Leadership: Be a clear communicator

Columns / 13 October 2011

Communication is vital to effective leadership, say Jeff Grout and Liz Fisher – but so is the ability to listen

If you ask leaders what they do all day, you’ll get some interesting answers. A few would say that if they have done their job properly, they actually do very little on a day-to-day basis. What they mean is that their organisation is in such great shape that everyone knows what they have to do, and are left to do it. The leader’s role, if all goes well, is like the conductor of an orchestra – keeping everyone on track and in time, with minimum visible effort.

But that’s nirvana. Even in the best organisations, leaders are doing a lot even if it appears otherwise. Everything a leader says and does has an impact on the people around them. The livelihood and ambitions of employees depend on decisions made by their leader, which means staff listen to and watch them closely. In other words, the way in which leaders communicate with their followers – through direct and indirect communication, both verbal and physical – underpins everything they do and how they are perceived. And yet many consistently fail to pay enough time or attention to the way they communicate.

The leader is responsible for setting the vision for their company, and for communicating that vision. That in itself is an enormous task. If a leader is introducing change into an organisation, the most important task is to communicate the reasons for this change, the way it will be achieved and the benefits it will bring. If the leader fails to relay this effectively, the initiative is bound to fail.

It’s all talk

But every organisation also runs on more mundane (but no less important) communication. The big decisions underpin a business, but it is the small, everyday actions that ensure these big decisions are successfully followed through. Martin Johnson, former captain (and now coach) of the England rugby team, describes these two types of communication as “big talk” and “little talk”.

We are looking for more than just competence from a leader. We want credibility and integrity. We want to respect them and, preferably, like them. When a leader’s credibility is damaged, followers lose trust in them and begin to doubt the quality of their decision-making. Once this happens, the leader’s days are numbered.

Jeff Grout

“Little talk,” as he puts it, “makes the big talk happen.” This means giving direction and encouragement, but also reassurance and praise. Often, the biggest sapper of morale in an organisation is the absence of a “thank you” or “well done” from senior management.

It sounds simple, but communication is a complicated beast. The management writer and consultant John Kotter once made the point that “a message is not necessarily accepted just because it is understood”. Modern leadership is all about persuasion, and that means it’s not enough to tell your people to do something – they must have faith in you as a leader if they are going to obey. This phenomenon is seen most clearly in politics.

Invariably it is the most persuasive, likeable or believable candidate who comes out on top, sometimes irrespective of their policies. Campaigners are keen to show us the human being behind the politician, hence the wooing of Mumsnet and discussions about favourite biscuits.

We are looking for more than just competence from a leader. We want credibility and integrity. We want to respect them and, preferably, like them. When a leader’s credibility is damaged, followers lose trust in them and begin to doubt the quality of their decision-making. Once this happens, the leader’s days are numbered.

Credibility depends largely on the perception of the leader’s honesty, and the consistency of their words and actions. Most business leaders would argue that honesty is usually the best policy, simply because in the world of the internet, people are perfectly capable of finding out the truth for themselves.

In fact, technology has made the lives of leaders far more difficult when it comes to communication. Email is a notoriously difficult conduit to master – it allows a leader to communicate with a large number of people simultaneously, but it is also anonymous and must compete with dozens of other messages, some of them far more interesting (such as the latest office gossip).

Perhaps the most important point to remember is that communication is a two-way street. The words and phrases that management tend to use in describing their communications strategy – informing, cascading, briefing – betray the view that many leaders see it as a strictly one-way process. This is why it is relatively easy for a leader to become isolated from reality – one of the biggest risks once you reach the top is that people will tell you what they think you want to hear, and not what they actually mean.

The simple truth is that a leader is far more likely to earn the trust, respect and loyalty of their staff if they pay attention to what these employees have to say. Leaders should listen before they earn the right to be heard.

Jeff Grout is an independent business consultant, specialising in leadership. Liz Fisher is an experienced business journalist. They are the authors of What You Need to Know About Leadership, published by Capstone