Thoughts Unlocked – Communication Code

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Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
01:44 Understanding Communication Problems
02:58 The Five Communication Codes
03:37 Clarifying Communication
05:05 The Importance of Constructive Critique
07:38 Collaborative Efforts in Teams
08:25 The Role of Care in Communication
09:31 Celebrating Achievements
10:55 Building a Positive Communication Culture

Skot Waldron (00:05.00)
I’m Skot Waldron, and when I’m not hosting Unlocked, I’m speaking at events all over the globe, helping leaders and teams communicate better, build trust faster, and actually enjoy working together. I know, who would have thought? I’ve spoken for companies like The Home Depot, I’ve spoken at national architectural firms, at their sales trainings, off sites for major pharmaceutical companies, and industry associations.

A thousand of attendees who have read my sessions. With 99% of them saying they found the sessions valuable. 97% saying they’d actually attend again. I’ve had caterers come up to me afterwards and thank me because they actually got something they could use when they went home or when they went back to their own jobs. I mean, if every keynote delivered those types of numbers, nobody would secretly be refreshing their email under the table. And let’s be honest, that’s a little bit of my nightmare, maybe a little bit of yours. Yeah, something that keeps me up at night.

If you’re an event planner, looking for a speaker who’s easy to work with and delivers actual value that people can take away and use on Monday. Let’s make your event unforgettable.

Welcome back to Unlocked. Today we’re talking about communication, which every company says is important. I’ve heard it multiple times, right up until someone sends that passive-aggressive Slack message, with the, you know, “per my last email” energy.

And suddenly HR has a whole new hobby of managing everybody’s people problems because that’s what HR does, right? Wrong. That is not what HR does, although everybody treats HR that way.

Most teams don’t actually have a “communication problem.” Everybody says it’s communication because it’s a big bucket that everybody just throws things into, but they have an intentionality problem, which is why my book Unlocked: A 52-Week Guide for the Intentional Leader is all about intentionality because we have to do that in order to be the healthiest people for the people we work with, the people we live with.

Communication isn’t just about talking. It’s not about transmitting all the time. It’s about whether you meant to send. Well, like what you meant to send is actually what that person is receiving. And let’s like understand the idea that half of that conflict at work isn’t disagreement really, it’s interpretation of the message that was sent in the first place.

One person says, can we talk later? And the other person automatically assumes they’re getting fired. Don’t tell me I’m lying because it’s true, right? That’s not communication. That’s friction. That’s emotional fanning, is what we want to call it, right? We need to be more clear about what we’re saying and why we’re saying it so we can you know manage the expectation.

Today I want to give you a practical framework I’ve been using with teams that I call the communication codes. I don’t usually talk about the tools I teach too much on this, but this is one that I thought is pretty helpful, not only at work, but also in life. The Five Communication Codes: clarify, critique, collaborate, care, celebrate. Let me say those again: clarify, critique, collaborate, care, and celebrate. These are behaviors. And when teams consistently practice them, communication stops feeling a lot like reactive stuff that’s happening all over the place. It starts to become, again, more intentional.

So, let’s start with Clarify. This is, you know, all about not assuming things, but really making sure that we clarify what is being said. Because vague expectations are like relationship landmines, y’all. Research in communication psychology shows that people routinely overestimate how clearly they’ve communicated. Something called the illusion of transparency. Do you like that word? The illusion of transparency. Yes, I looked that up. It’s true. We think we’re being obvious when we’re actually being very confusing. Check that with me, because that is my world. That’s why leaders say things like, you know, just get it done. Okay, well, what does that mean? By when? At what level? Who owns what?

So, clarity, y’all, it reduces anxiety, it increases accountability, and it keeps your team from playing corporate charades all week long. One exercise I give teams is really simple. After explaining a project, ask the other person to repeat it back. What they heard. It’s not to dumb them down. It’s not to challenge their incompetency. And you can even say, “hey, I want to make sure I explain things clearly. Can you please repeat back to me what you heard?” Not because this isn’t because you don’t trust them. It’s because you don’t want to trust assumptions, right? So, let’s not a trust all the assumptions that we make.

Let’s move to the next one, Critique. Now, let’s talk about feedback because most people, you know, you don’t hate feedback. A lot of people I hear, they’re like, give me some good feedback. But they hate humiliation that’s disguised as feedback.

Critique should build awareness, not trigger survival mode on people. And this matters psychologically because when people feel attacked, their brain shifts into defense, into hiding, into not collaborating anymore, into not putting themselves out there anymore. This prefrontal cortex stuff that you probably heard lots about. The part responsible for problem solving and growth that starts to go like away, which means that your beautifully crafted feedback speech is actually now being received by someone mentally preparing to fight you.

So instead of what’s wrong with you, try this, help me understand kind of what’s going on here. One creates a little bit of shame, the other creates dialogue.

Great teams normalize critique because they separate performance from identity. You made a bad decision; you’re not a bad employee. There’s a big difference there. Let me say this right, you made a bad decision, you’re not a bad employee. We use this with our kids all the time, my wife and I. You made a bad decision; you’re not a bad person. It’s a big deal. Okay. One creates shame, the other is built out of structure and growth and what we can, how we can come out of that. Okay.

Now, Collaborate. This is the next one. Some teams say they collaborate when they really do what they really do is hold a lot of meetings that nobody really wanted to be in in the first place. You know, these collaborators they’re really good at collaboration. They love it when 10 people are in a room all in a whiteboard session for like three days. But that is not collaboration. That is a hostage negotiation with a calendar invite.

