Leaders sometimes expect their team to follow directives without ensuring team comprehension. Two-way communication between leaders and teams lends itself to good team morale and a healthy work culture. One way to lay a strong communication foundation is by establishing a mission oriented culture. Continuous repetition of the company’s purpose will assist the team in understanding what drives decision-making.

Once this foundation is established, communicating strategy with the team should become a smoother process. The Harvard Business Review offers these three tips for communicating strategy.

Reveal the Thinking Behind the Thinking

When talking through potential strategies with your team, you naturally may disagree with proposed approaches. It can be advantageous to explain the why behind your disagreement rather than squashing an idea without explanation. The thinking behind why certain ideas are rejected is a learning moment for your team. Revealing the thinking behind the thinking can help teams understand the ultimate strategy.

Connect the Strategy to the Mission 

If you have established a mission-oriented culture, then employees will be able to easily connect a new decision to the company’s purpose. Employees will have come to expect grounding in the company’s purpose and that the mission is the clear driver in decision making. Explaining to employees how each choice is linked to the organization’s purpose is a good way for people to quickly understand the logic behind the choice without needing to know all the deliberations that took place to make the choice.

Involve Employees in Strategy Development

The Surgeon General’s Framework for Workplace Mental Health and Well-Being, explains that when leaders help employees feel as though they matter at work, mental health and well-being are improved ultimately benefiting the team and bottom line. Leaders can demonstrate that they value their team’s expertise by involving them in decision-making and strategy development. “As strategic dialogues deepen, more employees will get involved, and with their involvement comes a greater shared familiarity of the context in which the strategy is developed,” explained Constantinos C. Markides and Andrew MacLennan in the HBR article. 

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