Cascading Leadership Series – Clear Job Description = Smooth Flow

This post will round out 2023—a whole year of Organizational Muscle! Thanks for reading! I’m grateful to all of you who have been on this journey with me!

You’ve already caught on that cascading leadership has a lot to do with communication!

An example: When we discuss something important at the Wednesday Operations (Ops) meeting, we also discuss how communication gets relayed to everybody’s direct reports. My direct reports are instructed to tell their direct reports everything they’ve learned and put it in context. 

Well-defined job descriptions within an organizational chart will include who relays information to whom. 

Folks need to know this with crystal clarity. Spot checks are done if there is a breakdown, and employees who drop or break the communication chain are spoken to.

(Quick leaders’ huddle here: Never use a public space or group situation to correct someone or complain that they aren’t doing things correctly. Go to them personally and privately to ask how the problem occurred. It’s not about embarrassing the employee in front of others. If you do, it becomes about the embarrassment, and you’ll lose the respect of the employee. Also, people doing their jobs well don’t wish to hear about problems with their coworkers. Go directly to the problem and fix it.)

The big idea here is that every employee knows from whom they receive important information and to whom they relay it. Having clearly defined and written job descriptions that include chain of command and chain of communication is vital here. It is critical that good communication flows throughout the organization.

Do it. Build muscle. Thank you for all your support in 2023. Let’s get even stronger in the new year!