Articles

Q:

Why is the need to communicate effectively so important today for leaders?

A:

Leadership and communication go hand-in-hand. Leaders are in a fishbowl; they’re always “on”. They’re being judged constantly by their peers, direct reports, the Board of Directors, the media, and many others. So knowing who they are, what they want to communicate and being able to communicate clearly and concisely with all these audiences is crucial to surviving and achieving in the fishbowl. Effective leaders must be aware of this.

Q:

How is this different from what leaders faced in the past?

A:

Today information moves faster and people are inundated with it. We’re driven to listen and think in sound bites. Leaders must cut through this information deluge to reach people’s hearts and minds. They’ve got to be much more purposeful and think about how they present their ideas. In their communication, a leader must clearly state the essence of their message immediately to gain their audiences’ attention.

Q:

How does that tie into the leader’s role?

A:

Many executives achieve promotions and greater status because they’re very good at what they do. They get recognized for their abilities, knowledge and technical skills, and sometimes part of the recognition is a promotion. Then they’re in the fishbowl, where they must be more focused on the big picture. Their task becomes to frame the issues in alignment with the big picture, and ask thought provoking questions rather than provide solutions. When they’re not truly communicating, they run the risk of misinterpretation, and a lack of clarity for their team. The good news is that leadership communication skills can be learned.

Q:

How do you work with an executive to build these skills?

A:

We start by exploring three questions:

What makes someone a leader?
What makes a leader an excellent communicator?
What does leadership presence mean?

I ask the person I’m working with to come up with several examples of leaders from their own experience. Then we analyze their choices – what is it about these people that makes them leaders? It becomes evident that the leader is someone who points the direction. It could be on a project, it could be among a group of friends – there are any number of opportunities for leadership.

Earlier, I said that leadership and communication go hand-in-hand. So next we look at different examples of leaders who communicate the essence of their message clearly and with conviction. There are those who are historically significant – Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., Margaret Thatcher – the list goes on and on. Equally important are the leaders the person comes in contact with every day – a company leader, a parent, or a community leader.

Have you ever been in a situation when someone enters a room and you can tell that they have a certain presence? We look at such situations in the executive’s experience and discuss what it is that this person has. We look closely at the qualities and characteristics of how they carry and present themselves, and we begin to put together a picture of leadership presence.

A useful aid to gauging how well leaders present themselves is SCORE^SM, which measures specific attributes of a speaker’s Style, Commitment, Organization, Relevance and Engagement. People who have leadership presence will rate highly in these categories.

Q:

So good leaders are good communicators who present themselves effectively. What’s the most important ingredient to being a good communicator?

A:

Preparation.

Q:

Tell me more.

A:

Remember that leaders are in the fishbowl and are always being judged. When they don’t prepare, they risk sending the wrong messages, or having their audiences misinterpret their messages. When a leader is properly prepared, they are better able to speak confidently and with simplicity and clarity. A leader has to prepare on many levels, which takes time.

Q:

How should a leader prepare?

A:

First, a leader must prepare the content – what is it that they want to say? What is the purpose of the presentation or the discussion? How much detail is really necessary? What is the point that they want the audience to get? How will they confirm that the audience has gotten the point? One executive I work with uses a 10:1 rule – 10 minutes of personal preparation for one minute of presentation – and that’s after the staff has been working for days on the content. He prepares himself thoroughly because he wants to make sure he presents the issues clearly and concisely.

Preparing for the context is also important. What is the climate? Who will be in the audience and what are their expectations and attitudes? What is their level of understanding going in? Is the audience physically present or in remote locations? Is it a large or small audience? Is it a formal or informal setting? Will there be Q&A? These are some of the questions a leader must reflect on as they prepare.

Finally, a leader must prepare as a person. They must connect with their message and make it their own. This is where it all comes together – content, context and person. Certain situations present unique challenges. For example, while working with an executive recently, preparing for a teleconference that was also a Webcast to a global audience, it became important to acknowledge the audience would only be listening. We worked on identifying how she felt about the information because the only thing the audience was going to relate to was her voice. I asked her, “Are you passionate about what you are saying? Do you care?” The audience senses this and reacts to it. It’s important to be aware of how you tune into people and how they tune into you.