Register now or log in to join your professional community.
Respected Sir, Thanks for invitation. Let me give this judicious question a shot.
Effective leadership in a business requires knowing how to communicate with all elements of the organization, including employees, other managers, customers and investors. Each group may require a different communication style and leadership style. Leaders must be able to adapt based on the group they are communicating with at the time. Effective communication skills are an important aspect of any leader’s portfolio of skills and experience.
Generally, a savvy leader’s success is directly tied to his or her ability to focus on the business fundamentals – the daily blocking and tackling that every company must master to be a winner in its field. Strong, effective leaders stress fundamentals like discipline, accountability, strategic alignment, managing to his or her values and empowering employees. Additionally, these leaders have mastered the six basic functions of management: leading, planning, organizing, staffing, controlling and communicating. But what’s the one golden thread tying all those functions together — and the most important key to great leadership? The answer is Clear Communication.
Think about it … how do the best leaders motivate and inspire their people? Through clear communication. How do the best organizations promote discipline, accountability and strategic alignment? With clear communication. And, how do market leaders sell their products and services? With compelling ads and marketing campaigns — in sum, by clear communication. The point itself is crystal clear: In real estate, the old cliché is “location, location, location.” In business Leadership, you preach “communication, communication, communication.”
Good Leaders, Good Communicators There’s no mystery here. Regardless of whether you’re talking about business, politics, sports or the military, the best leaders are first-rate communicators. Their values are clear and solid, and what they say promotes those values. Their teams admire them and follow their lead. Likewise, if you want your company to reach new benchmarks of achievement, you must master the art of clear communication. So, how to build an effective communications system within the Leadership?
First, you must realize and accept that clear communication is always a two-way process. It’s not enough to speak clearly; you have to make sure you’re being heard and understood. To facilitate this, use the following two-way communication primer:
1. Prepare how you’ll communicate • Clarify the goal of the communication. • Plan carefully before sending it or meeting in person. • Anticipate the receiver’s viewpoint and feelings.
2. Deliver the message • Express your meaning with conviction. • Relate the message to your larger goals. • Identify the action to be taken. • Confirm the other person understands.
3. Receive the message • Keep an open mind. • Identify key points in the message. • Value constructive feedback and use it to grow. • Confirm your understanding.
4. Evaluate the effectiveness of the communication afterwards.
5. Take corrective action as necessary.
Primers, of course, aren’t enough. You must go deeper and determine why internal communications are poor or ineffective, considering any potential barriers. Once you’ve determined what’s preventing clear communication at your company, dig even deeper, asking key questions that relate to your business’ health such as: How do you produce strategic alignment inside your company? How do you get your team to actively buy into your business goals? How do you ensure that everyone understands and upholds your company’s mission and values? Again, for each of these issues, the answer lies in clear communication.
Bottom Line; clear communication is the most important key to a business leader’s success. So to grow as a leader and manager, you must learn how to be an effective, compelling communicator. And if you want your company to succeed, you and your team have to master the art of clear communication together, as well. By using the above-mentioned strategies, you and your employees can reach new levels of leadership excellence.
Leadership and communications are inseparable. Our ability to energize, inspire, and arouse people to ever higher levels of performance, is directly related to our ability to communicate. Strong leaders are strong communicators. If my communication skills (especially verbal communication) are weak, I’ll never be much of a leader. I may be a strong administrator, director, technician, team member, or manager. But without strong verbal communication skills, I’ll be a weak leader. Unless I improve my communication skills, I’ll become a victim of the shifting balance between managing things and leading people.
Effective communication is no more a natural skill than leadership is a born trait. Very few powerful communicators just opened their mouths and let the words naturally flow out. Most leaders learned, developed, practiced, and refined their communication skills through a lot of hard work and conscientious effort. They learned how to sell and persuade. They learned how to infuse a well-formed case or logic with emotional appeal. They were able to light their logic on fire.
Ensure ethics, privacy & integrity.
Provide a platfrom for faireness & equity.
Provide a platform in which all memebers can communicate & interact freely & confortably.
Ensure that it serves everyone & caters for everyone's needs.
Ensure transparency & trustworthyness.
Develop various guidelines & regulations regarding the communication subject.
Develop & clearly outline the roles & responsibilities of members in this communication subject.
Develop an evaluation system for communication.
Thank you for a good question.
To build an effective communications system within the leadership Leaders need to develop a strong and compelling strategic communication plan through the communication strategy process, from concept to creation. When it comes down to it, the strategic planning process integrates many of the management practices we already follow daily, as communicators and also offers a clear methodology that can help leaders make powerful decisions. So, whether you’re building your annual communication plan, exploring longer-term functional objectives or designing particular initiatives, consider this guide as a framework for success:
Ensure alignment with your organization’s business by understanding where it currently stands and where leaders want to take it. An expansive, agreed picture of the current state of the organization – how it looks and works – makes sure all major issues are covered. To capture this picture, ask your planning group to describe the current state of the organization and pool answers, grouping similar answers together and discussing them for clarity. One approach to determining the present situation might be to do a SWOT analysis of the organization. This analysis rates: Strengths; Weaknesses; Opportunities; and Threats faced by the business, considering internal and external factors. Undertake a communication audit to find out which activities are most effective and to streamline your communication; deliver clear recommendations on how to improve existing channels and make better investments with available budget.
