Welcome to another beautiful Monday and another exciting new week!
We couldn’t publish our Mondy leadership article last week because I found myself in a very, very, very bad spot. Really.
I got stuck with an ugly project that sucked away all my time, and at the end of the day, it turned out to be, well. That’s a long story for another day.
Continuing in our leadership series.
The week before last, we discussed resilience in leadership and established key differences between determination and resilience. Read it here.
Today, we’ll be exploring the power of effective communication in leadership.
Master Your Message
Before delving into effective communication in leadership, we as leaders must fully grasp our message before we communicate it to those around us and our followers.
You must fully understand your team or company’s goals and vision before communicating them with the team or those around you.
If your message concerns a new project, ensure you understand its goals, objectives, and potential challenges before communicating it to your team.
The leaders’ first duty is to deeply and wholly understand their purpose and goals. If they don’t understand their purpose and message, passing it on to others would be difficult or impossible; besides, how can you communicate what you don’t even understand?
This is one of the biggest hidden problems of leadership. Most leaders don’t understand their message and purpose; if you don’t understand your purpose, you can’t pull others along to understand what you don’t understand.
The first step in leadership communication is understanding your message before attempting to communicate it with others.
Understand your personal message as a leader, and understand the corporate message of your business or organisation before you communicate it. This understanding is not just a task; it’s a responsibility that connects you deeply with your team’s vision and your team.
Communicating With Your Team
Now that you’ve got a firm grasp of your personal message as a leader and the corporate message, it’s time to start working to ensure that everyone on the team is on the same page and understands the team’s goals, vision, mission, strategies and plans.
Don’t assume everyone on the team knows or understands the fundamental principles that guide and hold your team together.
Most leaders make this mistake and assume everyone on the team has the same understanding of where the team is going. So, leaders become confused when there is friction of purpose and when team members are looking in a different direction instead of looking at the team’s direction.
They begin to wonder, and most times, they become worried.
“I thought we all knew where we were going?“
The vision in your head will not just transfer by diffusion to the heads of those you are leading.
You can’t assume they know or understand and are thinking on the same wavelength as you are.
When we discussed the definition of leadership, I mentioned that leadership is a relationship between the leader, the followers, and the vision, and for any relationship to grow and fulfil its purpose, there must be clear communication.
Communication must flow freely from the leader to the people and from the people to the leader as everyone grows towards the vision.
Listening is a vital element of communication. We already discussed listening in leadership—read it here. There is no communication without effective listening.
The leader must listen to the people, and the people must listen to the leader. It’s through listening that we understand ourselves.
If more leaders listen, it will be easier to gauge and understand what the followers know.
If more followers listened to their leaders, they would be able to understand what is in the leader’s heart.
Don’t Play The Assumption Game
Assumptions will cost you a lot. You must be sure of everything you do as a leader, especially when it comes to understanding the people you are leading.
Don’t assume they:
- Understand a new project.
- Understand a new decision.
- Understand a new team direction.
- Understand the steps you’re taking.
- Understand a new vision, mission or goal.
Always bend down to listen to them and ensure they understand you. You can only do this if you communicate effectively. One way to ensure understanding is to encourage feedback and questions from your team members. This will help you gauge their comprehension and address any misunderstandings.
There’s so much power in communication. A great idea or vision in the hands of a leader who doesn’t understand the importance of communication will not live to its full potential.
Poor communication can lead to misunderstandings, lack of alignment, and ultimately, failure to achieve the team’s goals.
All successful leaders who champion great teams to success understand the importance of communication. They know how to lead the team along.
One team member who doesn’t understand a team’s journey can derail the whole team’s progress.
Is There Anything Like Overcommunication?
No. There isn’t. In fact, leaders in this ultra-modern tech-harassed world are advised to “overcommunicate” because it’s easy for people to forget things in the midst of tech and media background noise. This vigilance in “over-communication” is what keeps your team on track and focused.
Hold quick meetings whenever you can. Hold individual meetings with key team members (I love to do this).
Always ensure that you are literally pushing company vision and goals down the throats of team members.
If you don’t and feel everything is ok, with time, you’ll begin to observe a natural dullness.
It’s natural.
The screen of vision can get blurred.
It’s like driving your car in the rain. Your wipers need to keep working to keep your windscreen clear. If they don’t, your sight will be obscured, and you won’t be able to see the road clearly.
Leaders are like the wipers in a car. They constantly keep the windscreen clear of obstacles or anything that will blur the team’s vision.
