Sitemaps
Are We Growing or Just Getting Fat?
Let's Get Back to Our Why
Does Startup Success Validate Us Personally?
How We Secretly Lose Control of Our Startups
Should Kids Follow in Our Founder Footsteps?
The Evolution of Entry Level Workers
Assume Everyone Will Leave in Year One
Stop Listening to Investors
Was Mortgaging My Life Worth it?
What's My Startup Worth in an Acquisition?
When Our Ambition is Our Enemy
Are Startups in a "Silent Recession"?
The 5 Types of Startup Funding
What Is Startup Funding?
Do Founders Deserve Their Profit?
Michelle Glauser on Diversity and Inclusion
The Utter STUPIDITY of "Risking it All"
Committees Are Where Progress Goes to Die
More Money (Really Means) More Problems
Why Most Founders Don't Get Rich
Investors will be Obsolete
Why is a Founder so Hard to Replace?
We Can't Grow by Saying "No"
Do People Really Want Me to Succeed?
Is the Problem the Player or the Coach?
Will Investors Bail Me Out?
The Value of Actually Getting Paid
Why do Founders Suck at Asking for Help?
Wait a Minute before Giving Away Equity
You Only Think You Work Hard
SMALL is the New Big — Embracing Efficiency in the Age of AI
The 9 Best Growth Agencies for Startups
This is BOOTSTRAPPED — 3 Strategies to Build Your Startup Without Funding
Never Share Your Net Worth
A Steady Hand in the Middle of the Storm
Risk it All vs Steady Paycheck
How About a Startup that Just Makes Money?
How to Recruit a Rockstar Advisor
Why Having Zero Experience is a Huge Asset
My Competitor Got Funded — Am I Screwed?
The Hidden Treasure of Failed Startups
If It Makes Money, It Makes Sense
Why do VCs Keep Giving Failed Founders Money?
$10K Per Month isn't Just Revenue — It's Life Support
The Ridiculous Spectrum of Investor Feedback
Startup CEOs Aren't Really CEOs
Series A, B, C, D, and E Funding: How It Works
Best Pitch Decks Ever: The Most Successful Fundraising Pitches You Need to Know
When to Raise Funds
Why Aren't Investors Responding to Me?
Should I Regret Not Raising Capital?
Unemployment Cases — Why I LOOOOOVE To Win Them So Much.
How Much to Pay Yourself
Heat-Seeking Missile: WePay’s Journey to Product-Market Fit — Interview with Rich Aberman, Co-Founder of Wepay
The R&D technique for startups: Rip off & Duplicate
Why Some Startups Win.
Chapter #1: First Steps To Validate Your Business Idea
Product Users, Not Ideas, Will Determine Your Startup’s Fate
Drop Your Free Tier
Your Advisors Are Probably Wrong
Growth Isn't Always Good
How to Shut Down Gracefully
How Does My Startup Get Acquired?
Can Entrepreneurship Be Taught?
How to Pick the Wrong Co-Founder
Staying Small While Going Big
Investors are NOT on Our Side of the Table
Who am I Really Competing Against?
Why Can't Founders Replace Themselves?
Actually, We Have Plenty of Time
Quitting vs Letting Go
How Startups Actually Get Bought
What if I'm Building the Wrong Product?
Are Founders Driven by Fear or Greed?
Why I'm Either Working or Feeling Guilty
Startup Financial Assumptions
Why Every Kid Should be a Startup Founder
We Only Have to be Right Once
If a Startup Sinks, Founders Go Down With it
Founder Success: We Need a Strict Definition of Personal Success
Is Quiet Quitting a Problem at Startup Companies?
Founder Exits are Hard Work and Good Fortune, Not "Good Luck"
Finalizing Startup Projections
All Founders are Beloved In Good Times
Our Startup Culture of Entitlement
The Bullshit Case for Raising Capital
How do We Manage Our Founder Flaws?
What If my plan for retirement is "never retire"?
Startup Failure is just One Chapter in Founder Life
6 Similarities between Startup Founders and Pro Athletes
All Founders Make Bad Decisions — and That's OK
Startup Board Negotiations: How do I tell the board I need a new deal?
Founder Sacrifice — At What Point Have I Gone Too Far?
Youth Entrepreneurship: Can Middle Schoolers be Founders?
Living the Founder Legend Isn't so Fun
Why Do VC Funded Startups Love "Fake Growth?"
How Should I Share My Wealth with Family?
How Many Deaths Can a Startup Survive?
This is Probably Your Last Success
Why Do We Still Have Full-Time Employees?

How to Stop Company-Wide Games of Telephone

Tony Delmercado

How to Stop Company-Wide Games of Telephone

Imagine stumbling across a Glassdoor review of your company filled with damaging declarations and seemingly unfounded statements. You’d be shocked, right? I know I was.

Our former employee’s description seemed so foreign, I didn’t recognize the company being described. According to the review, we were growing too fast, too furiously; we were operating in a knee-jerk manner.

It was clear the past employee wasn’t aware that we look to hyper-vet everything we do. Decisions are hardly made on whims; they’re quite nuanced. Of course, none of that matters to employees if they’re not hearing the truth.

