Communication Networking

Question of the Week

Kirsten Wolberg

11.08.21

Over her many leadership roles, Kirsten Wolberg has learned that leadership extends beyond knowing your employees by their business skills and personas. Here, she shares her approach to crafting real relationships with her employees, and why it's so important to do so.

Summary:

Over her many leadership roles, Kirsten Wolberg has learned that leadership extends beyond knowing your employees by their business skills and personas. Here, she shares her approach to crafting real relationships with her employees, and why it’s so important to do so.

Thuy

So as a leader, what consistent actions do you take to consistently improve team communication?
Kirsten_Wolberg

Kirsten Wolberg

So, I've said this a couple of times, because it's so important and so vital, and that is communication comes down to relationship. You really have to build relationship to communicate well. So, I do things that people think are silly but I've been doing it for years. In my staff meetings with my team. I open every staff meeting with a question of the week. And the question of the week is never business related. It's always like, what was your first job? What was your nickname as a child? What is your birth order? So, these are kind of good questions. People start to get to know each other as their full selves, not just the persona that they have in the work environment. And that building of relationship has been critical to my teams being able to communicate with each other about hard things. And connect with each other about hard things and relate to individuals about hard things. And learn about other cultures because of how we're answering questions. And so I think that aspect of communication and keeping the relationship at the center of the communication is really, really important.