Effective communication in the workplace has taken on a whole new meaning in the current reality of hybrid work settings. In a recent survey by The Predictive Index, the number one skill employees feel their manager lacks is communication.
Leaders looking to engage teams and advance corporate objectives need to ensure they are not only being heard, but that their communication motivates, educates, and inspires their teams. Effective leadership communication should be a part of your overall success strategy. Here’s how:
1. Be Strategic
Leaders searching for success strategies to communicate more effectively need to begin with just that – be strategic. This is not to suggest that every conversation must be strategic but communicating for the sake of communicating is not effective. Incessant chatter without being mindful of the objective for the conversation is inefficient. And can even be costly.
In reminds me of a time growing up with “Ma Bell” (as we used to call AT&T’s former self in my household) when my dad got stressed tallying the number of minutes on the landline phone with each month’s bill. AT&T used to have a marketing message that said, “talk is cheap” and I often used it as a comeback line to Dad.
With the digital speed of today’s communication, talk may very well still be cheap in the eyes of many, but purposeful, strategic communication with an end goal in mind will advance you light years towards a core objective.
There needs to be an understanding of where you want to take the conversation or communication. Determine what the goal is for your communication – is your intention to educate, inform, create awareness, or persuade?
2. Listen Twice as Much as you Speak
You may have heard the expression, communication is two-way, which emphasizes the importance of both expressive and receptive communication between individuals in conversation. As leaders strive towards effective communication in the workplace, I recommend considering the “two-way” to mean our two ears. One might suggest we were given two ears and one mouth so that we could listen twice as much as we speak. However, all too often I see leaders creating workplace environments or building relationships that optimize opportunities for individuals to speak or be heard, yet the active listening part of the equation falls short.
Hearing and listening are two different things. While I am not an expert in speech or audiology, I do know that just because you hear speech or sounds, does not mean you are really listening. Listening results in comprehension and leads to understanding.
Leaders can miss the mark on effective communication focusing solely on standing up and speaking. And while that often takes courage in challenging times, gifted leader and orator, Winston Churchill, reminds us that,
“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak,
it’s also what it takes to sit down and listen.”
3. Be Relevant
Whether you are communicating to an audience of one or one hundred, audiences will actively engage in the communication when they feel it is relevant to them. So, what exactly does that mean? Relevant can be defined as appropriate, applicable, and pertinent for the employee listener. Often what they really want to “hear” from a member of the leadership team is, what does this have to do with me? What does it mean to my role or my team?
Making sure what you communicate is timely and relevant becomes even more important when you are communicating to a global audience. Whether you are communicating in writing or verbally, leaders can be more successful as effective communicators when they deliver relevant communication that is mindful of nuanced language that may not cross-over into other cultures.
Relevancy can also be achieved when communication relates or reinforces an overall corporate strategy or revenue objective.
As you wrap up 2021, take some time to assess your past communication. Reflect on where it succeeded and where it fell flat. Ask your high-performance managers and frontline employees. Consider 2022 revenue objectives and team performance indicators and determine where communication could be enhanced. If you have unanswered questions about the effectiveness of your overall leadership communication, schedule a chat with us today.