Leadership communication barriers aren’t always obvious, especially when you’re at the top of an organization.
Sometimes, the most important information is the last thing you hear. A COO I worked with (a composite, details changed) called me the day after her VP of operations resigned. “I had no idea,” she said. “Not a clue.” A few days later she learned that at least three people had known for months. Two of them had tried, in their own way, to tell her. One had mentioned in a leadership meeting that there was “some friction around priorities.” Another said in a one-on-one that the team was “adjusting.” Nobody had used the words that would have made her act. If you’re in charge of a lot of people, you may recognize this. The higher you sit, the later you hear. That’s not because people are hiding things from you. It’s because information passes through filters on its way up, and most of those filters are built out of good intentions.
HERE ARE THE THREE I SEE MOST
The softening filter. Bad news gets a little softer at every level. By the time it reaches you, “we’re barely speaking” has become “some friction.” Nobody is lying. Everyone is being kind, careful, and a little bit afraid.
The timing filter. People wait for the right moment to raise a problem. When you’re the CEO or COO, there is never a right moment. Your calendar is full, you look focused, and raising a conflict feels like adding to your load. So it waits, and it grows.
The framing filter. Problems reach you already packaged. You hear “the team needs more clarity” when the real story is “two of us can’t work together.” The first version is safe to say. The second is personal.
None of this means your people don’t trust you. It means the cost of telling you is higher than it looks from where you sit. So what shortens the distance?
FOUR THINGS I COACH SENIOR LEADERS TO TRY
1. Translate the soft language. When you hear “some friction,” “a bit of tension,” or “adjusting,” treat it as a flag. Say, “Help me understand what that looks like day to day.” You’re not interrogating. You’re inviting them to take the padding off.
2. Ask the question that makes it cheaper. Try: “What’s the conversation nobody on this team is having?” It’s easier to answer than “Is there a problem?” because it doesn’t require anyone to accuse anyone. It just asks them to describe what’s already true.
3. Watch your face and your first sentence. The first time someone brings you something hard, they’re deciding whether to bring you the next thing. If you react with impatience, or solve it in thirty seconds, or ask who’s to blame, you’ve taught them to filter more. Try, “Thank you for telling me. Say more.”
4. Go around the filter on purpose. A short skip-level conversation with one question (“What’s getting in your way that I might not know about?”) can tell you more than a month of status reports.
The COO tried the second one the following week in a leadership meeting. There was a long silence. Then one of her directors said, “Do you want the real answer?” She said yes. It took forty minutes, and it was the most useful meeting she’d had all year. Here’s the question I’ll leave you with. The last time someone told you something hard, what did you do in the first minute? And what did that teach them about telling you next time?