Article 2 in a Series of 5 on each element of the 5Cs
What’s preventing teams and organizations from reaching their highest performance?
The top challenge is having poor communication across teams and departments.
Through our research on the 5Cs model, we discovered Candid Communication is the best predictor of performance. Candid Communication is about the ability for teams and organizations to have open, straightforward, unambiguous dialogue. It encompasses the subfactors of psychological safety, healthy conflict & feedback, transparency, and ideas meritocracy.
Unfortunately, Candid Communication is also the element teams and organizations struggle with the most out of all of the 5Cs. We don’t speak truth to each other very often, which creates team dynamic issues.
Why is that?
It takes courage and vulnerability to speak openly and honestly with each other.
I often say my role as a coach is both simple and complex. It’s simple because the core of humanity is fairly simple. We all have foundational needs to be seen, heard and acknowledged. We all want a sense of belonging. We all want to feel loved. If we can communicate our basic core human needs, then my role is simple.
In contrast, the complexity of my role is what we layer onto our needs. The layers of stories and masks on top of our foundational needs make open and honest communication challenging. Our communication can become jumbled to a point where people lack an understanding of each other, which is why it’s the element with the most struggle.
The 5Cs tool is an evidence-based model that captures the five critical elements to create high performing teams and thriving cultures. The elements are: Connection, Candid Communication, Clarity, Collaboration and Contribution.
This is the second article in a series of five where I’ll dive into each element in depth. The first article focused on Connection, the most important element at the heart of improving team cohesion and culture. This second article will dive into Candid Communication.
Overview of the Candid Communication Element of the 5Cs
The Connection element of the 5Cs, built on trust and care, enables Candid Communication. Teams and organizations need to feel some level of connection with each other to communicate openly. The subfactor psychological safety is foundational to Candid Communication as people need to feel safe in order to share openly and honestly.
What it means: Candid Communication is about straightforward, unambiguous discourse among all members of the team and organization. It can be fostered through psychological safety, which is seen through people’s willingness to take interpersonal risks, the important two-way processes of healthy conflict and feedback, transparency, and openness of information sharing, and ideas meritocracy, which reflect the willingness of leaders and managers to listen to ideas.
Subfactors:
- Psychological Safety refers to the degree to which employees feel safe to express concerns, vulnerabilities, and dissenting views without fear.
- Healthy Conflict & Feedback refers to a culture of healthy conflict that also encompasses the giving and receiving of clear and constructive feedback across the team or organization.
- Transparency within a team or organization relates to the openness and accessibility of the information and decision-making process to all members.
- Ideas Meritocracy refers to the degree to which the organization values and rewards the best ideas, regardless of their source.
In the 5Cs tool, the Candid Communication dimension directly measures how transparent and psychologically safe communication is across the organization. This helps leadership pinpoint where communication issues lie and implement strategies to foster open dialogue and trust.
Challenges when Candid Communication is Low:
When Candid Communication is low, communication is poor and fragmented across teams and departments. Teams aren’t able to perform at a high level. Leaders often hear filtered or no critical feedback from employees, with employees feeling unsafe to share concerns. This results in employees feeling disconnected from leadership, which erodes trust and transparency.
Most poor communication occurs with one of these two extremes:
- Culture of toxic positivity: This occurs when people report that everything is going well and on track even though it’s not. Employees don’t communicate about problems or have hard conversations. Yet, without anyone communicating about issues and breakdowns, they won’t get addressed and can intensify.
- Hostile culture of feedback: Without a foundation of the Connection 5Cs, people can mistake openly communicating with being rude or aggressive to get their point across. Unfortunately, it weaponizes communicating, creating a fear based environment, where people don’t feel safe to speak openly with each other.
These extremes are not what Candid Communication is about. Candid Communication is built on trust and care—the Connection element. It’s about healthy conflict and feedback and having a constructive conversation.
Benefits when Candid Communications is High:
True Candid Communication unlocks the highest team and organizational performance. The more teams speak openly and honestly with each other with care, the better they perform. Environments high in Candid Communication have greater innovation, creativity, transparency, healthy conflict, and constructive feedback loops. High performing teams with foundational trust and care fuel new levels of growth because the entire team is helping each person improve every day. That is what makes teams so magical.
How to Improve Candid Communication
The best place to start is with psychological safety, which is the most important factor for team effectiveness.
1. Bring awareness to the concept of psychological safety
I’ve noticed people are confused by the difference between trust and psychological safety—the two terms are often used interchangeably. Psychological safety relates to the group’s broader climate or culture, whereas trust occurs between two people. Teams and cultures high in trust lead to psychologically safe environments.
Psychological safety is displayed through people’s willingness to speak their truth. People must feel safe to speak vulnerably, share different perspectives, express concerns and have hard conversations.
2. Increase psychological safety as a leader by being a role model to go first
Role model the behaviors of psychological safety you aspire to see in your team. This means having the courage to speak openly and honestly to your team. Show vulnerability by being willing to ask for help, lean on others, admit mistakes, and recognize strengths and growth opportunities. This helps create an environment where others can do the same.
3. Reflect on your team’s Candid Communication environment
When was the last time your team had a conversation that was truly open and honest? If you can’t think of a time, you may not be building an environment of psychological safety. Consider how you can create open and honest dialogue around you. Give people permission and the positive reinforcement to speak their truth.
While the Candid Communication element tends to be the most challenging, it also has the greatest potential to catalyze team and culture performance. After the Connection element of the 5Cs, Candid Communication is the next most important element to improve team cohesion and culture.
