With your teams working virtually, your internal communication has never been so important.

Without the physical collision zone of the office, incidental interaction and face-to-face meetings have been replaced by Zoom meetings and phone calls.

Speaking with business owners each week, so many of them want to discuss how they can manage effectively and efficiently with a virtual workforce. Owners are struggling to find a balance with the frequency, mode and messaging of their communications with employees.

I thought it would be useful to explore the frequency, mode and messaging around internal communications with team members.

A few years ago, I read Dr Russ Harris’ excellent book The Happiness Trap in which he outlines powerful psychological research outlining ACT – Acceptance & Commitment Therapy.

Harris advises us to ‘accept’ our thoughts and feelings while being present, ‘choose’ a valued direction and ‘take’ action.

It turns out in business that we often set goals, avoid taking action and get stuck. We freeze and fail to follow through. ACT helps to navigate a path forward and get unstuck.

Imagine there are three large jars in front of us on our kitchen bench. Outcomes you seek are to be placed in only one of the three jars marked:

1. Outcomes we Control

2. Outcomes we Influence

3. Outcomes we Hope for

It turns out that we actually control very few outcomes. We spend endless hours agonizing over trying to place many outcomes in the control jar. It is terribly unfair to ourselves and leads to unhappiness, anxiety and even depression through setting unrealistic expectations.

Working with clients through this crisis has led me to identify a constructive process to come out the other side. I have termed it Re-Platforming. Imagine there is a huge tornado that rips up your house from the very foundations. After the storm passes, you need to re-platform your property from the ground up. Your business is no different in an extreme crisis.

In his excellent book Give & Take, Adam Grant outlines three archetypes in human nature – Givers, Takers & Matchers.

I share my take here on these three archetypes in business.

Givers are those business owners who generously give to others without expecting favours returned. They go out of their way to introduce you to that important contact, pass on a book or listen to your problems and even give free advice.

Givers always seem to have enough time for everything and everyone. Often selfless, they allocate time, money and resources to serving others. They typically possess high emotional intelligence and limitless energy.

I’ve just taken my annual two-day Retreat and it was awesome!

There is something grounding about taking a break to plan the year ahead and stopping to think about what is important to you. So, I set about reflecting on what 2020 could look like if I was life’s puppeteer.

My mindset kept coming back to simplicity.

Making things easier not harder, with less complexity and noise.