Save your surprises for birthdays

I love surprises. I once surprised my parents by coming home from a three month trip a week earlier than planned.

Turns out, my parents don't do well with surprises. I walked in and said, “Hey, it's me!” And they're like, “Oh. Right there you are. I hope you're not expecting dinner.”

So, I might love surprises, but I know other people don't know what to do with them. When you work with a team of people, you're going to have a mixture of responses to unexpected events. And when a bad surprise happens, emotions run high, especially if we’re not prepared, and don’t have a Plan B. So, everybody deserves good communication at work to avoid nasty surprises.

Here’s a scenario I’ve seen play out too many times. A technical team leader gives instructions. People get to work. But pretty soon it becomes clear everyone in the team is acting on those instructions in different ways. The leader is disappointed because she has to deal with the fact the work’s been done wrong. She needs to have uncomfortable conversations with the team. What happened? Where did you go wrong? I said what to do - what did you not understand? And in all of that, there’s blame implied. Somebody's going to feel stupid. Someone else’s confidence is going to be damaged.

The leader's going, how did I get that wrong? The employees are going, how did I get that wrong? That’s a whole lot of stress that could have been prevented with clear communication.

Ineffective communication compromises our mental wellbeing and slows down our collective progress. Save the surprises for family reunions ... best to eat beforehand :)