The Leadership Gap

Have you read the industry headlines lately? Strike that, have you read the industry headlines over the past few years? Because every year at this time, we see companies “cutting expenses.” I’m not pointing to any individual company when I share this because it’s happening everywhere in every industry.

In fairness, if you looked at your checkbook balance versus your obligations, you too might have to make some difficult choices. Leaders frame these reductions in forces as necessary and vital to future success. Those affected, and those watching only see the carnage, the lost jobs and the very real human impact.

I have no doubt leadership in these situations are well-intentioned. They look at the balance sheet and see red, and they know that if they don’t do something about it, EVERY job might be in jeopardy, not just the ones they are painfully eliminating during this round of cost-cutting.

It reminded me that one of the biggest challenges in leadership isn’t a lack of intelligence. It’s the gap between what leaders intend and what employees understand.

Recently, Glassdoor released its mid-year workplace trends report and found employee confidence in senior leadership had fallen to its lowest level since 2017. Employees weren’t questioning whether their leaders were smart. Instead, the most common complaints centered around trust, communication, alignment and feeling disconnected. That’s concerning, but maybe not for the reason you think.

When organizations struggle, leaders often assume the problem is communication.

• “We’ve shared the strategy.”
• “We’ve held the meetings.”
• “We’ve explained the decision.”

Yet employees often leave those same conversations with a very different conclusion.

• “No one tells us anything.”
• “We don’t know where we’re headed.”
• “Leadership doesn’t understand what’s happening.”

Who’s right? Maybe they both are.

Leaders and employees are often looking at the same event through completely different lenses. One sees stewardship. The other sees uncertainty. One sees protecting the future. The other sees losing the present. The event is the same. The interpretation is different and interpretation becomes reality.

Over the years, I’ve come to believe leadership isn’t measured by the message we send. It’s measured by the meaning people receive. That’s a very different standard. Leaders spend enormous amounts of time communicating budgets, priorities, goals and strategy. But people aren’t simply looking for information. They’re trying to answer a different question: “What does this mean for me?” When leaders don’t answer those questions, people answer them for themselves.

That’s where the leadership gap begins. Our minds naturally fill information gaps with assumptions and assumptions are rarely generous. “They don’t trust us.” “They’re hiding something.” “My opinion doesn’t matter.” Whether those conclusions are true is almost beside the point. Once people believe them, they begin behaving as though they are. Trust doesn’t usually disappear overnight. It erodes one assumption at a time.

Maybe the leadership gap isn’t really a communication gap at all. Maybe it’s an interpretation gap. Leadership isn’t simply delivering a message. It’s helping people interpret that message correctly. That requires more than speaking. It requires listening, curiosity and the humility to ask, “Tell me what you heard.” The best leaders I’ve worked with never assume clarity. They confirm it.

Perhaps that’s the real lesson behind the Glassdoor report. Organizations don’t build trust because they have the smartest leaders. They build trust because leaders and employees share the same understanding of where they’re going, why they’re going there and the role each person plays in getting there.

Leadership doesn’t break down because people hear different words.
It breaks down because people assign different meaning to the same words.

The distance between leaders and their teams isn’t measured in miles.
It’s measured in understanding.

Think Big. Make Big Things Happen.

Jeff Schmidt is the SVP of Professional Development. You can reach him at Jeff.Schmidt@RAB.com. You can also connect with him on X, YouTube, and LinkedIn.