Few beings are as intuitive as young children who sense a misalignment between two parents and their approach to handling a situation that may (or may not) require discipline. Their intuition, just like any organization’s intuition, penetrates like water into a perceived crack in parenting styles, waiting to do damage over time.
In northern New England, we know all too well the impact of water seeping into a crack and then unleashing damage over time. Yellow signs adorn the sides of the road this time of year that read “Frost Heaves”. For those non-New Englanders, frost heaves form in the road where cracks in the asphalt allow water to seep underground, and then as temperatures freeze and thaw in rapid succession during late winter, mounds erupt that can test even the best of vehicular suspensions. They are disruptive and can jar you when you are least expecting it, and while no road is immune, those that are less well cared for can quickly become an unexpected mogul course.
From an organizational leadership perspective, misalignment in messaging may start as a crack, but can quickly evolve into an institutional frost heave. Any one misalignment may not cause a significant issue, but over time, when leadership, Board of Trustees/Directors, and constituents lack alignment, the trust capital you have worked so hard to build over years quickly erodes into a messy, bumpy landscape.
Trust and the building of trust capital with constituents sits at both the heart of every communication strategy and at the core of effective leadership. In order to build trust capital, to avoid the metaphorical cracks in our road, we must work intentionally toward alignment in our messaging as leaders, in the content our organization produces, and the experiences of our constituents. Our overarching strategy must feed the actual experiences our constituents have which must feed the external messaging, which, in turn, feeds the trust our organizations build with all those who come in contact with us.
When we drop the ball on one of these links, when we fail to focus on our alignment and risk fissures forming, water getting in, and future challenges emerging. Trust in our organization builds momentum and provides us organizational grace when a crisis hits. Compromising that trust through misaligned or inconsistent messaging puts even the best organizations at risk. Spend time sealing your cracks. You won’t be sorry.
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