Real collaboration requires shared ownership, not here’s my idea. Everybody clap at it. Maybe I can get your input and your input. But you know, really, it’s just my idea. Like, can we do this thing? But, you know, what are we missing? What perspective haven’t we considered? Let’s jam on this thing. We’ve got some time. We don’t have to deliver tomorrow. And I don’t need you to critique it right now. Let’s collaborate. Let’s jam on this together. The strongest leaders, I find, are the ones in the room who are often the ones who are least attached to being the smartest person in that room.

And teams collaborate better when leaders model intellectual humility. That means like the willingness to admit that they don’t have all the answers. Humility, y’all, is just that idea of being teachable. That creates safety for contribution. Okay.

So, we’ve done clarity. This is where you ask, hey, did you understand me correctly? Repeat back to me what said. We’ve talked about critique. Now, critique is I need you to shoot holes in this thing. I need you to, you know understand that I have a little bit of pressure and I’m open to your critique. So, we have to invite that. Okay. Collaboration. Let’s jam on this together.

Next is Care. This one gets overlooked a lot because people hear care and they assume we’re headed into like, you know, a group hug of some kind, but we’re not. That’s not what I’m talking about. Care means people know that they matter beyond just the output. It means you notice when someone’s energy changes. It means you ask questions before you make assumptions. It means you remember that burnout doesn’t always look dramatic. Sometimes it’s just really quiet.

Studies on psychological safety consistently show that teams perform better when people feel emotionally safe to contribute, disagree, and admit mistakes. Not soft teams, safe teams. And there’s a difference. People that are really good at the care communication code, are really good about creating a safe space for somebody, they’re not feel judged, to just be open to hearing and listening without trying to fix their problem.

Caring is that place where if you are needing care from somebody, it is where you go to somebody and say, “hey, listen, I just need a place for you to care right now. I just need a care space. I don’t need you to fix it. I just need you to listen. I just need to vent a little bit.” That is how you communicate that you need care. All right.

Celebrate. Finally, the celebrate. This one is hard for me. I’m going to admit. I’m on like, hey, great project, super cool. Let’s go. Like, what’s the next one? Oh, you know, there’s some things I kind of tend to focus sometimes on the 10% that didn’t go so well instead of the 90% that went awesome. And I fail to celebrate sometimes. I don’t want like a force great job, everybody, thumbs up way, where everybody believes in. Someone awkwardly, you know, starts clapping a little too early. That’s not happened to me, but maybe it’s happened to you. I mean, I’m in genuine recognition.

Most teams they move from achievement straight into the next thing. There’s no pause, there’s no acknowledgement, no real reflection. Celebration reinforces behavior. That’s what we really want to emphasize. Celebrate the behavior you want to see. If you only point out problems, your culture slowly becomes emotionally allergic to risk.

People need to know what we’ve done here matters. What I’ve contributed mattered. What we’ve accomplished deserves attention. Every high performer needs some reinforcement, especially high performers. They need to know that what they’re doing matters. They need to know that they’re making an impact. They’re there for a reason.

Here’s the bigger idea though. Communication is culture. It creates culture. Language creates culture. The way we communicate creates culture. The way your team clarifies, the way you look for clarity amongst each other, critique, collaborate, care, and celebrate, eventually become like the emotional climate people work in every day. And culture isn’t built through mission statements, y’all. It’s built through repeated conversations.

Just every interaction you have is a what I call a brand deposit into your account or a brand withdrawal from your brand account. Every interaction matters. And here’s what I want you to do: this challenge. I want you to think about your own communication code. What do you default to? What are you really good at? Is it critique? Is it collaborate? Is it clarify? Is it celebrate? Or is it care? Any one of those five, you can be rock star. It’s your natural tendency. You’re really good. Now I’m going to guarantee that there are some of you where there’s two of them probably that you’re not so good at, which you need to be more intentional with.

So, pick one of the five communication codes, and I want you to intentionally practice it with your team. Either clarify expectations, seek clarity from other people. Okay, that’s the clarify one. Offer critique with a little bit of curiosity or ask if somebody’s open to critique or invite somebody to critique you but use the language. Remember, language creates culture. The way we communicate creates culture.

Next, you could invite collaboration. Maybe if you’re not a great collaborator, maybe you invite somebody into the collaboration space. Now, this isn’t let’s collaborate hours before it’s due. It’s let’s collaborate on this thing now because I have a couple weeks or whatever and I want to jam on this thing with you. Or you can practice showing care. This means sitting in a safe space, keep providing a safe space, sitting, not solving, just being there, present with somebody, noticing.

Or you could celebrate something meaningful. Look back at your wins. Win of the week, right? Like every Friday, I did this when I ran my agency, is I would set a win of the week, you know, calendar reminder. I needed to remind myself to celebrate. Yes, every week. Just reflect and say, “what went well this week,” and then go ahead and celebrate that on the Slack channel or whatever we used.

Small shifts in your communication will create massive shifts in your culture. Think about that one. Massive shifts in your culture. Would you like that? I think some of you would.

Thanks for joining me on Unlocked. Share this episode with someone trying to build healthier communication on their team, which is pretty much everybody. Until next time, communicate on purpose.

If you want to find out more information about me or check out the show notes where there’s going to be more information and links to the things referenced in this episode, visit skotwaldron.com. And lastly, I’m asking for a little bit of love, just a little bit. So please take a moment, follow, rate the show. The algorithm is like that; it helps me get the word out. I really appreciate it.

Thank you. And until next time, stay on Unlocked.