Communication styles and effective leadership
Most people in a leadership position understand the importance of clear and effective communication to ensure everyone is working together towards a common goal. So, if it is so obvious, why does communication go wrong so often? This article looks into the different styles to help keep your communication styles and effective leadership on track
Firstly, in any high-performing team, there will be different types of people, this is a good thing!
Some people are naturally good at detail while others are great at ideas; some people are natural leaders while others like to be part of a team; some people want everything done now while others like to progress in a careful and steady way.
If you can get all the different personalities working together effectively you are far more likely to achieve a positive result.
Dr. Steve Peters in his book The Chimp Paradox talks about the ongoing conflict between our inner chimp and our human. The chimp is our immediate emotional reaction to any event, basically fight, flight or freeze. Our human is a much slower, more considered, and reasoned response.
The Chimp jumps into action far quicker than the human and takes control of the situation – often with bad results in the modern world, it has after all evolved to keep us alive in the jungle!
The human takes longer to respond and won’t get a say if the chimp is already awake. The good news is that the chimp sleeps until it perceives danger. So very simply, if you want effective communication make sure it is your human talking to the other person’s human. Don’t wake the chimps – that is where the trouble lies!
Communication is the Result YOU achieve
All of us have heard of the Golden Rule of Communication, to “treat others how you would like to be treated”, but to be truly effective use the Platinum Rule of Communication, “treat others how they would like to be treated”.
ActionCOACH uses the DISC Personality Assessment tool, which is relatively simple compared to many of its competitors but does allow you to very simply identify the type of person you are dealing with, and more importantly how they like to be communicated with. Next time you are talking to an ActionCOACH ask them to tell you which type of person you are and how you like to communicate, our clients always say how amazingly accurate it is!
The key point here is that to truly effectively communicate with someone else you need to make sure you are communicating in a way that works for them. The test is very simple “Communication is the Result YOU Achieve” if you don’t get the result you wanted look at what you could have done differently.
Not all communication is good news
Effective communication is not always giving good feedback, sometimes you need to provide honest and timely communication to help team members improve, what Kim Scott calls Radical Candour in her book of the same name. We all naturally want to be liked by everyone but as a leader, we are sometimes required to correct undesirable traits, which is far easier to just avoid.
None of us like to have those radical candour conversations, but know we have to have them, the problem is that it can so quickly become a conversation between the two chimps!
Marshall Rosenberg initiated peace programs in war-torn areas throughout the world including Rwanda, Burundi, Nigeria, Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the Middle East, Serbia, Croatia, and Ireland.
Rosenburg knew a thing or two about how to have a difficult conversation! In his book Nonviolent Communication, he describes a formula that allows those difficult conversations to remain constructive and achieve a positive outcome through clearly describing the problem, its emotional impact, and a proposed solution.
Communication styles and effective leadership
Most leaders emulate their own previous managers’ and leaders’ styles, because quite simply they do not know any other way. Quite often this is usually a command and control style; you tell people what to do and then make sure they do it! This style of communication puts the burden on the leader to make sure everything happens and rarely leads to the best possible solution or outcome.
I am a big fan of Myles Downey who describes a Ven-diagram of three circles;
- What (management) are you delegating? Describe the detail of the deliverable, timescales, and quality expectation.
- Working with the team member to decide How (coaching) they will achieve the What
- And the Why (Leadership) is the context the task has been assigned within and how it aligns with the business.
Depending on your role and the size of the team, the emphasis moves between the above three. The failure of many leaders is that they tell people How (as opposed to helping them reach a solution) and don’t bother with Why (that is the manager’s piece of power!).
This emphasises why it is so important to have a Vision, Mission, Culture, and defined goals in place for the business, it helps explain the why as part of a known business objective.
Thousands of business owners attend Biz X each year where various experts and leaders present to educate the audience on best practices and their experiences.
This year Stephen R Covey talked about an emerging way of leading, throwing away the traditional command and control, which worked great in the industrial revolution but is not really suited to the modern work environment, and replacing it with what he has termed Trust and Inspire.
Trust and Inspiretrusts everyone can and will do a good job if they are allowed to do so, and then inspire by clarifying expectations, practicing accountability across the team, and inspiring others with a very clear why.
For many business leaders, this is a very big step, letting go of the traditional comfort blankets of carrot and stick but has been shown in numerous organisations to show outstanding improvements in performance.
It’s great to know all this but you actually have to do it…
Communication styles and effective leadership are all great in theory however, you can read all the books and understand what you need to do but most Leaders fail to put what they know into action. For any of the various techniques I have described the only way to success is to consistently practice them and not revert to your old Command and Control tendencies when times are tough!
Want to know if team and leadership are strong areas of your business? Take our online 3-minute business assessment to find out. Alternatively, see if 121 coaching is right for you with a free discovery session.
