Karin Hoelzer

I cannot agree more, Mike! I would go even further, we cannot be effective leaders unless we really understand what those we are leading value and what concerns and motivates them. We need to ask these questions, and we need active listening to create the trust in these conversations so people feel empowered to share what they really feel.

Much of what is outlined here should be best practices for any communication, regardless of how complex the topic - e.g., we should never use acronyms our audience doesn't understand, we need to segment and tailor messages to key audiences, we need to test messaging, refine our communications, learn from our audience feedback - and a picture truly is often worth a thousand words. But, if we consistently apply these best practices and the public (or any audience) is still struggling to understand a particular issue we need to dig deeper and understand WHY first - are we failing to frame the issue in ways our audience can relate to? Are we lacking the trust needed for effective communication? Speaking the wrong language? Assuming too much?

We cannot forget that not all failures are created equal. Some failures are clearly failures that we could and should have avoided, no doubt about it. But others are really just situations where we haven't found the right path to success yet but where we gained vital insights on what NOT to do. Reframing these 'failures' as the intermediate milestones and temporary setbacks that they really are can be liberating - and ultimately key to success. After all, a lot of really great inventions were made possible by hundreds or thousands of 'failures' that nonetheless each got us one step closer to ultimate success.

I can honestly say that over my career I have learned more from failures than successes - and not just because there tend to be more epic failures than epic successes to learn from. Empowering my teams to take (calculated) risks and creating a team culture of learning from and growing with failures is essential to leadership and I strongly believe the recipe to creating successful, high-performing teams.

I agree, empathy is key to leadership. Without empathy it is nearly impossible to build trust, and without trust it will be nearly impossible for teams to embrace and learn from failures.

Honesty is clearly key. But it should not start when you communicate to address a 'major issue' or a big failure. Rather, it should be part of the team culture and an expectation in every interaction. Normalizing honest feedback through everyday situations creates the culture, expectations, and trust that will be key to addressing and learning from failures - and failures should be viewed as the teachable moments and opportunities for learning that they are. But we cannot effectively learn from failures if we cannot embrace them with honesty and humility and a growth mindset.