Set up interviews with internal customers to learn what their priorities are. Gaining a good understanding of business issues allows you to offer effective solutions and highlights your consultative value as a function. Use Sue Dewhurst’s (B)ARROW framework to ask the right questions:
B is for Bridging statement: The bridging statement enables you to acknowledge what your customer has asked you for, e.g. “You’ve come to see me about putting a newsletter together; so that I can make sure I give you the best support on this, help me understand more about what we need to achieve…”
A is for Aim: Ask questions to understand the customer’s aim. Try and avoid asking what content they want – your goal is to understand what they want to achieve: the two might be different, e.g. “Six months from now, in organizational terms, what do you hope will be different?”
R is for Reality: Try and understand what things look like for them, e.g. “What’s happening now?” and “What’s led to the current situation?”
R is for Roadblocks: Ask questions to understand which obstacles might get in the way, e.g. “What could stop this project being successful?”
O is for Opportunities: Which actions or changes would make the fastest or most significant contribution to the aim? E.g. “What’s the biggest quick win we could have in the next month?”
W is for Who and When: Identify who needs to know, feel or do something differently to achieve the aim, e.g. “Who is directly affected by this?”
Envision the elements of an idealized future – how you want the internal communication function to look, feel and operate a year from now. This offers specific details that all stakeholders understand and are more likely to support. Ask your key stakeholders to envision the future state of the organization: “Imagine it’s one year from now, and the internal communication function has been successful. What have we accomplished? What does success look like?”Get stakeholders to write down as many ideas as they can, putting each idea on a separate sticky note. Categorize ideas: Content, Tools and Channels, Structure, Processes, Leaders and Managers, Partnerships, Metrics, IC team, Reputation and Impact, Role, Global and Other. For each, group together similar sticky notes under three or four key themes.
Identify a handful of the elements from Step 3 that are most important to the business and function. Assess current performance to get a clear picture of the success of all key enablers, compared to their relative importance.
5. Develop actionable objectives
Turn the three to six vision elements into actionable objectives. Each should have specific “end points” (providing an indicator of success) and consider available human and financial resources, programs, products or services that must be allocated to achieve the goal. Simply saying “increase employee engagement” doesn’t provide enough specific direction to allocate resources appropriately, nor does it identify a timeframe or specify an audience: e.g. among all audiences or a specific demographic? Goals need to take into consideration where you are today and where you would like to be – and by when – so you can focus on closing that gap.
Make sure each objective is SMART. It must be: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. An example of a SMART goal: “Increasing current employee engagement score of field-based employees to top quartile percentages by the end of fourth quarter, using a mix of non-wired channels”.
Create sub-teams and brainstorm a range of potential strategies to achieve each of these objectives, and a further range of tactics to support each strategy.
Create the detail behind those strategies and tactics. Namely, how success will be measured, the timeframe and who will be responsible.
Conduct some baseline measurements to identify the levels of knowledge and attitude of key stakeholders. There are four different types of measurable objectives:
Consolidate the wealth of ideas your planning sessions have generated, and integrate into a document with clear responsibilities for your team and other stakeholders, for management review and approval.
Work with stakeholders and team members to clarify the finer details of each part of the plan. Map the results into a clear, detailed strategic plan.
It’s time to put the plan into action, but remember: Implementation is only the beginning of a long process of activity, measurement, re-evaluation and re-strategizing. Once the strategic communication plan has been launched, determine regular review cycles for all phases of the plan. Ideally, the plan should be reviewed in a group meeting once every quarter, assessing all elements of the plan and their outcomes. Change the plan, as necessary, according to these review cycles; also review and change the plan ad hoc in response to organizational changes, or strategic or competitor activities.
Create a communities of practice (CoP) culture, form cross functional teams rather than silos where ever possible and remove any hierarchical limitations. View communication as a heterachical team with everyone open to communicate directly with each other without concern for the level or authority. In the end it comes down to trusting in your staff and showing them they can trust in you otherwise all channels become blocked.
Effective communication of the leadership should be build upon inspiration that should influence both vertical and as well as horizontal layers.
Thanks
I agree with Ms Sidrah Nadeem in my answer.
Agree with the already detailed Expert Answers.Thanks.
Thanks for the invite ............................ wonderful answer from Professor Sidra Nadeem
Communications: an integral part of the nature of the leadership of the head of the work.Whenever direct contact increased in effectiveness.- The ability to accomplish the goals depends on the efficiency of communications highlighted by the Director in his work, The success achieved in the human work depends on (85%) of the constitution and communication (15%) rely solely on practical skills or specialized professional.- That the communications represent a significant part of the daily work of Director - Some experts estimate that they consume between 75-95% of the time managers, as well as on the work of this educational school, which are all contacts manager.
It means oversight and guidance to the activities director in the field of directing the activities of workers.A way to motivate employees to do the roles required of them. Studies say that 75% of human relationships can be built through good listening skill, it says that we use only 25% of our ability to listen. The listener, director of the staff of the most important elements of effective communication, as director can by listening to know what the employee wants to say, and have the employee the opportunity to fully express himself, as well as to listen Director for others ensures the effectiveness of the decisions taken because they may be based on information mobility it through oral conversation.
Do you need help in adding the right keywords to your CV? Let our CV writing experts help you.