It’s been a month since Naomi Osaka withdrew from Roland Garros to take care of her mental health. This incident affected me enough, for me to break a year’s hiatus from writing and pen these thoughts down. The reason why this incident affected me so much is the problem she faces is so systemic.

Osaka was doing her job. She was also expected to face the press after each match and answer their questions. Now it is true that communication is an inevitable part of her job which I am sure she is well aware of but in today’s day and age, whether she communicated directly in a press conference or she shared her thoughts post-match in a public statement and published it on her Twitter and Instagram, did it really matter if she was co-branding her comms with the tournament?

If I were to question this situation even further, I would have to ask, in a year where mental health is at rock bottom for the world, why is there this incredible demand on communication from a human being against their will? Is this because we are so used to a culture of over-communication and information overload, that we just cannot see any other way of operating? Is the profit from media coverage so high on a tournament’s priority that they would be willing to sacrifice a player’s well-being?

What happened with Naomi Osaka is happening all around us. In a work environment, we are reframing the problem of low engagement from employees as maybe as an organisation we are not communicating enough. How are we to up-level it?

As a leader, I lose sleep over this topic frequently. Am I communicating enough with clarity to my teams? Are people feeling connected to the information they need to have to do their work well, given we are remote? My personal hypothesis about the current moment is that it is not about under-communication, it’s more about finding ways to deal with information saturation and the need to reclaim our mind space aggressively in order to keep going through this pandemic.

So here’s an approach I have been toying with. What if I become more selective in my communication? What if I prioritised less noise in this moment over decades of outdated wisdom that if you are a leader, you must share your thoughts constantly with others, in the name of being the visionary, flag bearer of your organisational charter. Like Osaka, I know that communication is an important part of my job.

Dialling down on my communication has had a massive upside to my own personal well-being. Quality communication takes time to craft and communicating more and more at the workplace takes time away from the other things I value in life. It takes time away from communicating with my family, dealing with Covid-19 alone in India. It takes time away from learning what’s working in the world that can help me navigate this uncertain time with a more thoughtful and resilient approach. And it takes time away from my own wellbeing. The time I spend away from my phone and laptop, that’s time I can focus on giving my brain some rest.

Now the downsides of trying to minimise my public-facing communication are also not trivial. I have tried this now for a year to know firsthand that this is not the most accepted thing in the corporate world. Last year when I said no to a few conferences that I was not inspired by and I did not want to put out ‘just another talk’ (that I could come up with quite easily), some of the organisers were surprised. After all, the theme of the year was networking and being vibrant remotely!

On the work front, the moment I slowed down some communication, I knew from past experiences that someone was going to ask me to figure out my “communication strategy” as a developmental area.

Now here’s the irony of it all. Covid-19 and this break from the ‘normal way of work’ have really offered me an opportunity to look at my own communication closely and exercise some judgment on when, how, and what I do.

I have noted every month which kinds of public discourse gave me energy and which didn’t. I understand my public communication thesis a lot better than I did the year before and yet, the reduction in my overall volume of communication seems to be the only factor that matters. No one’s asked me about the quality aspect, no one’s asked me about what communicating a little less does for me. This lack of curiosity and the desire to stick to the world as we know it is a most impressive reminder of how hard it is to change existing practices.

So what has this year of cutting down on over-communication led me to:

1. I understand the communication style of my team better

As a manager, one of the most common topics of discussion I have with my team is how much they should go out there and over-communicate their work across teams and time zones. While communicating research comes fairly naturally to me, it is not the same for everyone in my team.

Before 2020, I used to work with researchers to have them identify a communication plan for their projects. I still do that but I have fundamentally asked my team where their communication thresholds stop and why. This has led to interesting learnings around organisational dynamics which I have then been able to focus on fixing rather than stop at step one of let’s all have a comms plan.

It has also enabled me to think more deeply about the extroverts and introverts in the team and how they are coping with work from home and remote communication. I have learnt a lot more about my team’s communication style, once I decided to revisit mine. This has by far been the most interesting thing I learnt as a manager in 2020–21.

2. I am being mindful about who gets the share of my free time

Once the pandemic hit, my professional network was thriving by discovering remote communication. Conferences became more affordable, networking talks were plentiful, podcasts boomed but what we did not talk about was the lack of interaction with people and the sharing of ideas, the things that most often gave me energy as a public speaker.

I spoke at two conferences where we had 100+ people but neither could I see anyone, nor was there an opportunity to network. It was literally like speaking to a blank wall. Get in, speak and get out. I did not want this kind of engagement. Instead, I did a few podcasts. The speakers were prepared, the questions were good and at the end, it felt more connected than the conference scene.

3. I accept feedback on my communication as a part of my performance

I think I will remember 2020–21 as the landmark years when I got comfortable with my communication style. Communication is a touchy subject for a lot of people. It has a lot of socio-political baggage that drives how women get more of this feedback. When I was given communication related feedback in the past, my strategy was to double down and over-communicate, so that in six months, the issue was a non-issue.

This time around, I feel a lot better about where I stand. I have taken the discussion on board and I have shared back with my manager, why my communication plan focuses on cutting down on the noise and what I will do to ensure the high quality signals are always available. And if there are still consequences of my choice, then I shall own it.

I have learnt that I need to craft a communication plan that works for me. And as an introvert, over-communication is never going to be my forte. Rather, I hope the quality of what I have to say will matter. If that means I am still less ‘visible’ than my peers then I am ok. I do not have any interest in actively contributing to the circus of over-communication.

4. I made space for communicating something I love

By rigorously choosing where and how I show up in public communication, I have now been able to bring alive two things I love- reading books and practicing critiquing. The number of hours in life are finite and I have chosen to lean in and practice my own critical thinking. By creating a bookstagram account, I was able to connect with book lovers from around the world, develop a sense of appreciation for what people ten years younger than me are up to and have massively diversified what I read. I cannot but appreciate the comfort this outlay has provided me in a year of being at home.

Reflecting back on my year long journey of taking a step back from over-communication to creating more empty space in my life and eventually communicating things I love, I realise how we over-communicate in today’s world, has a direct impact on one’s well being and sense of self.

It is not an easy discussion to have with your boss. It is not an easy decision to walk away from networking opportunities when we all know that these things matter.

And yet, some of us are dialling it down, to represent what communicating intentionally and communicating less, can lead us to. I believe it is possible to be professional and lead mindfully without filling up a team’s inbox with umpteenth communiques.

Whether the world of work will accept this dialling down, that’s yet to be seen. Check in with me in a year and we will see if it worked for me. But here’s to a start. Here’s to Naomi Osaka for not letting anyone else define how she needed to show up and communicate in a professional context. Here’s to all of us who are trying to prioritise mental wellbeing and silence over noise.

Image Courtesy:

Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash

Photo by Kasya Shahovskaya on Unsplash

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