“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” Attributed to George Bernard Shaw, this is one of the most quoted statements about communication and one of the most accurate. The importance of effective communication for leaders cannot be underestimated.
So, I asked several skilled and experienced communication professionals—filmmakers, storytellers, PR professionals, corporate communications specialists and more from a variety of backgrounds including freelance, consultancy, higher education, manufacturing and humanitarian—what advice they would offer leaders and aspiring leaders on effective communication.
The interviews took place over a couple of weeks. The purpose: to create a series of recorded interviews to include as part of the Communication for Leaders unit in Avondale University’s MBA program. I’ve found including the voices of practitioners helps MBA students contextualise and apply the principles and ideas they’re learning, making their learning practical and relevant.
Three themes emerged from these interviews that addressed the what, who and how questions for effective leadership, with a fourth theme emphasising what everyone loves to hear. The themes are:
1. Have something to say. The number one piece of advice all the communicators had was to ensure you have something to say. Not just any generic “motherhood” statement but a clear and consistent message about your vision and purpose. All communications should reinforce this. And ensure the message you’re sending best represents you or your organisation and is what you want people to remember.
2. Different audiences require different approaches but not a different message. There are so many different audiences—internal or external, for example—you need to be thinking about when communicating. One thing became clear during the interviews: adjust how you communicate the message but stick to the core message.
3. Of all the different mediums, digital is the most important. While there are so many different mediums to use for effective communication, digital is the one leaders need to consider most. Ask your MarComms team to adapt your message for social media, create a podcast, or brush up on your Microsoft Teams or Zoom skills. Are you using an electronic newsletter or a blog or posting videos to your website or YouTube channel? Across cultures, countries and generations, digital is how people are consuming information, and if you want to be effective, you must use it, too.
4. Everyone loves a story. The power of story is incalculable. We’ve passed down the big principles of life through stories for millennia—Jesus used them in His teachings. Leaders who communicate most effectively know we love stories and use them to support, illustrate and translate their messages. Stories, particularly those that are succinct, create connection and engagement. Digital mediums such as video are perfect for leaders to share their message to large numbers of people while still creating connection and engagement.
I learnt so much from spending time with these people, exploring their ideas and drawing from their experiences. Our MBA students are going to enjoy the interviews that summarise well the key lessons for any leader looking to communicate effectively.
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Successful change is almost as elusive as golf’s hole in one. It occasionally happens but usually to someone else and never twice in a row. Models for change management are numerous and purport to provide the right formulae for success (think Lewin, Kotter and ADKAR as examples). The magazine strategy+business published an excellent online article that offers a dose of realism and advocates for a more flexible and inclusive approach.
Does the following sound familiar? Top level leaders conceive a change, discuss it at administrative level, then go through a series of “town hall” meetings with staff to convince them of the need and benefits and maybe solicit feedback that involves only minor tweaks to the plan? Is it no wonder change is typically and spectacularly unsuccessful? The authors of the article give some ideas that supplement rather than replace traditional change management approaches. In summary, the key factors are:
There are no easy answers.
Rather than launch a political campaign to win “hearts and minds,” leaders need to participate in “a dialogue about the potential implications of the plan.” Recognise the people tasked with implementation and change management know more about the implications than you do. Ask employees to brainstorm about how to make it work and then adapt the plan.
Avoid the temptation to rush in.
Engage in frank conversations and work together at the early stages of conception rather than impose change. This takes time, but the investment pays off with more ownership and less unexpected hurdles along the way.
Engage with the “other side.”
Actively seek out resistors, as they “often have clear, important messages that leaders would do well to head.” This helps to achieve real commitment from the people at the front line of change. Remember, “the leader’s task is to create an environment in which different perspectives can be fully explored consciously and collectively.”
Model vulnerability and lack of omniscience.
This may be hard for many leaders, but modelling openness invites people to speak candidly. This is when leaders hear the really important stuff.
Engage both peers and top leaders.
Remember, senior leaders share the global view and frontline workers the details. Understanding both is crucial to an effective change process.
Yes, this change management process does take longer, but by involving more people, gaining more perspectives and details, it’s worth the effort.
The skill of giving and receiving feedback is personally and professionally valuable. While there is an abundance of discussion and professional development on the art of delivering feedback, receiving feedback receives comparatively little attention. Perhaps this is because most discussion about feedback focuses on the quality of the delivery rather than the skill with which it is received.
A few common principles underpin discussion about delivering feedback:
An article by organizational psychologist Adam Grant changed my view on the feedback sandwich. He argues it may leave a person so focused on the good news portions they don’t absorb the constructive criticism in the middle. So, he suggests a more transparent dialogue instead of a formatted one.