Company-Wide Games of Telephone

What had happened? To make a long story short, complete miscommunication on our part.

We’re not the only business that’s dealt with miscommunication. A 2017 Dynamic Signal report noted 74 percent of survey participants believed they were being kept in the dark about essential on-the-job matters. People in that category tend to go to colleagues to fill in the puzzle pieces, and that’s when disconnects occur.

That’s how we realized it isn’t just the “what” we need to talk about; it’s the “why.”

Halting the Rumor Mill’s Furious Spin

Like it or not, all brands suffer from a grapevine. Still, you have a choice: Will yours be healthy or unhealthy?

Unhealthy grapevines take root in company gossip. They twist as colleagues share snippets of information and fill in blanks. These grapevines turn unreliable secondhand suggestions into facts, producing sour fruit best left to vinegar production.

In contrast, healthy grapevines blossom in communication-rich soil. Rather than thriving on innuendo, they grow on positive dialogue between departments and across siloes. The wine that comes from healthy grapevines isn’t just delectable; it attracts new talent.

To foster a healthy grapevine that limits workflow disruptions, employees must understand the “why” — the purpose — behind any decision. If your team members have the entire picture, they’re more likely to buy into what’s occurring. Plus, they don’t need to make up their own creative interpretations.

After discovering the Glassdoor review, our team took steps to ensure we could defuse the amount of misinformation being propagated.

Business Communication

Do the same by using these steps as springboards to devise your own method of slaying the game of “telephone”:

1. Ask managers to practice their team speeches with you.

You’re explaining a rollout program to a manager who is expected to send the information downstream. But are you sure he or she understands the point?

Many well-meaning managers don’t actively listen for purpose; they listen for outcome. Not surprisingly, they focus solely on those outcomes when they pass information to their teams.

To close this loophole, ask all managers to articulate their spiel to you first before sending them out the door. If the message is out of alignment with what you initially relayed, it’s an opportunity to say, “You’ve got the gist of it — the meat of the message — but the ‘why’ behind it is off.”

Finesse the message with your managers until you’re on the same page; then they can relay it to the rest of their team.

Do this consistently, and you’ll have a much better handle on what your employees are hearing from their supervisors. Plus, you’ll pass along a great skill to your managers, which helps others contextualize messages.

2. Know your company’s pulse with skip-level meetings.

Want to know what’s happening on the ground? Institute regular skip-level meetings, where you’re actually “skipping” team levels to learn more about other staff at your company.

You get the chance to meet with individuals you don’t normally work with, and they have an open forum to ask questions, bring up concerns, and present ideas.

Think skip-level meetings are superfluous? Make them a must-do anyway.

You’re probably not aware of what’s being said within the rank and file, and that’s exactly why you need this type of “crew” interaction.

How often should you host them? Initiate one for each project review, program rollout, service clarification, marketing campaign, etc.

Also, feel free to engage immediately at the first scent of trouble. For instance, we discovered that an unhealthy grapevine was threatening to strangle productivity and morale. By jumping into a skip-level session, I was able to clarify everything immediately.

3. Conduct weekly all-hands meetings.

Trying to get great people to stick around? ClearCompany research says offices that promote communication have half the turnover of their non-communicative counterparts. Be a pragmatic leader by making all-hands meetings a weekly experience.

Our Friday all-hands gatherings enable us to clarify, celebrate, and converse. They’re not just a platform for leaders to pontificate; they’re for everyone to learn. Quarterly, we incorporate personal and professional development workshops into the mix.

These meetings stop rumors rapidly, as was the case recently when employees discussed concern regarding an office move: Someone had seen a seating chart mock-up and didn’t approve; yet the mock-up wasn’t set in stone. It was for space requirement use alone.

4. Act with poise and purpose when unsavory stuff hits.

Let’s say you have an online review experience similar to ours. Don’t take it out on the reviewer. Instead, talk to the employee’s manager (if you know who the worker was, which is often easy to tell by verbiage and timing), and discuss what happened.

Your job isn’t to assume the worker was crazy, nor is it to assume your manager is incompetent. It’s to discern whether your team played a part in unintentional miscommunication.

As an example, if your reviewer claimed you didn’t offer bonuses or incentives — but you know you do — ensure your managers understands bonus and incentive perks. Then, ask existing team members whether they know about the programs. Perhaps everyone’s unclear about them, and that’s your opportunity to educate.

After your discovery, institute processes to correct future issues before they get out of hand.

As long as humans work at companies, rumor mills will exist, so being proactive counts for everything. Put processes in place ahead of time (using the steps above as a foundation), and your chances of fostering unhealthy grapevines will shrink.

As a leader, you owe it to all stakeholders to run an operation where everyone’s on the same page and not playing telephone.

Find this article helpful?

This is just a small sample! Register to unlock our in-depth courses, hundreds of video courses, and a library of playbooks and articles to grow your startup fast. Let us Let us show you!


OR


Submission confirms agreement to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

Already a member? Login

No comments yet.

Start a Membership to join the discussion.

Already a member? Login

Create Free Account