Leadership Development: Top Communication Skills for Success

Leadership Development: Most Essential Attributes of Effective Communication

One of the important duties for leaders is to ensure that their communication flows smoothly. Leaders’ decisions of how to communicate with the team or other stakeholders can highly influence the workers’ motivation, performance and organizational results. Listed below is a brief description of some of the most important areas that leaders should consider concentrating their efforts on developing.

Active Listening

The third category known as active listening entails, listening to another person beyond the sound that their words create. In essence, it is very important to listen to team members and stakeholders, learn from them and then communicate appropriately. Listening is other way of building trust and rapport between the parties involved. Managers and other organizational leaders need to improve in the following aspects of active listening, that is; repeating what has been said in other words; Asking for more details; and; Non-interference with the flow of the conversation.

Providing Clear Direction

Employees expect their leaders to be able to provide straightforward guidance to the workers. When leaders communicate ineffectively it leads to misunderstandings and lowers morale alongside productivity. The leaders must focus on the articulation of goals and tasks, roles, and accountability,/architectures, standards, target dates, and requirements. It is equally unadvisable to provide either very little or very much direction. Managers should always know how to provide enough detail to a team so they get the message with the instructions they get without having them overrun by micromanagement.

Tailoring Communication

People are very different and so is the way they take information or how they can pass it on. Leaders also consider audience, context and purpose while choosing their communication strategy to use. When engaged with senior managers you require a formal and serious style of communication; in contrast with first-line employees you may seem more friendly and welcoming. They should know their followers and what would interest them most. Since tailoring communication is somewhat challenging, it is paramount when one wants to achieve better engagement and outcomes.

Nonverbal Communication

Nonverbal communication refers to our mannerisms and spoken word differences. Employers often fail to see how effective weak signals really are for gaining employees’ trust. Self-monitoring of these body cues is possible and enables leaders to reign in this dimension of communication. Some of the nonverbal communication that a leader should employ include; making eye contact with the audience, standing straight to face the group, smiling at the right moment and using more open body postures.

Crisis Communication 

In this case, stakeholders depend on the leader to provide some direction and calm in times of adversity. Failure or success in organisational crises depends on how leaders employ their verbal skills when dealing with the events. Leaders should present themselves in strong demeanor in their communication throughout the crisis. By considering how the effects affected those around him the leader bolstered trust in their handling of the situation. In crisis communication we should ensure that it is concise and uncomplicated, timely and accurate, honest and frequent. Those leaders should avoid being tempted to remain mute or merely provide ambiguous information during turbulent periods. Open, positive leadership reduces alertness, and focuses people on the leader.

Feedback Delivery

Affording corrective feedback is one of the major leadership communication activities. According to the EEF findings providing feedback solidifies skill mastery and encourages better performances on the job. Leaders should make feedback always a fire of positivity and make sure it is equal for the employees. More importantly feedback should be precise, illustrative, procedural, solution-focused, questioning oriented, unbiased and transactional. Expert managers partly focus their efforts on learning how to transform negative feedback into positive development. I also learnt that detrimental feedback delivery has negative impact while proficient delivery results in positive impacts.

Public Speaking  

In organizations, employees may have to speak to their fellow workers or the other stakeholders, or in external events mostly in conferences, leaders are often required to speak. Signs of excellent communication within an organization enable leadership to mobilize groups within an organization in relation to the organizational goals and objectives with ease. Leaders are expected to polish speech writing, voice modulation and expression, eye contact, use of gestures, narration, sectioning, use of visuals and practicing. Nets of nervousness and getting closer with the audience result to substantial speeches. This research work reveals that speeches enable leaders to create contexts and frames, advance agendas, coordinate action, and self-promote to become thought leaders.

Writing Skills

Writing is used by leaders in their day to day operations such as in preparing emails, memos, reports or articles. Issues such as disorganization in writing, wrong spelling as well as typing mistakes are very damaging to a leader and they reduce their professionalism. Get a grammar guide, create an editing checklist for yourself, write every day, use templates to format your writing and try different apps. Great writers communicate better through Regular written-wards like emails, vision statements, newsletters, and blog posts. Orchestrated and bright forms of writing correspond to the leaders’ patterns of thought.

Interpersonal Rapport  

While leadership is greatly mediated by communication, individuals skills do translate poorly once they lack interpersonal interaction. Organizational members desire to be witnessed where managers and supervisors actively demonstrating and engaging on the employees’ side. There are task oriented communication and relations oriented communication; leaders should adopt both in their communication. Leadership means meeting people, creating consciousness, valuing details and asking people questions and listening to them as well. These individual relationships lead to interest and commitment as well as productivity. Managers and supervisors must prove to teams and key players that they really do care.

leadership requires fluent communication across a widening spectrum of settings, which is needed in today’s global business environment. Subtle and robust patterns of critical communication enhance modern leadership with cognition distillation, resource synchronization, action encouragement, and culture creation. To master communication however, it needs commitment but rewards are apparent in form of receptive stakeholders, shared visions and organizational accomplishment. More to that, leaders should assess themselves on the communication skills that they possess, and actively practice this art throughout their personal development.