Communication is Critical to Leadership

Have you ever seen a native English speaker talking to someone who doesn’t speak English well? They just keep raising their voice and raising their voice and it doesn’t help at all. It doesn’t help at all because it’s not a volume problem; it’s a comprehension problem.

Or have you ever sat through a long, rambling presentation without a clear point that loses the audience? 

Or, on the flip side, have you worked with somebody so bombastic and over-confident that everyone is immediately turned off? 

Have you ever been so bored listening to someone that you really just tuned out completely? Nothing they said made any difference to you.

Those examples are common examples of failed communication. What made them failures? 

In each of those examples, nothing was achieved. Nothing changed. There was no impact – other than, perhaps, that you felt annoyed afterward.

Why do we communicate and why is it so important?

We communicate because it amplifies and expands impact. We can do more when we collaborate with and listen to others – when people are bought into our vision and understand how to participate in our plan; when they can problem-solve alongside us and offer new ideas.

We communicate because, if we don’t, people assume the worst. People fill in the blanks with bad stuff, not good stuff. You know this is true. You’ve probably done it. We all have.

It’s hard to communicate bad news, but no news is worse than bad news.

We communicate because, when someone hears something new, they need to hear it 7-10 times for it to sink in. So you can’t just say something once and assume they’ve got it. You need to communicate over and over again, in a variety of different ways, so that they will actually understand it.

We communicate because it builds credibility over time. People need to hear from you all the time so that they can trust you and what you say when times are tough.

In other words, we communicate because it’s an incredibly important part of leadership. As a leader, your job is to challenge the status quo and to solve problems. To do that, you need to amplify and expand your impact. You need to mobilize people around your cause – which means understanding them and getting them excited about the good stuff. It means bringing them along with you. You need credibility when the going gets tough. 

You have to constantly remind yourself of those things because it’s easy to put your head down and focus on the work in front of you. It’s tempting. Other people are less predictable. Sometimes, they’re less reliable. So when something is hard, it can be tempting to say, “I’ll just do it myself” or: “They don’t need to understand why – they just need to do what I’m asking.” We’ve all been there.

That may work for a little while, but it’s not sustainable in the long run. It’s not sustainable if you want to solve problems, lead, and change the order of things for the better. You have to collaborate and therefore, you have to communicate.

Communication is critical to leadership. Over the next few weeks, this newsletter will focus on strategies that you can implement now to communicate more effectively.

Download the first part of Carly’s EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATIONS WORKBOOK