Communicating As A Leader

Leaders Must Take Time To Clearly Communicate With Their Team and Team Members 

Communicating is at the heart of leadership. Almost by definition great leaders are great communicators. In fact, I cannot think of any great leaders who were poor communicators.

For many years being great at leadership communication was thought to be a function of using the right words, exhibiting the right passions, and delivering one’s message in a strong, forceful manner. And while that approach worked pretty well in the old command and control generation of leadership, there is a whole lot more today to being a great communicator.

The number one communication goal for any leader is to create a Clear Line of Sight for all team members. This means ensuring that each team member knows how their individual work contributes to the team’s goals, and how this in turn contributes to the organization’s key objectives and strategies.

Some people interpret a Clear Line of Sight to mean ensuring that there is clarity on goals, objectives, tasks, and procedures. I take this a step further and say that a Clear Line of Sight communication must ensure that there is no chance of any misunderstanding on goals, objectives, tasks, and procedures. This puts the onus on the leader to not only ensure that his or her message is clearly delivered, but also that it has been clearly received and understood.

If your internal communication with your teams and people is not good, and by that I mean clear and concise, then your external communication (either outside your department or outside your organization) will likely end up being centered on rationalizing and explaining negative outcomes and events.

A leader cannot be muddled and disorganized when communicating within his or her organization and expect to be a clear and focused communicator outside it.

Leaders must take time to clearly communicate with their teams and team members.

Kindly share examples you have of leaders who have been great communications in the comments box below. Thanks!

This article is excerpted from my book Great Leadership Words of Wisdom, which is available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle formats and has over 1000 quotes on leadership from global business leaders, statesmen, athletes, coaches, sages, and philosophers.