Adam interviewed Mellody Hobson, president and co-Chief Executive Officer of Ariel Investments, on his Taken for Granted podcast. I highly recommend listening to it or reading the transcript because it explored the perspective that responsibility lies with the person receiving not delivering feedback. Mellody suggested it’s important to receive feedback in any way a person gives it to you, that it doesn’t have to be “packaged” to be received. She notes feedback is a gift not a right and that, in essence, if you’re requiring feedback to be couched in the right terms, you won’t get the authentic truth.
As someone who personally takes things to heart and professionally promotes the responsible delivery of feedback, I’ve been thinking about this alternative perspective ever since. It does make sense that the way in which we receive feedback would either encourage or discourage another person from providing feedback again. I also agree I’d rather know I’m receiving a person’s authentic feedback rather than a version they’ve packaged for me.
While it’s unrealistic to expect people will never get upset when receiving feedback (this may be part of the process in some cases), I do believe we need to focus more on the skill of receiving feedback. Here, resilience is key. Fortunately, the resilience muscle builds with each use and over time we can learn to take the grains of well-intended truth in most forms of feedback.
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“…when you spend forty to eighty hours a week at your job it is easy to lose perspective. You slide into the false belief that what you do defines who you are rather than allowing who you are to define what you do.” This realisation came to Preston Poore in the midst of him redefining is role as a Christian in a leadership position.
Poore, a seasoned leader in Fortune 500 companies draws on this experience as a Christian in business and shares in his book Discipled Leader (2021, Kregel Publications). Poore’s passion is for Christian leaders to integrate their faith into their work rather than keep the two aspects of their life separate. His approach is to highlight the “seldom discussed connection between personal discipleship and corporate leadership.”
The book is peppered with illustrative stories and practical advice in relation to the readers spiritual life and leadership. Each chapter contains a challenge for leaders that is spiritually focused, and tackles key leadership issues like integrity, making tough decisions, and resilience. But it also advocates for leaders to bring joy to their people, know when to walk away, and to actually seek to share God with others.
I found it an easy read, but extremely challenging in its content – it took me outside of my comfort zone and opened my eyes to the broader responsibility of being a Christian leader. It is suitable for anyone on the leadership journey, but if you are an experienced leader, be prepared to feel uncomfortable as it asks some difficult questions of your exiting practice. I would highly recommend this book.
There is so much impacting on the world of work at them moment that the skills required are evolving rapidly. The rampaging mark of digital and AI technologies, exacerbated by Covid-19 has changed what skills will be required in the future. A just released report by McKinsey & company entitled ‘Defining the skills citizens will need in the future world of work’ (click here to download it), reports on what their research found will be the jobs that are lost and created. Even more importantly, it specifies what skills will be required.
There are 56 foundational skill areas identified by McKinsey that are grouped into four broad categories:
The following table form the report categorizes the 56 foundational skills (note that the acronym DELTA comes from Distinct Elements of Learning):
The research looked at the levels of proficiency the current workforce has in these skills and concluded that “participants with a university degree had higher average scores”, giving this group a distinct advantage. However, across all groups, some of the lowest scores were in relation to communication and planning ways of working.
Also of interest was that employment was strongly associated with having proficiency in the following areas:
The highest incomes are associated with those proficient in the wide range of digital skills.
The implications of this are far-reaching. For the individual, it is a chance to fill in any deficiencies in these skill areas to ensure you are equipped with what employers are going to be looking for. For employers, it is an opportunity to be targeting these skill sin new hires, so your workforce is already equipped for the future. And for education and adult training providers, this is what is needed to ensure your graduates are employment ready.
I recently caught up with Dean Banks (FIML, CPBP, MISCP, MBPsyS) the Leadership Strategy Leader and Leadership & PD Manager for the Seventh-day Adventist Church South Pacific Division (SPD), and asked him what is happening in the leadership space in the Adventist Church. Following is a summary of recent and planned activities that Dean shared with me.
At the end of last year, the SPD ratified an SPD wide-leadership strategy. The strategy involves a three-step model:
We like John Maxwell’s quote says Dean – ‘leadership is knowing the way, going the way and showing the way’. In other words, we’re very clear about our mission and vision, we model the way through our behaviour and actions, and we enable people with the skills and knowledge to get there: Most importantly we’re God-centred and continuously growing ourselves and those we lead.
Numerous planned initiatives and pilot programs are underway to test the model steps, stretch leader’s mindsets and teach them how to build a performance culture by holding people accountable. If successful, it’s planned to duplicate these programs each year. These include a:
If you’d like to hear about and be involved with ongoing opportunities, subscribe to the SPD Leadership monthly communique by contacting Grace Millar at [email protected].
