If leaders want to succeed, they must learn to communicate and connect with people. Effective and accurate communication act as an important factor to grow as an efficient and successful leader within organizations; It is an opportunity for a powerful connection. To achieve professional success, leaders at all levels must be effective and convincing communicators. People cannot succeed in life without communicating effectively. It’s not enough just to work hard. It’s not enough to do a great job. To be successful, people need to learn how to really communicate with others. Good communication and leadership are all about connecting. If you can connect with others at every level - one-on-one, in groups and with an audience -  your relationships are stronger, your sense of community improves and your ability to create teamwork increases. Meaning that your influence increases as well and your productivity skyrockets. It is important that leaders and employees learn ‘the how’ to communicate perfectly as this will not only help them to complete their assign tasks and responsibilities successfully, but also enable the organization to achieve success and growth.

 

For an effective leader it is mandatory to ensure persuasion, responsibility, premeditated association, creating and managing a value system and to provide support and motivation to others. A leader is capable to accomplish all this by effective leading, sound planning, monitoring and communication. Of these mentioned factors, perfect and precise communication is of utmost importance! It is a leader’s communication skills which motivate and inspire employees to work hard and achieve individual -, team targets and organizational outcomes as well. Effective communication act as an advantage for a leader to lead effectively. Leaders must have leadership qualities and capabilities, but are not able to lead if they are not good communicators. Communication enables them to share what they have and what they expect from others.

 

So, it is effective communication, which makes leaders to lead successfully! Good communication skills help to develop better understanding and beliefs among employees, inspire them to follow the principles and values which their leader wants to ‘inculcate’ in them. In the absence of good communication skills, a leader fails to achieve the goals set by him and also by the organization and makes him an ineffective leader. Leaders should be very well aware with the fact that productive communication is not a one way process, rather there are two key factors which complete the communication process: speaking and listening with understanding. For achieving the objectives of communication, leader imagines the opinion, emotions and knowledge level of the receiver and prepare actions to support communication so as to make others understand the message as intended to be understood. He delivers the well planned messages with persuasion and relates them to the goals and objectives to be achieved with help of communication. Asking for conformation or understanding of the message indirectly is one of the key note qualities of a good leader. Even in case of negative feedback the leader doesn’t ‘lose his heart’ and take this as an opportunity to further strengthen his capability. He always tries to understand the weak points and analyze the usefulness of the communication. In case of mis communication, taking corrective measure to rectify the mistake is also important and must be done by the leader.

 

Great leaders are always considered first-class communicators. They have a clear set of values and they always believe in promoting and ‘inculcating’ those values in others. It is due to this reason that their teams appreciate them and follow them as a leader. Being great communicator does not mean great talker! There is a big difference between the two. The thrust of gaining more knowledge separates excellent communicator from a good talker, who lack knowledge and get confused while interacting with others, whereas great communicator speaks in confidence and never get confused because of the knowledge they possess. They have the ability to connect to passions and ambitions while communicating their ideas with others. They are aware of the fact that, if they fail to connect with the audience, they might not be able to pass on their ideas to others, and the purpose of communication will then not be achieved.

 

The best communicators always have a unique quality of listening peacefully to what others are speaking. This makes them good observer and enables them to read a person or group’s mind by analyzing the attitudes, behaviors, activities, ideals, anxieties and are able to modify their messages according to the situation (situation-oriented communication).

 

Leaders who communicate effectively, encourage and stimulate people, are considered to be the best leaders. They ensure work discipline, and a sense of responsibility among team members. They have strong and precise set of working principles and beliefs, and because of this they are highly appreciated and followed. When a leader inspires his team, group or people around him by communicating his ideologies and goals perfectly, make them sufficiently efficient to perform the assigned tasks effortlessly, that concept is called ‘Leadership Communication’. Even many studies have explained the concept that it is among other things effective communication that takes an individual from a lower-level leadership to a higher level of leadership. In fact, it has been proven that individuals who can communicate exceptionally, capable of taking significant decision and are able to get the work done by others, are recommended more frequently for leadership positions in an organization. Good communication skills support in creating an atmosphere for exceptional understandings of what is being communicated and encourage team members ‘to blindly follow their leader’. It is therefore an essential priority to become an expert in leadership communication for leaders who want to achieve excellence and remarkable growth in their professional career.

A leader should make sure that communication is continuous and also ensure the appropriate use of both, informal and formal approaches.

 

“Nothing in life is more important than the ability to communicate effectively.” Talent isn’t enough. Experience isn’t enough. To lead others, you must be able to communicate well, and connecting is key!

 

Source: ‘Everyone Communicates, Few Connect by J. Maxwell’, ‘Effective Leadership is all About Communicating Effectively: Connecting Leadership and Communication by

A. Luthra and R. Dahiya. ‘How to Communicate More Effectively by B. Tracy’.