Communicative competence for leadership

John Samuel

?Leadership Lessons - 13

Communication, to a large extent, is about communion. Communion is about sharing emotions, ideas and knowledge. Communions and communications happen in communities.

One of the most important leadership skills is the ability to communicate clearly, convincingly with an ability to inspire the community for action. The notion of community may change depending on the language or a particular profession or a particular context.

This also means the mode and manner of communications will change. For example, the language, words, tone and emotions used to communicate to a grassroots community will be very different from doing a communicative exercise in an academic community.

Because, even when we speak the same language, each of those communities have a particular meaning for a particular word or phrase. For example, if you are speaking to the CEOs of major companies, their language will include 'Return on Investment' , 'investment' opportunities, market and the terms and phrases they use ( in Linguistics - they are called 'registers').

Most of the academic disciplines will have their favored concepts or jargon. In an academic community of social scientists, if you use the term 'paradigm shift' it has a specific meaning. But if you are speaking to a group young people, it may look like a 'big word' that they don't understand.

The purpose of leadership communication is make audience understand and appreciate an idea or a concept or a proposal or a sense of vision or mission.

This also requires an ability to understand an audience, their experience, the language they use, the culture of the place and what they want to hear.

People with multi-dimensional communicative competence and skills will be able to talk to a people with hardly any education and at the same time to the most educated people in the world or to the policy makers or to the media.

Communication is an attitude

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Communication is not merely about the choice of words, or the tone or manner of speaking.

Communication is also about attitude. it is an attitude of being alert, an attitude to listen, an attitude of power and an attitude towards the people who listen to you or observe you. Because our own internal attitude determines the choice of words, our tone and manner of communication.

Every word is important. Because in every word, there is a world.

It is often the words that make you or unmake you. Sometimes a wrong word can cost you a relationship of a life time. A wrong word can change the way people perceive you.

The meaning of the same expressions in a different cultural context can have an entirely opposite effect. For example 'cattle -class' is a usual slang in English in UK or USA. But when Shashi Tharoor used the term in India, people understood in a very different manner. So the choice of the words and tone also will be dependent on the context, culture and the audience.

In leadership communications, the quality of content is as important as the form of communication. A good leadership communication requires home work, reading and preparations.

(To be continued.)