Have you ever followed something up in a team meeting, only to be met with silence, blank stares or furrowed brows wondering what it is you are on about?

Or perhaps you’ve been met with nods that feel more like dismissal more than understanding.

It’s frustrating. And when it’s something that matters, it’s even more so.

In my 30 years of leading and two decades of coaching senior leaders and executives, there are usually three reasons why this happens:

1. Clarity – Your leaders don’t fully understand the context, the importance, or what they actually need to do.
2. Confidence – Your leaders are unsure how. They either don’t have the skill or don’t feel capable enough to take it on.
3. Care factor – Your leaders aren’t invested. They’re not bought into the topic, the change, the organisation, or potentially you.

And more often than not, we have contributed to at least one of them without Realising.

When it comes to clarity and confidence specifically, there’s a well-documented concept that explains exactly why we are not as clear as we think, or as effective at building confidence as we should be. This phenomenon is known as the Curse of Knowledge, popularised by Chip and Dan Heath in their bestselling book Made to Stick. It is a cognitive bias where, once we understand something deeply, we lose the ability to see it through the eyes of someone who doesn’t have the same context, experience or capability that we do. It’s where we assume clarity we haven’t actually created, and competence we haven’t yet built or shown.

The care factor, the third reason, is different. Unlike clarity and confidence, it’s not a knowledge gap or a skill gap. It’s a disconnect – from the work, from the organisation, and sometimes from you.

It is usually a consequence of one or more of the following:

• Leaders having lost faith – they’ve been through enough change or broken promises to have quietly stopped believing it will be different this time.
• Leaders unable to connect what they’re being asked to do to something meaningful or bigger than the task itself.
• The relationship between you and them simply not being as strong as it could be.

And out of all three reasons, it’s often the biggest contributor to a lack of buy-in and engagement.

So what do you do about it?

While providing clarity and confidence are important and will help with some of the factors above, the biggest difference to how your leaders show up – and how invested they feel – will come from leading relationally.

Relational leadership, if you haven’t heard of it before, is a people-centred approach where you prioritise building trust, being collaborative and understanding the thoughts, feelings and perspectives of your leaders.

It’s best practised by being:

• Compassionately Curious – bringing a kind, non-judgemental lens to understanding what’s really driving the disconnect. Asking yourself “I know their intentions are good, what might really be going on here?”
• Coactively Catalytic – bringing your leaders into the thinking, the decisions and the problem-solving. Creating a genuine “we’re in this together” mentality that builds participation and shared ownership.
• Consciously Conscious– deliberately paying attention to where your focus is. Being fully aware of yourself, your leaders and the moment you’re in.

These are three of five states I refer to in my new book (The Connect Effect) as the Voltage of Building Trust, Loyalty and Engagement, and they are imperative to leading relationally and bringing disengaged, disconnected and dismissive team members back on board.

I trust this has got you thinking and been helpful in some way, shape or form.

Until next week, be well and lead well.

Kylie