How do you effectively communicate with other leaders?

Purposeful, clear, concise communication is imperative to ensure effective communication. Active listening allows for each person to gain an understanding rather than listening to respond. Practicing the “PAUSE” after listening allows you to formulate your thoughts and process what you’ve heard to offer a response. One thing that I’ve found helpful is using an agenda whenever possible to guide the conversation. This allows you to be clear about the topic and respectful of time. It also highlight actionable items and deadline dates. Be approachable and create a safe space for honest feedback. You may learn your leaders’ concerns, and challenges to be able to assist and provide guidance thus building a trusting, supportive relationship.

Imagine your a Harbor pilot or Navigator and everyone who comes to you are a ship or vessel seeking your service to enter an unfamiliar harbor in life. How you talk to an Admiral or General presenting your view on a project is not the same as talking to an engaged couple getting ready to get married and you're their photographer, or coaching a college grad or retiring Chief or Sargent Major about their finances. You got to know the waters you're threading through water channels in life, as you pilot your passengers (your clients, your prospects, your partners, and especially your family). Your knowledge and experience will give confidence to your passengers that you're guiding them in the right direction in their lives or work.

In today’s business landscape, effective communication with other leaders is vital. Here are some key strategies to enhance it that I have learned in my experience: 1. Active Listening: Understand and acknowledge perspectives, fostering respect and collaboration. 2. Clear & Concise Messaging: Be brief, clear, and relevant to capture attention and engagement. 3. Emotional Intelligence: Connect on a deeper level, validating emotions and fostering trust. Be human, and realize that the information you may be presenting or collaborating on can be perceived in different ways by different people. Learning to enhance your power in executing these strategies empowers leaders to build strong connections, promote collaboration, and drive success.

A balance of empathy and objectivity is important when communicating with other leaders. We often come at challenges from differing perspectives, and sometimes those can clash. Understanding that it is not personal and that the other leader's perspective may enrich the overall context for the solution is imperative. Famous quote: "Never let your ego be so close to your position such that if you lose your position, the ego goes with it." Listen to understand, not to respond. All too often, in order to actively engage in the conversation, we jump in with a related anecdote to show commonality. Actively listen. Take notes. Formulate a clear, concise--and appropriate--response.

Knowing your audience and meeting them where they are is so valuable in any situation with anyone. Active listening and understanding are crucial to the communication process.

I have found simplicity in communication is best. If the topic is something they are unfamiliar with or is in relation to a task that is causing high stress your messaging can be lost. Keep communication clear and concise and as they begin to understand what you are trying to convey opportunities to go in depth will present itself. I have found that keeping it simple also allows those you are communicating with to seek out information which just help create better dynamics within your leadership team.

It's fashionable these days to champion concise communication, but that principle can be carried too far depending on the context and situation. I agree that communicating at scale requires keeping ideas as simple and concise as possible, repeating those ideas frequently, and enabling others to act as repeaters of key messages. But if the objective is to persuade or influence others to become champions of a concept or to educate on a key idea at a smaller scale, it's important to include detail, expose complexity, and reveal the full texture and terrain of what's being discussed. A pitfall I have seen in operations is to make communication so concise that the actual meaning of the idea is lost as it ripples through the organization.

The need for concision is entirely contextual--a lesson I learned in Senior Military Education. Your audience may prefer a more elaborate response...perhaps to answer as many questions up front as possible in order to provide more time for debate of the merits. However, when dealing with your boss...or your boss's boss, effectiveness and efficiency go hand in hand. Your bosses know the business. Mental shortcuts are entirely appropriate in those cases, and will engender trust from those leaders--they know that you know the business, and they know that you know they know the business. Now they can get to "the brass tacks" and make the strategic decisions for which they are paid.

One of the greatest mistakes that can be made in the listen-respond cycle is to know what you are going to say in the middle of someone else talking and just waiting for them to finish. This cycle leads to each side speaking their mind and mostly ignoring the other. Instead, employ active listening: Ask powerful questions to get a deeper understanding of what they are saying and truly hear what they respond with. Once you understand their points, then you can offer your own. To sum it up, approach each conversation with respect for what the other leader brings to the table.

Listen without thinking about your response. Easier said than done. Really hear their message and ask questions for clarification. By asking questions you are not only validating their thoughts you are also gaining insight into their world.

This starts with intellectual humility. You should be asking questions and listening actively not just for the sake of making your audience feel valued and included. It should be because you are genuinely curious to harvest their input. On a given issue, take a bit of time to understand what you understand confidently, what you feel presumptively confident about but would like to test with the views of others, and where you have genuine ambiguity and need help to resolve it. Leaders make the mistake of wanting to project decisiveness and resolve by appearing to be cleverer than everyone else; a little humility goes a long way in building endearment and admiration in a relationship, but also produces better communication 100% of the time.

Listen to understand, not to respond. If you fully understand the points being made, the response is far more useful in furthering the conversation.

Each and every person communicates and understands in a different way. By actively listening and studying their words and body language, you can adapt and react in a way that will literally ‘speak their language’ By mirroring their words, language and mannerisms you will not only be able to reach them with your message more effectively but also be able to collaborate more efficiently.

Relationship between management and employee is a major factor that can affect the communication. We have to be careful here not to cross any boundaries or expectations that could be set a perceived barrier or expectation.

Something to watch out for here is the role of time compression. Fast-paced organizations have a tendency to think of time as something to be filled and exploited to get things done. This is natural and valuable, but it compresses communication into "efficient" spaces. If every communication you undertake is transactional and time-constrained, you will likely not succeed in building genuine relationships. It's super difficult to do, but endeavour to leave some of your time unspoken for ... block it and use it to engage in idle conversations that don't necessarily have to do with business. Relationships, real ones, are free-flowing and take their own shape. They end up very limited when totally shaped by official business.

Having empathy and actually caring goes a long way in this digital world. Bringing in the human components of feelings and emotions you will always be able to create lasting relationships with open communication.

Leaders should crave frank and timely feedback--from their superiors and especially their team members. Nothing kills growth faster than "shooting the messenger." Always, always, always empower your team to provide both positive and negative feedback--and act on it. A team that communicates effectively excels...and it is completely on the leader to nurture an environment where the team knows (as opposed to feels) they can be open and honest with the boss.

Holding a mirror up isn’t always easy and having the right approach is crucial. Constructive and productive feedback can improve relationships and create an amazing workplace and team environment. Using empathy to understand where they are will help you construct the feedback to match. Some will want direct and some will need a softer approach. This is why building relationships is so important for positive communication!

Leaders in organizations will determine how proficiently people communicate as they grow and develop. Take advantage of the influence inherent in a leadership role to actively teach, model, monitor, and regulate communication in your teams. Challenge everyone to continually improve in this core skill, which is foundational to everything else we do but is something we tend to presume just happens. In my most senior roles, I spent a good bit of my time studying how my people were communicating with one another and distilling opportunities to illustrate where a preventable misfire occurred and how we could improve. My experience is that when teams are communicating effectively, delivery and results are superior and sense of belonging grows.

Leading a group of your peers can be one of the most difficult and awkward situations that an individual can encounter. In a traditional setting, the leader is immediately distinguished from their followers by their direct authority over them, but when you are all peers, that distinctive separation is nonexistent. Paradoxically, while the peer leadership scenario occurs daily within every organization, it remains largely overlooked in the world of professional leadership development. And this creates a situation that I affectionately refer to as “Musical Chairs”. “Musical Chairs” happens when there is not a distinct leadership structure and individuals are jostling for position or a chair at the decision-making table.