Leader Apologizes for Insufficient Communication
Social awareness and subsequent compassionate response goes a long way towards protecting or healing professional relationships
An executive confessing to suboptimal communication and then apologizing for it is not a common occurrence. When it happens, especially publicly, it gets noticed.
"I think the lines of communication in the summer were not that great," says a president of an organization. “Just because sometimes I don't have answers. And sometimes the answer that I'm giving you is the same answer that I'm going to give you the next time I speak to you. But based on my relationship, (a now former employee who has moved on) he deserved that I even gave him the over-communication, which I didn't, and I apologized to him for it. I apologized to him before the season started, and I apologized to him again recently. So that part, I'm not particularly proud of, but there are so many things in our business that bring about this type of communication or non-communication."
Was the explanation at the end of the above statement an excuse? Definitely. Maybe he spoke the facts yet that doesn’t mean that communication can’t be given. That can be questioned or criticized.
However, what else was expressed was encouraging and meaningful.
The organization’s president spoke of the errors of under-communication, considering the quality of the person about whom he was speaking and the relationship quality they enjoyed. He spoke of the courtesy and respect not offered because of errors and the (three) apologies that followed.
Not everyone negatively impacted by the neglect or omission of important, desired communication receives it or an honorable and maybe craved response from an organization, especially from its president, about a failing.
Not all leaders are willing to publicly express such a relationship communication shortcoming. This one did and likely learned from it for “next time” with his employees.
He also modeled the need to communicate better, even when in his position, he admits, it’s not always possible to give people what they expect because of variables outside a leader’s full control.
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