For me open, honest, and direct communication is the cultural underpinning which allows Influvians to work well together and with our partners. In a business context we strive for effective communication in an atmosphere where people are encouraged to share ideas; openness, honesty, and directness are useful starting points for business communication.

Directness, honesty, and openness all improve communications and in combination they reinforce each other fostering an atmosphere of trust. There are no hidden agendas and we can collaborate easily. It’s a non-competitive style of communication which has many benefits in my experience:

• When both parties in a conversation are being open and honest, then it’s easier to explore ideas and stumble. Both people have an interest in the outcome, and all mistakes offer some learning and opportunity to re-evaluate assumptions.
• The openness of communication creates an atmosphere where people with a contribution to make are happy to speak up, even across team or hierarchical boundaries. This helps mix perspectives, and provides the opportunities for unexpected innovation from someone with unique insights or experience.
• In conjunction with the team productivity not individual glory core value, Influitive’s resultant culture encourages sympathetic active listening. There’s no loss in helping your fellow Influvian refine and develop their ideas.

I find that keeping directness in mind improves the clarity of my communication, because it helps me focus on the ideas I’m trying to communicate and helps me restrain my urge to embellish the message. Crafting a concise, direct message respects other people’s time, and reduces the chance of miscommunication.

The combination of openness, honesty, and directness forms a solid foundation for effective communication, which leads to benefits including:

• Developers have a shared, effective style of communication in and across squads.
• The openness fosters an environment without barriers for communication so that any employee, no matter how junior or new, feels able to talk to anyone else in the company. This has deep consequences for many types of formal and informal information exchange.
• We can discuss the vision that the company has, and our plans to make that vision real. There are many opportunities at squad meetings and off-sites to ask how things are going and make contributions.

An example of open communication across teams is the chart on the wall behind finance. It’s a frequently updated chart of a team’s financial goals showing how we are meeting them. Another example is the celebration of closed deals at the daily sync-up meeting. These help me to know how Influitive’s doing, and I feel confident that I can ask about anything if I have any concerns.

The most important area of communication to me is around personal development. In my one-on-ones and my work, goals, and progress discussed candidly during the year and that makes it easy to have course corrections and adjust to changing circumstances. The directness of communication helps with focus, and the openness and honesty during the year means there aren’t surprises in the review.

Developing a straightforward and honest communication habit has benefits outside Influitive too. It is much easier to work with partners and customers in an atmosphere of trust, and open, direct, and honest communication is a good foundation for trust.

Over my career I have become more sensitive to whether a company has explicitly stated core values, and whether they seem to play a major role in people’s daily life at a company. A well chosen set of core values support each other, and the company’s culture arises from the personalities of the individuals who share a respect for the core values. I think that open, honest, and direct communication is the foundational value for our culture at Influitive, in that it builds trust and supports the other values.

At influitive we keep our values in mind by recognizing someone for their contributions at our daily sync-up meeting. This recognition is tied back to one (or more) of our values, so everyone is exposed to them on a daily basis.

I hope this has piqued your interest in Influitive’s values. In future posts I will investigate our other values.