How Great Leaders Communicate
You’ve just been promoted into one
of your organization’s Big Jobs. Now you’ve got an impressive office, a hefty
budget and vast expectations about how you will lead dozens or even thousands
of people. Can you stick with the leadership style that brought you this far?
Or do you need to recalibrate your approach, starting with the way you
communicate?
Some fascinating rethinking is under
way on exactly that topic. Scholars such as Harvard Business School’s Boris Groysberg argue that effective leadership no longer
revolves around brilliant speeches and heroic exhortations. (We can call that
the Fidel Castro approach – and it doesn’t work especially well in either
government or mainstream business.) Instead, Groysberg and co-author Michael
Slind argue in their 2012 book “Talk Inc.” that
the higher you go in an organization, the more you must engage other people in
conversations, rather than trying to shout them into submission.
Here are seven ways that the best
leaders increase their effectiveness by the ways they communicate.
1. Bring the vision to
life.
Anyone can write a mission
statement, full of lofty words that sound good. But you aren’t communicating
that vision unless you repeatedly signal how those values translate into
concrete actions. What people learn from your routine decision-making matters far
more than what you pack into your speeches.
Bring your bedrock values
into the daily workplace. Salute other people’s actions that reinforce what you
prize. Call out conduct that doesn’t. And infuse these principles into other
people’s thought patterns by referencing key values as decisions are being
made.
2. Ask smart questions.
In his new book, “To Sell Is Human,” best-selling author Daniel H. Pink cites studies showing
that when you want to persuade someone, questions can be more powerful than
statements. The reason: you engage another person’s heart and mind more
strongly. You get him or her thinking about the ideal answer – and then all the
steps necessary to get there. By being less dogmatic, you let people on your
team build game plans that they believe in, rather than trapping them in a
helpless state until you issue your next command.
3. Take time to read the
room.
Once you’re in senior leadership, you will meet
a lot of outsiders that you hardly know ... but whose support or forbearance is
crucial to your company's success. Do 90% of the talking and it’s tempting to think that you
carried the day . Guess what? If you don’t know what the other party really
wanted, all that bluster was in vain.
Don’t fall prey to the belief that
careful listening is only for the little people in the room. When you listen
carefully, you win people’s trust – and that’s crucial to everything else you
want to accomplish. There’s a maxim in the public speaking business: “The more
your audience talks, the more they think they have learned from you.” Use that
sly insight to your advantage.
4. Create a climate where
things get done.
In any organization, there's a huge
gap between projects that are headed to the finish line, right now -- and ones
that live indefinitely in limbo, hardly moving forward. Which do you prefer? If
you're looking for results, make sure your employees and front-line managers
are repeatedly aware of your top priorities. Help set interim mileposts. Get
roadblocks out of the way. Walk through the areas where specific tasks are
being done. Even a 10-minute visit by the boss conveys the clear and uplifting
message: "This is important."
Be mindful of how many "top
priorities" your organization can handle successfully. Better to win two
big campaigns a year than to stumble in the midst of 20. I've seen ambitious
but unfocused organizations end up with overcrowded agendas that create
internal strife -- with the unpleasant consequences of missed deadlines,
constant changes of directions and ugly battles for resources and recognition.
The higher up you go in an organization, the more important it is for you to
communicate key goals with clarity and brevity.
5. Use stories to get your
points across.
When you’re at the top of an
organization, you can seem pretty distant from the people on the front lines.
Now you’re in a job where it may be impossible to schedule enough face time
with everyone you’d like to influence. One of your best ways to compensate:
sharing teaching anecdotes, so that even people who hardly know you will still
feel they know your human, authentic side.
Just think how you would explain
your week’s battles and goals to a neighbor, a spouse or a college roommate,
and you’ll find the right tone.
6. Be mindful of what you
don’t know.
If your subordinates are any good at
all, you often won’t know the fine-grain details as well as they do. Expect to
be learning constantly on the job. Find ways that your in-house experts can
quietly bring you up to speed on emerging issues that are catching your eye.
You’ve got vital strengths that other people don’t, particularly in terms of
experience, broad perspectives and judgment. As you work toward important
decisions, make sure your remarks and conversations are opening the way for
other people to keep augmenting your knowledge base.
7. Make people feel they
work for a winner.
Can you single-handedly improve your
organization’s morale – in ways that genuinely translate into better
performance and innovation? That’s one of the great mysteries of leadership.
Some executives try smothering their employees in perks. Others praise good
work, hoping that it will lead to greater doings in the future. Still others
scold slackers and kick out the weakest performers, believing that some
situations call for toughness.
All the other six techniques in this
article point toward this final priority. If you’re conveying a clear vision,
asking good questions, setting the right priorities and so on, you’re creating
that winners’ aura that is the ultimate reward for great leadership
communication.
George Anders Contributing Writer at Forbes magazine
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