The Benefit of Over Communication

ANGRY PARENTS

For many years in my early career, I oversaw a program where we planned various events for the teenagers. One of the first activities I was responsible for was a weekend retreat in beautiful northern Michigan. As the event approached, I started to get a big head, feeling I had done a superb job planning and organizing this retreat.

This was 1996, before sending emails was commonplace. You relied on newsletters, snail mail, and phone calls because websites and social media weren’t really in use back then. Isn’t that crazy? How did we function without the internet?

The day of the event arrived! As we were loading into the vans, parent after parent approached me with questions about the retreat weekend. They wanted to know when we would return, how much spending money their student should have, how many adult volunteers were attending, and a host of other details. And they brought their questions with an almost angry passion.

Quite frankly, I was getting annoyed. I was surprised. (My shoulder was getting sore from all the patting I had been giving myself.) I thought I had planned everything superbly and communicated it all to the teenagers. 

My problem was that those teenagers didn’t relay any of the details to their parents. I learned firsthand what under-communication does to a group of people.

When you under-communicate, you create confusion.

When you under-communicate, you foster arrogance.

When you under-communicate, you generate questions.

Communication builds trust. The less communication there is, the longer and harder it is for trust to build. If you’re a leader of anything—a team, volunteers, a project—you need to make communication your best friend. Even if it’s bad news, both good and bad news can develop trust.

OVER COMMUNICATE

One of the best lessons you can learn for your leadership is to OVER communicate. I learned the hard way during that student retreat that I needed to over communicate. Especially since I was taking those teenagers away on a trip, I should have massively over communicated. I was young and just didn’t know better, but I learned the hard way that OVER communication is your friend.

Yes, communicating takes time, but I would rather over communicate nine times out of ten than under communicate.

Here are some ways to OVER communicate if you lead a team, project, or initiative:

1. Schedule a Time on Your Calendar for Weekly Communication: Consistent communication helps keep everyone on the same page and reduces misunderstandings. Every generation likes a different style of communication, so use them all. Is there really any harm in over communicating? The pushback I get is, ‘What if they unfollow us?’ Ok, then they unfollow you. But schedule a time to communicate across the means that you can.
2. Decide Which Ways You’re Going to Communicate: There are so many different ways to communicate in 2024. Figure out the best ways to communicate with your team or audience and then do those consistently. I know my age group (Gen X) loves emails, but I know Gen Z does not. So, if I’m leading people or trying to communicate with multiple generations, I would communicate in multiple ways to reach all age groups.
3. Follow Up Conversations with Written Records: If you have a one-on-one conversation, make sure to follow up with an email or a text to ensure there’s a record of what was discussed. This prevents any confusion down the line. Especially if you have a difficult conversation, as soon as you can, write an outline of the conversation and date it. Why? Because then you have a record if things get messy or if conflict slips in.
4. Plan Your Communication, Don’t PLOP It: Are you a planner or a plopper? Do you consistently plop information on your team? Or do you roll it out because you have a plan? I have found over the years of leading that if you create a strategic communication plan and plan out your communication, you will win. Especially if you lead people. A plan will always grow trust over plopping. We’re going to talk about this more in a future post, so check back!

Over communicating might seem excessive, but in leadership, it’s a habit that will save you from unnecessary headaches and build stronger, more trusting relationships.

Ten years after my giant communication mishap with the student retreat, I had turned the corner from under-communication and wrote a great over-communication plan. Our leadership team decided to plan a lock-in for our teenagers. Looking back, now that I’m almost 50 years old, my eye still twitches anytime I think of a lock-in. If you don’t know what that is, it’s when you lock teenagers into a building all night long, and they play games and try to stay up from start to finish. It’s not for the faint of heart.

This lock-in was called the 12 Hour Blitz, and we wanted to impact an entire community with hope and joy! We planned for months, created a great strategic communication plan, and then executed it. The event had more than 15 bands playing throughout the night, multiple stages, a bus system that ferried students from gyms to swimming pools to tents with giant inflatable events, competitions, and sports. It truly was an amazing evening!

But something happened that we weren’t prepared for. We were planning an event for 800 students, and over 2,100 students actually attended. Even more were turned away because our building couldn’t handle the influx of students. I’ve never seen a Fire and Police Marshall look so worried.

The event was a smashing success, and so was our communication plan. We OVER communicated, using multiple forms of communication, and did everything we could to plan well in advance so there wasn’t any plopping. It worked out—maybe a little too well—but I learned the importance of over communicating.

By Jason Raitz - CEO, Speak with People

Jason is a communication guru, advising Fortune 500 companies on how to improve their communication so that they will increase revenue and employee satisfaction.