THE Five Communication Responsibilities
My time with the AmeriCorps FireCorps on Cape Cod (it always was and continues to be a mouthful) opened my eyes to the importance of clear, direct, and concise communication. It was the first time I had heard of what the National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG) refers to as the "Five Communication Responsibilities". Having been exposed to countless numbers of motivational LinkedIn posts, it'd be easy to assume these are just another set on the inspirational speaker white noise album. But I've actually found them to be a recipe for success not just in emergency response, but in every environment I've worked in.
While the language is usually wildland fire-centric, I think we can adapt the concepts behind them to almost any communication scenario:
Brief others as needed. Successful teams and managers ensure that the people executing the work know what they need to know. We started every day in FireCorps with a morning briefing, and whenever someone arrived to an in progress project, the project leader pulled them aside to brief them on the strategy, objectives, and any obstacles they've encountered. In my time since, I have made transparency in communication and planning a cornerstone of how I manage projects. I don't know how if the old story of Napoleon quizzing the lowest ranked person on the battlefield about the plan and calling things off if they couldn't answer is true, but there is a lot of wisdom there. People don't need to know everything, but you can't expect them to do their jobs in the dark.
Debrief your actions. I love the concept of after-action reviews. After every project day, whether we executed a prescribed burn or we had a day of sharpening chainsaws, we got together at a picnic table outside the Fire Cache to have our "AAR" before we could go home. What went well, what could we do better, and what did we learn? Everyone had to say something, and you weren't allowed to "ditto" what someone else said. I credit this with our ability to improve day after day, even on the smallest tasks. And when something went wrong in the field, we'd hold a "DAR" or during-action review. That's how we kept people safe- we acknowledged when we messed up and fixed it right then and there. I am not advocating for a 4:45pm standing meeting at the end of every project day (as much as I would love it), but I do believe taking the time, even just yourself, to think through what you've learned that day and commit to carrying that lesson forward is the key to continuous improvement. And when you are writing a more formal After-Action Report, don't lose sight of the simplicity of the questions you are solving for- what went well, what could go better, and what did you learn?
Communicate hazards to others. Following 9/11, just about every mode of public transportation I used had a sign or an announcement with the phrase "if you see something, say something". Just because we perceive a threat or a hazard doesn't mean the people around us have. While project teams aren't facing tripping hazards in the wilderness or running chainsaws, that doesn't mean there aren't hazards on their projects that they can help their team avoid. Have you ever been working on a client project and just felt like it just doesn't feel right? That the product you are making seems off to you? Surely your project manager notices that feeling too, and will adjust, right? And if they don't, it surely means our feeling was wrong. Too often we see pitfalls coming and don't speak up because we assume the awareness of our teammates matches our own, but we can save ourselves a lot of problems by saying something. And if we do trip on the proverbial tree branch and no one saw, don't play it off like nothing happened. Allow the team to learn from your mistake.
Acknowledge messages. I tend to scare a lot of people who email me with this one. I used to always respond within 15 minutes, at the very least saying "hey, I got your message. I'll answer your question in a bit when I have more time". Why did I do that? I want people to know I received it. In the modern world of ghosting, it's important to make sure people know we've heard them. Now, I have backed off on that since starting a business (I get a lot of spam these days), but the core idea still lives with me. Even if you are too busy to give someone a full answer, at the very least let them know you heard them. And when you do have time for a full response, repeat back what you heard so they know you understood them, or so they can correct your understanding. So many misunderstandings would be cleared up with that simple effort towards reflective listening. "What I heard you say is this, is that correct?". If you don't have time to communicate with your team in that way, your schedule is too full to effectively manage properly.
Ask if you don't know. An thus we come full circle, back to where we started with briefing others. This is the other side of that coin. You can't expect your team to perform in the dark, but your team can't expect you to help them if they don't let you. All too often our team members are afraid to admit that they don't know something, or they have never done something they have been asked to do. This is ultimately a side effect of learned behavior from bad managers and that ever present imposter syndrome. "I don't want them to think I’m incapable". But the reality is often the opposite- I’ve had the most success in my career when I’ve been willing to say "I don't know how to do that" or "that is outside my circle of competence". All too often we put ourselves in poor positions when we try to "fake it 'till we make it". It leads to more stress, less efficiency, and ultimately more burn-out. Oh, and way more mistakes and poor project outcomes. If you are given a certain type of assignment for the first time, make it known you’re new to it. And if you are the one managing the team, make sure the environment encourages questions- which includes showing vulnerability yourself when you yourself don't know. They say the most dangerous person is the person who doesn’t know what they don’t know, but easily the most frustrating is the person who knows they don’t know, but pretends anyway.
If I can summarize all of this it would be: communicate transparently. Having a structure for how you approach communication can be the difference maker on a challenging project, and it sets you apart as someone who has intention behind their work. Now of course, none of what I wrote was particularly succinct, so perhaps next time will be the perfect opportunity to point out why writing so much was a mistake- why I was once instructed to keep my emails to "Twitter length".
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Andy Platt is Founder/COO of Blue Sky Planning Partners, a consulting firm that supports emergency preparedness and continuity planning for organizations and municipalities. If you’d like to reach out to Andy to discuss how Blue Sky Planning Partners can support your business/organization/municipality, you can reach him at aplatt@blueskyplanningpartners.com.
