One Simple Trick to Level Up Your Leadership Skills
I spend a lot of time thinking about what good leadership is and what makes a good leader, and I think about this from the perspective of the worker. I think this is different from most leadership books, advice, and thought leadership, which are usually centered on the leader. As human beings, our impulse is to center ourselves, and this makes sense if we’re hunting, gathering, and trying to survive in a collective culture. But in our (usually) hierarchical work cultures, leaders aren’t just responsible for working together with their teams, they’re responsible for bringing them along, helping them align with a vision, and making and communicating about tough decisions.
Recently, I’ve been noticing a trend in my work—leaders who find it challenging to balance all the work of working on and in an organization, making decisions, and communicating about them, especially in times of change or organizational growth. Often, there are multiple groups of stakeholders involved, such as folks who raise issues that need to be addressed, ones who make decisions alongside a leader, and others who are impacted by those decisions. Sometimes these groups overlap or shuffle around depending on what’s being worked through. It can be hard to keep track of who is who, who knows what, and who needs to know something now. It can be hard to bring people along as a leader, and this responsibility can be easy to overlook until it starts to create problems.
For leaders, this can feel like business as usual; they need to tackle whatever’s showing up and move onto the next thing. But for the people who report to them—the ones who are expecting to be led—it can feel destabilizing if a leader doesn’t prioritize communicating about their decisions after they’re made. This can erode psychological safety in the workplace.
I wish there was a quick fix or simple formula I could give leaders so they could know exactly what needs to be communicated, to whom, and when. Unfortunately, I think that judgment about these things is part of what leadership is, and it can be one of the factors that differentiates between a “good” and not so good leader. So while using the tool I want to share with you does still require good judgment, it’s the simplest “trick” I’ve come up with that leaders can use to quickly check that they’re communicating in a way that is calm, affirming, and stabilizing for their teams.
Strategy Screens Meet Leader Communication
If you haven’t heard me talk about Strategy Screens, welcome to the club! I love a strategy screen as a tool to ensure alignment between an organization’s vision, mission, and values and their programmatic initiative and goals. For the uninitiated, there’s a Strategy Screen in the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council’s 2025-2029 strategic plan, which I teamed up with Workhorse Collaborative to facilitate.
When I noticed recently that a client was either “moving on” from decisions too quickly or communicating about them out of order, I realized that we could apply the concept of a Strategy Screen to their staff notification process to ensure that no one was being left out of discussions or surprised by decisions. I developed a quick “Communication Screen” that they could use before sending all-staff communication via email.
Staff Communication Screen
Screening questions to consider as you bring staff along with leadership decisions:
Who does this (decision, communication, etc.) affect?
Who needs to be included or notified re: email, phone call, etc?
If sending an all-staff email update, does everyone included know this email is coming?
If not, what do I need to do before I send it?
Screening Tool Versatility
This example isn’t meant to be prescriptive; the great thing about any kind of screening tool is that you can use it to solve whatever problem or issue you’re facing. Once you notice something that needs to be addressed, simply create a question or questions that address it. To use the example above, my client noticed that there were staff members who were surprised and worried when decisions that affected them were communicated in all-staff emails, so the leader needed a way to ensure that no one would feel surprised by such communication moving forward. They needed to bring their staff along by having one-on-one discussions with certain individuals before communicating with the full team. Whatever issue you’re facing or efficiency you’d like to operationalize, a screening tool could help you develop your leadership skills and get you well on your way committing these things to muscle memory.
Is there an area of your leadership where a Communication Screen or Strategy Screen could help? If you’re facing any kind of misalignment or difficulty making decisions at work, I’d love to help. Contact me to get started.
