, it can be the edge you need and it will
make a difference.
3. The update: You want to update your team, department or company
on what's new. I'm talking about
bigger updates, not the daily or weekly
status reports on a project. Those are pretty technical
and practical in nature. Let's take the
following example. Here's the head of development
for a department of 100. The various teams in
our department work on different projects. You responsible for the
overall practices, standards, and quality of how work
is done in all teams. You're sending the monthly
department update in case of this recurrent
updates were nothing major has necessarily happened. It's just a summary of the past month and some
ideas for this month. The best way to think about it. It's like writing a newsletter. You People Strictly speaking, don't need your update. They're not eagerly
waiting for it. It's not by itself high on
their list of priorities. There's nothing specific
holding them back that this kind of communication
will solve for them. You have to make it interesting. You have to pick the curiosity
to get them to read it. We need to craft short,
easy to understand, easy to read
meaningful messages, and have to address the most relevant things that you can. Even so, this is not the kind of communication where
you can hope for 100% open rate or
anything close to that, if you can call it open
rates, by the way, that'll be helpful to measure the success of your message, considering this fact that
not everybody will read them. If you have a message that
is particularly important, prepare to repeat
it not identically, but address it repeatedly in a few consecutive
communications to ensure it reaches as
many people as possible. Also establish consistency. A consistent schedule always on the first Monday of
the month or whatever. A consistent structure,
always the same 23 sections. It's also the kind
of message that can benefit from a
bit of visual work. Use sections,
colors, font sizes, maybe pictures to make
it even easier to read. For example, something like this is just an example,
but you get the idea. Another thing you can
do with these kind of communications is to use
an overarching theme. If let's say increasing quality is the big initiative of
the year, how is it going? What's new? What's the next milestone?
4. The kickoff: You wanted to start
something new, a new project or new initiative. And this is your
kickoff message to the people that
will be part of it. Let's continue with the example from the previous chapter. You're gonna head of development
again and you want to kick off that quality
improvement initiative. Before I get into the content, let us discuss channel. You want as many people as
possible to read this message. You're going to use
the most direct and in your face channel. You've got email, for example. You're not going to put this on an internal forum somewhere, hoping people stumble upon it. This is the message that is not optional. Everyone
should get it. Stick to one message
and just one message. If kicking off the quality
initiative is the message, then this is the only thing
you address one message or you leave everything else
for another communication. In crafting this message, your job is to answer the
following questions as clearly, but at the same time as
concisely as possible. Why are we doing this? What are we doing? How does success look like? What is the first step? Was the first thing you
can expect to hit you. So an example could
look like this. That's a good way to
kick off an initiative. This example happens
to be problem-driven. We have a problem and
an end to fix it. It can also be opportunity
driven, in which case, the y changes by the overall structure and
approach stays the same.
5. Crisis management: Let's change the example and assume you are the manager in charge of a business unit or accompany and the
COVID epidemic. And the COVID pandemic
is your starting. It's very, very early days, a lot of uncertainty, but it's clear that
it might be big. When it comes to crisis
management, timing is crucial. Timing matters in
all situations, but nowhere nearly as
much as in a crisis. When do you address it? When do you
communicate about it? The answer is early, but not too early, and definitely not too late. Too early can solve panicky. And you don't
really have much to say because you
don't know much yet. Yes, they were aware of this
and watching it carefully, kind of messages has their
role, but it's limited. While you should look
quickly, you shouldn't rush. If it's the very early stages. Some reports from
China unsure when and how and if it will reach
the rest of the world. Give it a bit of time. Not a lot of time, but a bit of time. However, don't wait
for a full month until your government
has already mandated work from home. And only then do you also come with a message like, Hey guys, who have to work from home,
That's ridiculously late. Once you're, let's say 75% sure something will develop into some
kind of a crisis. You can address it. You don't have to be 100%. But if you're 75 wish,
roughly speaking, of course I'm not saying you calculate it when
your people are also seventy-five percent or
more and then worrying and thinking about it and
have been for awhile. Your communication is
now urgently needed. Crisis things can
change quickly. Maybe today it's a bit
tour little react. But tomorrow evening made
already be too late. Tomorrow morning
is the right time. Have to be quick on
your feet in a crisis and adapt to everything
that's going on. The key to great crisis
management communication lies in directness, simplicity, and
the right balance between confidence
and vulnerability. Simple words, straightforward
language, specific things, concrete facts, no fanciness, and definitely no corporate
lingo. That's the baseline. Then you've got to be competent. Your people need to know
you're not freaking up and have some kind of a plan. However, you can't say
we've prepared for everything because that can possibly be true in a
situation like this. Nobody can predict exactly what will happen and nobody can prepare for everything
that will be false and exaggerated
confidence. And it would have the opposite
of the intended impact. It would not be believable. And instead of
strengthening morale, it will weaken it. This is where the
vulnerability comes in. You must admit to
the uncertainty without letting yourself
be overwhelmed by it. The gist of your message, the GIF of your crisis
management message is something like this. This thing is happening. It's developing,
it's unprecedented. We don't know exactly
how it will evolve. However, we do know some things. We've identified some problems and we're taking some measures. And here they are. When it comes to communicating
the measures of Decided, be specific and give them something concrete to grab onto. Tell them who's going to
contact them by Wang, who came they contact, etc. Don't leave it open-ended. A crisis brings enough
uncertainty anyways, don't add to it with
vague decisions. If you're not ready to
decide, don't decide. But if you do decide, be decisive and ended
with, we'll keep in touch. It's very likely that further
measures and updates will follow on this and encourage
them to pitch in with ideas, to ask questions, etc, and create the
channels for that. If they're not already in place. Constant communication
to address uncertainty and
issues as they come up is essentially in a crisis because in the early stages
of a developing situation, everything can
change very quickly.
