Feel Misunderstood by Your Team? Three Communication Rules to Finally Speak the Same Language

You and your team want the same things for your business, yet the message keeps getting lost in translation. As a founder, you’re a fast-moving visionary who thinks in big-picture priorities, while your team thinks in execution, details, and deadlines. When it feels like you’re not speaking the same language, both sides can end up frustrated and burnt out.

At Second First®, we teach Seconds-in-Command three rules for communicating with their entrepreneurs. When you share these rules with your team, communication breakdowns drop, friction eases, and you reach your goals faster together.

Rule 1: Don’t go dark

Your team is often so deep in the work they don’t have time to provide you with status updates. Or, they’re high-performers who execute without thinking to circle back with you to close the loop. No communication can leave you assuming nothing is happening, which leads to the “if no one is doing anything, I have to do something” thought process of a founder. You may also find yourself bypassing your leaders, going directly to the team to delegate work.

To avoid this, decide on your preferred method of receiving updates, and have everyone commit to that one channel. This could be:

• A dedicated Slack channel
• A recurring headline during your leadership meetings
• A weekly standing huddle or phone call
• A brief recap email every Friday

You don’t need to be involved in every decision, but you do need visibility into the work.

Rule 2: Limit unhappy surprises

Your team, especially your leaders, may believe it’s their duty to resolve issues without involving you. They act as a “membrane” to prevent bad news from bubbling up to the top, which inevitably can end up boiling over.

Unexpected bad news leads you to assume that there are more hidden problems waiting around the corner. You start to be more involved in the day-to-day, ask more questions, and your team begins feeling micromanaged and doubted in their abilities.

Tell your team you want to know the bad news, and to deliver it in three parts:

1. Brief headline: Only the facts of what happened.
2. Action plan: Next steps to fix the issue and prevent it from happening again. If a postmortem is needed, include the date and time in case you want to attend.
3. Your input: An invitation for you to add anything to the plan.

Rule 3: Keep it brief

Your team is constantly communicating important information upward to you. It's their job to know every important detail, so the natural urge is for them to share those details with you, too.

The challenge for folks reporting directly to founders is finding the balance between providing comprehensive information and overwhelming you with excess. If your team inundates you with too many details, it feels frustrating. But if they give you too little information, you’re left to dive into the data without context, possibly making incorrect assumptions.

The solution is to ask your team to share information in the following format:

• Executive summary: One to three sentences on the main point
• Key points: Three short bullets of facts or updates
• Action needed from you: Yes or no, and if yes, what and by when
• Full details: Attached or linked for you to dig into on your own time

Your next step this week

During your next one-on-ones, walk your team through these three rules. To see more of where the partnership with your team stands, specifically with your right-hand leader, ask them to take the free Entrepreneur-Operator Sync Score assessment. It takes 10 questions and about 5 minutes, and the diagnostic report gives you both a clear starting point for the conversation.