- Most organizations are designed in ways
that communication flows down the chain of command,
top-down.
In very few instances,
are there systems in place
to make sure that bottom-up communication
happens effectively,
and there's a huge advantage to doing this properly.
So let's unpack it.
(uplifting music)
Hello again friends, I'm Alex Lyon,
and if we haven't met yet,
this channel, Communication Coach,
is here to help rising leaders increase your impact
so you can lead your teams to higher levels of excellence.
I'm talking about frontline leaders
like team leaders, supervisors, and managers.
This channel is for you.
And today's topic is communication,
that balance between top-down
versus bottom-up communication.
I write about this in my new book,
in a couple of the chapters.
It's really a critical notion to get our heads around.
So the first thing I wanna say
is that most organizations are designed,
through and through,
so that communication goes from top to bottom.
We call this a hierarchy or a chain of command.
It's modeled after a military design
and that's the way it is built.
So in almost every case,
unless you work really hard to do something different,
that's the way information is going to flow.
Now, it's true that as leaders,
you're probably gonna hear
a lot of people griping and complaining,
but that's usually not high quality information
that you can do anything about,
that's just human nature.
What we don't often have
is information going up the chain of command
in a really reliable way.
So there are some obstacles
to explain why this doesn't happen
in a normal chain of command situation.
The first one is the psychological contract
that Bisel, Messersmith, and Kelley talk about
in their research.
When we come to work,
supervisors expect to issue the orders,
and employees expect this too.
So there's a relationship
that we assume about the workplace when we arrive.
And for that reason alone, a lot of times,
we don't feel, as employees,
that it's our job to pass up information.
So we often don't, we keep our mouths shut.
The second major obstacle is fear.
You might sour your relationship with the boss,
you might have that fear.
So if you tell the boss something,
maybe he or she feels connected to that project,
so they feel personally criticized if you share that.
It's one of the reasons
why employees don't wanna tell the boss
some negative information.
Another one is fear
that you might be labeled as a trouble maker.
Someone that's going to rock the boat,
oh, that's that person complaining again.
And then a third fear, of course, is retaliation.
One of the whole reasons we have an expression
like don't shoot the messenger
is because oftentimes, when people share information,
people criticize, and discredit you,
and we do shoot the messenger.
So those are some of the reasons
why we don't pass information naturally
up the chain of command.
And the third thing I wanna talk about is the result.
The result of this is that the decision makers
in the organization often are out of touch
with the day-to-day operations
of the frontline employees,
supervisors, and managers.
They don't have good information
from that level of the organization.
And that's a level of organization
that's doing almost all of the work
with clients and customers
so they have incredibly valuable intel,
and insight, and feedback,
but there's really often no channel to pass it upward.
And then the leaders make these decisions,
and everybody seems mystified,
like why in the world would we wanna do that?
That's a horrible idea.
So the benefit of upward communication
is better decision-making intel.
And I really believe that leaders of the future
need to take upward communication seriously.
In my book, I recommend developing what I call
dedicated channels for upward communication.
And I'm not going to go into
all the details,
maybe we'll do that in a different video.
But you want to do regular employee surveys.
And then when you get the results,
you have to take action based upon those results.
You can't just put it in a drawer and say,
oh, well, we'll do it again in six months,
and see if it's changed.
You can also do focus groups around particular issues
to really dig into it.
There are a lot of ways to do this well,
to develop upward communication.
And so I think the main bottom line here
is that left on it's own,
the hierarchy will let information flow down,
but you have to develop dedicated channels
to pass good information up the chain of command
to get this equation in a little bit more of a balance,
to develop a healthier, more effective workplace.
So question of the day,
have you ever had experiences
where you've tried to pass information up
and it didn't go all that well?
I would love to hear your comments in that section below.
So thanks, God bless, and I'll see you in the next video.