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As a tech leader, one of my most vital responsibilities is fostering trust and alignment across my teams and stakeholders through thoughtful, nuanced communication.
Whether delivering tough messages about deprioritizing a project, resolving conflicts between engineering and product teams, or simply keeping everyone informed on our Q2 objectives, how I communicate can make or break my credibility and impact.
From my experience, trusted tech leadership communication boils down to adhering to these core tenets:
Tenet 1: Radical Transparency
In our fast-paced world of rapid iterations and changing priorities, I've learned that trust is a renewable commodity. I must continuously reinforce it through radical transparency.
For example, when we had to delay a key project last quarter, I overcommunicated the underlying issues, tradeoffs, and revised timeline across multiple forums - Slack, email, team meetings, and 1-on-1s. This transparency ensured everyone was on the same page
Tenet 2: Diligent Follow-Through
My words are only as valuable as my ability to back them up with actions. If I make reassuring promises but fail to follow through, I'll quickly erode the trust I've built.
Tenet 3: A Culture of Feedback
As a leader, I can't operate in an echo chamber. I actively solicit feedback through monthly 1-on-1s with reports, quarterly roadmap reviews with cross-functional partners, and our open Github issue tracker. This creates an environment where diverse perspectives can be raised.
Tenet 4: Proactive Conflict Resolution
Tech teams are highly interdependent. Conflicts are inevitable, but avoiding them only allows issues to fester. When tensions arose between engineering and analytics over a set of project requirements, I brought everyone together for a working session to get full buy-in.
Tenet 5: Tailored Communication
Not everyone communicates the same way. For example, leadership prefers visual decks, while my own manager is more data-driven. A one-size-fits-all approach leads to disjointed communication.
When I adhere to these tenets, I find my teams operate from a place of trust rather than politics or uncertainty. We're unified around our mission and can devote our efforts to delivering impact, not navigating territorialism. This has significantly helped us deliver more value in less time.
Trusted leadership requires proactively cultivating candid communication as a core discipline. It's how I build the organizational momentum to deliver on our ambitious technology visions
✍️ Did I get this wrong or right?
♻️ Reshare if this applies to you!
📞 Reach out if you need a coach who can help you become the best you can be!
Want more details - check out my Medium post on this topic! https://medium.com/@piermartin/mastering-communication-a-tech-leaders-playbook-for-driving-trusted-alignment-efd40b1a2c93
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