6. Ask for more: Your team has been working really hard on a
difficult project by the client isn't happier
because there's still problems and more
hard days lie ahead. You need to tell your team the more hard work is
going to be required. Goes without saying that
you should take care of your team and not
push them too hard. But that aside, this
is about how you tell them that more
hard work will follow. We're focusing on the
communication aspect here. First, in this
difficult projects, it's easy to be overwhelmed
by the problems. It fixed one thing and
three others break. Everybody's stressed so people
lose perspective and get buried in the seemingly
never-ending stream of issues. Once people lose perspective soon after they lose motivation. So one thing you need to
do in this situation and your communication is to
regain some perspective. Say something like, Hey, we started this thing two
months ago with the a, we did B, but C is still left. We fixed ten out of 30
bugs once we fix them, or C will be done as well. This kind of a summary, taking a step back, included in your message, it when it's not super detailed, will provide perspective. Then you're gonna be
positive in your message. You got to believe
it can be done and it will be done if you
stick to the black. However, you've got to be
real at the same time, your positivity should not
be this neighbor, right? Yeah, we can, Yeah, it will do it without
anything behind it. It's a different
kind of message, but the mix of confidence
and vulnerability that we talked about in the crisis
chapter applies here as well. You've got to be
confident you can do it, but you're vulnerable in
admitting is not gonna be easy. I also like to mention
things in these kind of messages without getting
too formal about it. For example, if I go
back to that summary, I won't say something like, this is the progress
of the project so far. Blah-blah-blah. It's a bit too stiff. Instead, I'll bring it
up in a more casual way. Like I just thought about it. Like it's almost like
an afterthought. It wasn't an afterthought. I knew exactly what I was doing, but maybe I wanted it to
sound a bit like that. It wasn't an after thought. I knew what I was doing, but maybe I wanted it to
sound a bit like that. For example.
7. Recognize & congratulate: Let's say you want to
highlight the great work or some kind of an achievement
over team or an individual. You want to send a public
message to everyone about it. That's nice. A couple
of things to consider. Firstly, don't
congratulate people or teams for easy things. Don't just say awesome
work for everything. It's great for you to be nice. Don't get me wrong
to say thank you to appreciate them and all that. But a public message sent to everyone else basically
saying, hey everyone, stop whatever you're
doing and look at this team or this person
they did this awesome thing. This special thing
should not be sent. Likely it should mean something, they should do something special and in this way they
will appreciate your message because it will
mean something to them too. If you create an inflation
of congratulations. And Everyone's
congratulating every one I left and right all the time when it won't
mean much anymore, provided a story behind it. Don't just say they made exhales or they delivered the
project in x days. While that x may be impressive, it's not enough because
others can learn from it. Provide a story behind it. How did they do it? What did they do differently? By doing this, you
achieve two things. One, you make it a learning opportunity
for everyone else. And two, you make it more
human and relatable. For example,
something like this.
8. Announce changes: When you're announcing
big change, there's some specific
things to consider. What do I mean by big change? Maybe you're changing
the tech platform where you're changing the
organizational structure, where maybe you're changing
the business focus. These kind of changes
will inevitably create discomfort because they take pretty much everyone
automated comfort zone, people have to learn new things. Job responsibilities may change. Power structures will be
turned upside down and so on. In 99% of cases people,
even good people, will initially be at least somewhat resistant to
these kind of changes. Expect a lengthy
communication process with multiple interactions, questions and so on. But for now, let's focus on the big announcement
that takes it off. The three key ideas you
need to have in a message. And I don't think a big change. Our, why, why are we doing this? Why don't I just take to the things we've
been doing so far. Maybe it's because
the industry is changing and I have to keep up. Maybe the clients have
changing or maybe the competition is
whatever it may be. Make sure that you
start by explaining why the change is necessary. Because if you're a
proactively there, then you want to change things before they become
a huge pain point. You want to be
ahead of the curve. But that also means that
the change may seem rushed and not get
unnecessary to some people. That's why you got to explain
that while the change doesn't seem necessary today, it isn't necessarily for
tomorrow inevitability. This change is
coming. It will come. You cannot opt out of it. All of us will have to
go through it, respect. But we want to talk
to all of you, hear your concerns, your ideas, and adjust the plan
based on them. We want you as partners. If you give people an option to not participate in the change, a lot of them will
not participate in the change or they'll come
late or they'll have adopted. And again, look,
this is not me being pessimistic while people
that does not Hawaii, I'm actually very optimistic
about human nature, but it's about comfort zones and how large groups
of people change. I speak based on experience. If you want big change quickly with large
groups of people, then he needs to be inevitable. However, you do want
to make them part of the process and respect
their opinions, get their ideas because
they'll have good ideas. You can think about
everything by yourself or with your
small Strategy Group. You need them to be on board with it and you need
them to be part of it. Some of them even
wanted to become leaders in the change process. The general direction
may be inevitable, but exactly how we get there
and should be discussed.
9. Conclusions: Leader needs good
communication skills and the ability to
craft polished, effective messages
suited to the situation. This is not something you
may need to do daily, maybe weeks who pass without the need for this kind
of communication. But when the time comes
and it will come, It's typically
something important and if you're handling it well, it will make a difference. Thanks for sticking by. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you found it
useful and that's it. Now go do it.
Andrei Postolache, Leadership Consultant
