Clear Communication

Leadership Demands Clear Communication

In this world of sound bites, emails, text messages and twitter, the art of communicating information in a succinct way is being championed. I, myself, love it. However, it seems that many of us leaders have allowed this to influence how we communicate to our teams.

We all think that we communicate well, but we do not get the final say on how well we communicate. The judge of the effectiveness of our communication is the one who receives it. It’s like the old question “if a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound?” Well, the answer to that question is easy if you think about it. The tree only makes a sound if someone hears it. Likewise, you’ve only really communicated to someone if they hear you. And, they only really hear you if they understand completely what you’ve communicated.

Short form or electronic communication increases the likelihood that you won’t be heard. If a leader is not heard he or she becomes frustrated… and so does their team.

A frustrated team is an ineffective team and the root cause of the frustration a team faces is most likely a lack of clear communication from the leader. A leader must communicate clearly and a leader must be very comfortable with the clearest form of communication… face to face.

The further away we get from face to face conversations the closer we get to frustration.

I love email, text and twitter. I pride myself on the ability to say more with fewer characters. These ways of communication can save time and energy and keep things moving when we just don’t have the time to spare for a face to face conversation. Unfortunately, though, too many of us rely upon these short, detached forms of communication to say things that are of great importance. That is a problem and that is poor leadership.

We should never exchange the ease hitting “enter” over the tension (and clarity) of looking someone in the eye and saying what needs to be said. This takes time and this takes a willingness to put our organization or ministry AND the people we lead ahead of our own personal comfort.

Clear communication demands leadership.