Teams get tired and weak. It’s normal. This is the reason why the leader must have the deepest understanding of the vision and be at the front, motivating and inspiring the team.
How? By communicating with them, you can actively engage and reignite their motivation.
Obsess Over Communication!
Oh, yes. It’s that serious! You need to practically obsess over communication, whether you’re leading a small team like mine or a large global team.
Communication is the hidden foundation of strong leadership.
Successful leaders understand the importance of investing in communication structures and systems.
The success of any team or vision depends on how much importance is placed on communication.
What Should I Communicate With My Team?
Finally, in this section, we will briefly discuss the important things leaders must communicate with their teams.
Communicate The Vision
Everyone on the team must know, understand and master the vision. As the leader of any team, this is your first and primary assignment.
Personally, I have struggled with this aspect of leadership, and as I write and study more about leadership, I am also learning new things.
I used to think that if the idea or vision is great and exciting, team members should naturally understand. I was wrong.
There were team members who didn’t even know what we were doing but nodded in meetings and just carried out tasks without understanding the vision. This lack of understanding will always show in the type of work they produce.
Do this small assignment with your team. Ask them individually or during a meeting what your organisation’s vision is.
You’d be amazed at the answers you’d get.
Communicate Major Plans And Strategies
Always communicate major plans and strategies with the team and ensure they all understand where the team is headed. If someone doesn’t understand, you must take the time to explain it to them personally.
Don’t assume that they’ll catch up. Most people don’t have that big motivation to grow personally in a team’s vision; they want to be told what to do and why they should do it.
One person who doesn’t understand major directions and plans can be a sore point in the team.
Communicate The Good, Bad And Ugly Stuff
While it’s important to communicate team vision and strategy, it’s also important to communicate other things happening in the team.
The good things, the bad and the ugly, especially the bad and ugly. If you discover something isn’t going quite well, make haste to correct it by communicating with the party or parties involved.
Never assume they know what they are doing is wrong; if you do this, you might ultimately cause more harm.
Address negative and ugly issues right away and communicate satisfaction, too. If a team member did well, communicate it to them. Let them know that what they did was good while you encourage and inspire them to do better, pointing out areas they can improve.
Listen To Your Team Members—Communicate Feedback
Remember that communication is a two-way affair and not just about you dishing out directives. Communication is not complete if you’ve not heard back from the team.
Feedback is vital in communication. It helps you evaluate the effectiveness of communication.
If you’ve not been practising feedback, try it today. You’ll discover that not everyone processes your messages the same way.
Some need more explanation, while others may perceive it differently. Feedback enables you to fine-tune your communication to meet the needs of everyone on your team.
Practical Steps To Improve Communication Within Your Team
Here are some practical steps to improve communication within your team as a leader
- Share The Vision Everywhere: Make the vision bold in all internal team communications—WhatsApp groups, emails, texts—everywhere. Repeat it until it becomes part of the team’s culture. In meetings, repeat the vision or plans, strategies, and culture. Keep saying it! Don’t stop until it becomes second nature.
- Know Team Members Beyond Just Meetings: This is hard to do but worth it. The leader needs to reach out even if no one is reaching out to them. I make it part of my assignments to try and know the people I lead beyond the corporate and formal environment. It gives you strong connections with them, especially key leaders, and makes communication easier and more effective.
- Use Every Form Of Communication Possible: Team meetings, WhatsApp discussions, voice notes, short videos, blogs, etc. Just keep communicating. Remember, it’s not too much, and you can never “overcommunicate.”
- Everybody On The Team Must Be On The Same Page. Organise practical sessions where you strive to understand what every member of your team understands about the team vision or important strategies and plans. The feedback you get will direct your actions, whether to strengthen the team’s understanding of the vision or plans or completely overhaul their understanding.
- Engage Your Team In Practical Sessions: Attend communication workshops with your team members. Listen to podcasts, read resources and books about team communication and share insights on how to improve. Here is one magical practice most teams neglect. Why do you think leading global companies spend so much on leadership consultants, workshops, and resources? They know how important it is to invest in their teams. An inspired and motivated team makes it easy for organisational goals to be achieved.
And that’s it for today.
What lessons have you learned today?
Here are the central insights in this article:
- You need to understand the message yourself!
- Never assume everyone knows!
- You cannot overcommunicate!
- Communicate the right things!
- Be practical and intentional about improving communication within your team.
Next week, we will discuss “servant leadership”—an exciting aspect of leadership and the trait that differentiates great leaders from ordinary ones.
Catch you next week!
Have a productive week!
