5 ways great leaders communicate

You better not skip number 4

Having the world’s next best idea is great, but if you can't get others on board you won’t get far. That's why the best leaders in the game don't brush off communication as a "soft skill" anymore.

The greatest CEOs, founders and leaders consistently practice and improve their skills in every area of communication - writing, talking, presenting — always looking to up their game.

We’re not born great communicators, we must learn and practice.

So today we’re going through the 5 ways great leaders communicate, so you can be great too.

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5 ways to Communicate Like a Leader

Each one has an action tied to it, let me know in the comments which you’ll be working on this week

1) Active listening

Even being super intentional about active listening, I still struggle with it to this day.

It’s so easy for our minds to wander, or for us to start thinking about what we want to say next. But when this happens, we miss really hearing what our team are saying.

Real leaders focus, hear and seek to understand.

Some tips that I’ve found really handy over the years:

• Write things down - even when you’re in a casual conversation, have your pen at the ready, this helps with memory coding.

• Don’t take your laptop or phone into meetings (ever) - No you won’t miss an important notification. This helps to keep you wholly focused on the conversation at hand.

• Be curious - Ask more questions to get to the real truth of what this person is trying to say to you, or to understand their idea/opinion deeper.

2) Always do what you say you’re going to do

The best leaders have trust behind their words, trust that has been built up over months and years of their words being reliable.

But always doing what you say you’re doing isn’t about simply following through on promises, it’s:

• Saying no when you’re unsure you can deliver

• Pushing back on un-realistic deadlines for you and your team

• Having a high level of organisation; if you verbally commit to something, best know you’re writing it down and not forgetting

• If a deadline or commitment is coming up that you’re not going to hit, communicate it to other stakeholders. Give them an update (before the deadline), don’t just hope people have forgotten.

3) Practice the confidence in your voice

Very few of us are born with natural confidence in our own voice, especially in a leadership setting

But we are lucky to be born into a working world where our ‘voice’ is rarely transmitted in real-time, but instead is over Slack, email, social media etc

So start to practice having confidence in your written voice first. A few tips:

• Remove the word ‘just’ (this belittles whatever comes after it)

• We can often remove ‘I think’ or ‘I believe’ - We know you think or believe this thing, that’s why you’re saying it. Using those words often just dampens the impact.

• Just before you hit send, can you get your word count down to 50%? We so often fluff out what we’re trying to say with un-important words to make it land lighter. This isn’t necessary, every time I write this newsletter, I write It up freely, then go back through and try to reduce the word count by 50%.

• Stop apologising. Truly, please. Stop. Your apologies are sacred and should be saved for when you truly mean it. Not for when you just take 24hrs longer than usual to reply to John in accounts (He probably didn’t want you to reply anyway).
  The more you say sorry, the less meaning it holds in your mouth.

Once you start practicing these things in your written comms, you’ll naturally start to become more intentional about it in your spoken comms too.

4) Shut up

I couldn’t think of a lighter title hehe woops - But it needed to be said. And you better not skip this one.

Us humans absolutely love to:

• Fill awkward silences

• Get our opinion in thinking it’ll make us look smart

• Jump in to fix problems

• Respond to messages really fast

None of these are helpful, and none help you build leadership-style communication.

What leaders do instead:

• Say ‘I don’t know’ alot - We trust those who say ‘I don’t know’ much more than those who seem to have all the answers

• You don’t always have to have an opinion, let others take the floor and just listen

• Sit in the awkward silence

• Turn off your notifications, slow down responses

5) Be inspiring (it’s not as hard as you think)

Being inspiring in your communication isn’t as hard as you think, but I’m not going to do it justice here - I wrote a whole other blog post on it a few months back

Summary

Be intentional about your communication, your word is powerful

Peace,

H