If you have followed along with the first 24 episodes, you will have already developed all of these elements. Therefore, this episode is about stringing them together and communicating these clearly and regularly to your team, stakeholders, customers and partners:

• Why you do what you do – Purpose
• What you’re going to do – Vision & Goals
• How you’re going to do it – Strategy and Tactics
• Who is going to to do what – Role clarity
• Your style in doing it – Values and Standards
• Updates on progress – warts and all along the journey
• Victories & Losses
  • Tell the epic stories of wins in great depth, give credit to the team members that nailed it
  • Talk openly about the setbacks, and inspire the members about a comeback.

Before we go on, I want you to do a bit of an audit of your own communications with your team and just go through those seven things and ask yourself how you measure up.

Two key ingredients: repetition and listening

The interesting thing is that the above links directly into the philosophy of so many of the great Chiefs that have been on the Inner Chief podcast; when it comes to communication, repetition is key. Every single person in your sphere of influence who listens to you might take up to six or seven times for an idea or a concept to truly land. So, you might find yourself constantly repeating yourself over and over again, but that's okay.

On the flip side, the other half of the equation is to listen. As you go around communicating, you must at least be listening to your people as they tell you their challenges, their side of the story, and their part of the journey. And it's important to respond to them when they ask you ‘where you are going', ‘why you are going there' and the ‘values and standards'.

In times of crisis…communicate!

What about when something goes horribly, horribly wrong? I was in Brisbane in 2011 when there were some absolutely horrible floods that really tore the city apart. But one thing that really impressed me was how the Mayor and The Premier of the State came together and gave a constant feed of information and updates to the people. Everybody always knew what was happening and it really created a sense of calm.

The converse of this is that when you don't communicate with people, they will fill the silence with myth; they'll spread all sorts of horror stories and you will have all these rumours floating around that will turn out to be not true and could cost you enormously.

So, when you are in a crisis, gather your leadership team as quickly as possible and communicate regularly, every few hours if need be. Your people need to hear from you and they want to hear from you in those moments. You need to communicate more often than you normally would.

Thanks for following along!

This brings us to the very end of 25 episodes of High Performance Teams! Thanks for following the series – I trust you got some value out of it and are already applying the lessons at work or in your business.

In the next episode, I am going to bring them all together for you and talk about the four stages of transformation.

Stay epic,