Hey, it's Rachel Cook, your modern mentor.

I'm the founder of Lead Above Noise, a firm specializing in helping leaders and organizations

fully activate their teams, driving both engagement and performance.

I've been speaking a lot lately, mostly about this concept of fully activating our teams,

not just to engage them, and not just to amp up the results

they deliver, but really to achieve both. Because if we can do one set of things that both

make our teams feel engaged and enable them to perform better, isn't that the biggest win

of all? What I'm realizing is that a lot of leaders seem to think it requires a major organizational

investment or effort to achieve this state. And yes, sometimes those help, but the truth is there's

a lot of impact that a leader at any level can have on their own team, if they understand

which levers to pull and how. And one place where I'm seeing leaders have a huge impact,

it's in their communication.

With just a few small tweaks in the who, what, and how of their communication, I'm watching leaders experience some pretty big wins. Today, I'd love to share just a few of my favorite

communication tips that you can pick up and practice, but only if you'd like your team to be

fully activated. First, give them a why. People don't like to be told what to do. We just don't.

But what do we like? We like contributing to a cause and feeling part of something. Like sometimes

my family will head to a park for a hike or a picnic, but mostly

picnics, and I'll see a sign reminding us not to leave our trash behind. But here's the thing.

Sometimes the sign says something like, littering is prohibited, risk of $250 fine. But other times,

the sign says, help keep our park beautiful.

Please take all trash out with you.

Both messages will get me to clean up.

...