The changing circumstances organisations find themselves in is challenging the way CEOs lead their organisations. One of the key shifts has been a more holistic view of the people who make up the workforce. This includes looking beyond outputs but also the health of the people, which moves beyond the basic requirement to keep people safe from harm, but to also consider their mental health, and now to also promote wellness.
A report released last month by Deloitte Insights (Read it Here) discusses this, and notes that CEOs frequently underestimate the impact they have leaders have on the health of their people, not just through their actions, but also through their personal example. The report challenges CEOs to take health and wellness much more seriously and to invest more intentionally in their workforces – and themselves.
The authors note there are six key concepts the health-savvy CEO can recognize and integrate into their lives and practice. As a sample of these concepts the report states that:
While there are four other concepts well worth reading, the article also outlines a series of activities for CEOs to consider, with ideas on how to actually make them a reality. The actions are groups around the following areas:
The benefits of being a heath-savvy CEO are tangible and evident. Investing in health and wellness now sees not lonely long-lasting benefits, but puts your organisation at a competitive advantage.
We all know that manager who likes to micromanage – the obviously named Micromanager. None of us particularly like being micromanaged, and to be honest, probably too many of us are micromanagers. We are typically not bad people, ipso facto, micromanagers are not necessarily bad people either. But they are annoying, distracting, and at times make the workplace less than ideal. Often, they don’t realise they are doing it, and frequently it is because they fear letting go of control.
A recent article in Fast Company by Martin Moore looks at the micromanager and provides some great tips on what we can do to help them. Following is a very brief outline of the salient points:
Some useful advice on dealing with a micromanager, and if you recognise that one of your colleagues is asking doing this to you, then it’s time to realise you may be a micromanager, and to get help.
Leadership is foundational to the success of organisations. However, in a world where the COVID pandemic continues to force organisations into remote work mode, the ability to apply virtual leadership skills is more important than ever. While standard leadership skills remain important, virtual leadership requires a unique set go skills that fosters openness, communication, trust and cohesion.
In this article, Keather Snyder, then director of the Federal Market at AchieveGlobal, suggests the two keys of successful virtual leadership are group cohesion and individual commitment.
To foster cohesion it’s vital virtual leaders:
Fostering individual commitment? Well, that’s a topic all on its own, but in this context it’s all about motivation. When working remotely, your team members don’t have external motivating factors such as the physical presence of other members or a manager. So, you need to unlock their internal motivation. The Snyder article provides three drivers of motivation you can apply to your remote team:
The other key to motivation is communicating a clear, common vision. The difficulty with this is you’ll be doing so without the usual face-to-face communication cues. Using multiples channels of communication to convey the message will help in maximising its effectiveness.
Virtual leadership often requires a heavier focus on goals and objectives. For the virtual leader this means:
Leading virtually also means you’ll need to be more intentional about providing and seeking feedback. You don’t have the ability to rely on general observation and meetings to facilitate feedback, so you need to ask regularly for it and provide your team with quality feedback, which in turn helps with building trust and cohesiveness within your team.
While leading a team from a distance is a big adjustment, remote working is here to stay in one form or another. If you can lead your team to a place of cohesiveness and commitment, you’ll find members who are just as productive, creative, engaged and, especially, resilient.
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She’s quotable. “Let everyone who sits in council and committee meetings write in his heart the words: I am working for time and for eternity, and I am accountable to God for the motives that prompt me to action” (p. 187). Such is an example from the compilation of writings on leadership by Ellen White, found in the book Principles for Christian Leaders (Review and Herald Publishing Association, 2018).
As a pioneer and leading voice of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, White expressed to its leaders and members clear guidance on the principles of leadership and management in a Christian context. Essentially, this involves devoting all to God and following His will, remembering the church belongs to Him and all its people are redeemed by His sacrifice. Leaders should treat people and lead accordingly. Being a prophetic voice in the birth and early development of the church, White spoke plainly and clearly about church issues, including those related to leaders and managers.
This book is a compilation of the principles of Christian leadership peppered throughout White’s writings. Each extract is clearly referenced and dated so you can contextualise the principles. However, the essence of the principles are timeless and just as applicable to leadership today. Here’s an example: “Whatever position we are called to fill, our only safety is in walking humbly with God” (p. 73).
The book is organised thematically and logically, making it easy to follow. You could read it cover to cover or use it as a reference. As with any compilation, you need to be aware of the context of the writing and ensure you use the principles as principles not dictates.
Any Christian leader would appreciate this book and learn a lot from the principles contained within. It’s a worthwhile addition to your library and comes with my high recommendation.
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