Vital, Missing Engagement Perspectives That Leaders Ignore or Miss

Also, the fine line with transparency and the risk of not following up on employee feedback

David Grossman is the founder and CEO at The Grossman Group, an internal communication agency

Leaders don’t consciously intend to end up off track with their communication and relationship with employees, yet it happens, at costs, small, significant and extreme. It doesn’t have to be that way because the course corrections are simple when you know what to do and how to safely sidestep or successfully address habitual errors that plague many communicators.

David Grossman discusses three points that he says can be of valuable assistance.

The founder and CEO at The Grossman Group, an internal communication agency, is the author of “The Heartwork of Modern Leadership, 6 Differentiators of Modern Leaders” and previously, the “Heart F1RST” series and “No Cape Needed.”

He argues that leaders often communicate from their own perspective rather than that of their audience’s, which can cause levels of relationship disconnect. Addressing it requires asking better questions for better answers.

“Most leaders communicate from their own vantage point because they have the information, the context and the big-picture view,” Grossman says.

“They assume their audience will interpret the message the same way they do but the audience doesn’t live in the leader’s head.”

He elaborates on the sense making.

“What’s actually happening on the receiving end: people are processing whatever you say through the filter of their own fears, priorities and unanswered questions. And during times of change, those filters get more intense,” Grossman teaches.

This impacts people in a way that organizations don’t usually realize.

“Employees regress to deeply personal questions such as, ‘What’s my job now?’ ‘How am I doing?’ ‘Does anyone care about me?’

“Leaders who don’t recognize that end up communicating at the organizational level while their people are stuck at the personal level. They’re talking past the very audience they’re trying to reach.”

That’s the problem. There is a solution.

“I call the practical shift, communication calibration — adjusting not just your message but your approach based on where your audience actually is, not where you assume they are,” Grossman says.

He discusses what the remedy looks like.

“When leaders calibrate their communication, they demonstrate that they value and respect their audience,” Grossman says. “Moreover, calibrated communication is simply more effective. When leaders tailor their message to their audience, they’re more likely to get their point across, to inspire action and to achieve their goals.”

He outlines a brief strategy to achieve a higher degree of trust, relationship quality, influence and persuasiveness.

“The discipline is pausing before any important communication and asking yourself: ‘What is my audience carrying right now? What are they afraid of? What do they need from me that they’re not saying out loud?’” Grossman advises.

The all-too-common reality is, he asserts, is that “most leaders skip this step entirely. They go straight to the slide deck and then they’re genuinely puzzled when the message doesn’t land.”

There is an alternative approach that will lead to more desirable, beneficial outcomes. Grossman provides his list:

1. Know your team: Take time to understand the individuals on your team.

What are their communication styles? What motivates and inspires them? What challenges are they facing?

2. Listen actively: Don’t (only) wait for your turn to speak. Really listen to what your employees are saying. Pay attention to their words, their tone and their body language.

3. Ask questions: Don’t assume you know what your audience needs. Ask them directly: “How can I best support you?” “What information do you need from me?” “What’s your preferred communication style?”

4. Adapt your style: Based on what you learn, adapt your communication style. This might mean providing more context, using more visual aids, checking in more frequently or adjusting your tone.

5. Seek feedback: Regularly ask your team for feedback on your communication: “What’s working well? What could be improved?”

“Be open to constructive criticism and willing to make changes,” Grossman says.

Transparency, most leadership practitioners argue, needs to be more frequent for trust building and strong relationships, yet some organizational communicators have countered with the argument that leaders can be too transparent, to the risk of their and their organization’s best interests.

It’s a debate and not as simple of question about where the line is between need and excessive risk.

“I get this question a lot, and I think it comes from a misunderstanding of what transparency actually means in practice,” Grossman responds. “Transparency isn’t radical disclosure. It’s not dumping everything you know or don’t know on your team and hoping they sort it out.”

He explains what it is and how it is best practiced.

“The line I draw is this: share what’s relevant, share what helps people do their work and make sense of their world and share it with vulnerability, rather than false certainty,” Grossman advises.

“I use a framework I call ‘3+1,’” he continues.

“Tell people what you know, what you don’t know, what you’re working on finding out and then proactively bust the myths you know are circulating,” Grossman says.

“That structure gives you a guardrail. You’re being honest without being reckless.”

The Bigger Problem

Grossman says there is an inaccurate belief circulating.

“Where leaders get into trouble isn’t usually too much transparency, it’s the wrong kind,” he pointedly states.

“Sharing your personal anxiety about a decision before you’ve processed it yourself? That’s not transparent, that’s unfiltered. But sharing that a decision was difficult, that you weighed competing priorities and that you understand the impact on your team?

“That’s the kind of transparency that builds trust,” Grossman says to delineate.

The True Escalated Risk

Leaders can come to believe that transparency is overvalued and unnecessary, is weakness or fraught with risk. In most cases, Grossman disagrees.

“The real risk isn’t being too transparent, it’s silence,” he argues.

“When leaders go quiet during periods of uncertainty and wait for the full picture before saying anything, employees often fill that vacuum with worst-case assumptions, rumors and fear.”

Grossman paints a figurative picture of how this looks to stakeholders.

“Silence in uncertain times doesn’t feel neutral to employees,” he stresses. “It feels like abandonment.”

The final, important topic that Grossman discusses with Communication Intelligence is the damage an organization does to trust and engagement when leaders solicit feedback but don’t explain what happened to it.

“This one hits a nerve because I see it constantly,” he reveals. “Frankly, it’s one of the fastest ways to destroy the very trust you were trying to build.”

He vividly describes what happens.

“When you ask people for their input, whether through a survey, a listening session or a town hall Q&A, you’re making an implicit promise. You’re saying, ‘your voice matters here.’ When nothing visible happens afterward, the message people receive is the opposite,” Grossman says.

“That’s worse than never asking at all, because now you’ve confirmed their suspicion that leadership doesn’t actually want to hear from them.”

That is a high-cost error to credibility, trust, relationship, reputation and influence.

“The damage compounds. People go from disappointed to skeptical to completely checked out,” Grossman says. “Not because they stop caring but because they’ve learned that participation doesn’t lead anywhere.

“You’ve trained them, unintentionally, that feedback is performative. A box to check, not a conversation to have.”

When this happens, regardless of how obvious it is to the trained eye, it’s not well recognized by most leaders, even with metrics. The losses suffered are significant.

“What most executive teams miss is this doesn’t just damage trust in the feedback process, it damages trust in leadership broadly,” Grossman says.

“Our research found that only 19% of employees under ‘good’ leaders feel heard. … Every time you solicit feedback without closing the loop, you’re reinforcing exactly the dynamic that’s already driving quiet disengagement.”

He brings a solution to the discussion.

“The fix isn’t complicated,” Grossman says, “but it does require a commitment most leaders underestimate. “You don’t have to act on every piece of feedback.

“People understand that.

“What you have to do is tell them what you heard and what you’re doing about it.”

In concluding, he drives home his point.

“This is the part leaders skip: explaining what you’re not doing and why. People can handle a ‘no’ far better than they can handle silence,” Grossman teaches.

“What they absolutely cannot tolerate, is the feeling that they spoke into a void.”

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Communication Intelligence, a magazine on another platform from 2021-24 and a newsletter on Substack, from 2023-present, is a publication of interviews turned into current event analysis, examinations of important quotes from leaders, features, reports — and a collection of contributed Insights & Advisory.

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