4. Communication
"For millions of years, Man lived just like the animals. Then, something happened... We learned to talk." - Stephen Hawking
Communication is all about sharing ideas among people. Your vision might be the most exciting, the most inspirational and the most meaningful but if people don’t know about it they’re not going to be able to jump on board with you. The final step in adopting your grand vision is to communicate it, so that your followers can see it as clearly as you do.
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Effective leadership isn’t about one-way communication, from you to your followers. If you’re going to lead your people effectively, you need to listen to them, too.
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In fact, listening is more important than speaking. If you really want to understand your people, you must listen to their ideas, their thoughts and opinions, their suggestions, their successes, their struggles, their problems and their complaints. You must seek feedback from them about your performance as their leader, and listen carefully to what they tell you.
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Problems and complaints? Yes, you must listen to those. If your people stop bringing these things to you, they have concluded that either you can’t help them or you don’t care. Either of those is a failure of leadership.
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In all your communications you must seek first to understand, and only then to be understood.
Your communications must be clear, concise and unambiguous, and you must encourage your people to question you if they need more detail or clarification, or if they think they have spotted a flaw. If you’re a smart leader, you went to some trouble to recruit smart people. You’ll remember that none of us is as smart as all of us, and also that none of us has a monopoly on good ideas. Encourage your people to speak up, ask questions and share their thoughts.
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When you have an important message to convey – and what could be more important than your grand vision? – you must make sure you communicate it clearly and often, using different media to bring the point home. When your people start quoting it back to you, you’ll know you’re on the right track.
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Effective communication is a skill that doesn’t come easily to some people, and no matter how good at it you might be, you can always improve. Keep working on it, right through your leadership career.