Over-involvement through communication

I‘m a big fan of communication. Oftentimes, I rather notice to little communication than too much of it. 

And I don’t mean that employees feel the need of more communication. Over the years, I have come to the realization that communication is never perfect. Because no matter how well prepared or well intended, there are too many variables on the sender and receiver side that give room for improvement. So usually people say that they could be informed better, or differently, or more often, or whatever. 

When I talk about too little communication, I consider both sides (sender and receiver) within an organization and I notice that there could be more exchange, more clarity, more transparency. 

But I also observe a very different aspect. It’s what I call over-involvement. 

Over-involvement happens when leaders or the person communicating share information or problems with their team that don’t need to be shared. 

They might share because they feel better themselves if they share. 

They might seek the team’s consent out of insecurity before making a decision. 

They might think that they need to share everything that comes to them for transparency reasons. 

Over-involvement is not contradictory to transparency or strong communication. It is a different aspect.

Because whenever we communicate, we create data noise for the receiver. It is data that needs to be digested by the receiver. The receiver‘s brain needs to work on it, understand it and decide what to do with it. 

So, if we want our team to be well informed, but at the same time focused - which is crucial for high performance - we need to sort in advance what kind of data noise we want them to digest. 

For that we can ask ourselves the following questions:

• Is the information necessary for the receiver?

• Is the information valuable for my audience?

• What kind of reaction (whether visible or not!) will the information cause in that human being?

• What will they do with the information?

• What is the reason I want to share the information? 

• Do I need to involve my team member or is it better to keep it for myself/on my level?

My advice is to exchange regularly and to share freely, but to communicate consciously. The more we focus on what is important and the better we filter any noise, the higher our team’s performance and information level.