A Foundation for Developing Leadership Communication Skills
At this point, I feel like I’ve pounded the drum loudly enough about communication being a responsibility we can’t duck if we expect to lead anyone around us. And I think you’re probably on the same page with me that the messages we send as leaders are far more than just what we say… Hopefully I’ve dispelled any remaining notion that you’re only responsible for what you say, not for what they understand!
So what skills do we need to develop if we really want to make sure the messages we’re sending are indeed received and understood by each of our team members? Having just (recently) covered how much more effective our leadership communication can be when we follow The Platinum Rule by sharing our message the way our team members need to receive rather than what’s easiest or most natural for us, let’s look at how we can make the rubber meet the road…
Have you ever met someone who seems like they’re just a natural when it comes to connecting with people and getting their message across? Of course! We all have. And how frustrating is that for those of us who don’t feel like we have anything resembling their talent? I’ll answer that question too - it’s incredibly frustrating!!!
With that in mind, here’s a word of hope I heard John Maxwell share more than a decade ago in Everyone Communicates, Few Connect that I’ve tried to keep in front of me every day since. He said “connecting is more skill than natural talent. Connecting is something anyone can learn to do, but one must study communication to improve it.” John went on to emphasize that “it’s no accident. You cannot expect to succeed through dumb luck!”
Consider John’s comments through a sports lens… We can all think of several examples of athletes with loads of natural talent who never achieved their potential because they weren’t willing to put in the work. And I’ll bet we can all list a few superstars who started out with modest skills - at best - but became great because they worked circles around everyone else. Thank God that approach doesn’t just apply to sports!
To this day, I believe my transition from safety to human resources was a smooth one because I had invested a tremendous amount of time and energy into knowing everyone in the facility I worked at. But that didn’t happen just because I wanted a bunch of friends; I had watched a few of my mentors at the time do that same thing. In fact, I recently ran into a friend I hadn’t seen in over twenty years who worked with one of those mentors just prior to him retiring (my mentor, not my friend). When I asked if he knew this person, he commented on him being the one manager he had ever known to spend time on their shop floor and get to know every employee by name. My friend said that single thing had earned this manager more respect in the facility than anyone before or since.
I promise you that learning to know everyone in a large facility like is never based on dumb luck! It takes a TON of very intentional effort - I know that firsthand… But I also know how powerful the results can be when we’re willing to do it. To this day, I work extremely hard to learn to know everyone we interact with; and I even get frustrated with myself when I’m not able to put a name and a face together afterward!
While learning to know each team member shows that you value them and it serves to develop some common ground, it also gives you a foundation for one of the most powerful leadership communication skills I’ve found to date…
More Than a Basic Understanding…
If we really want that strong foundation for leadership communication skills, learning to know each member of our team as well as we possibly can is the best starting point I can suggest. To that end, showing our team members that we’re actually interested in who they are rather than just what they can do for us even goes a long way toward building a culture great people want to be part of, but let’s just stick with how it can impact communication for now…
While it’s certainly more than what we say, the way we say it can be the difference between any given team member buying in or mailing it in! If we’re not willing to take action on The Platinum Rule I’ve suggested a few times leading up to this point, the message we need to get across may fall short. And quite honestly, adapting our message to have a lasting impact is so much simpler when we know our audience; individually and collectively!
Even in the most basic session that Cindy and I provide companies on recognizing and understanding communication styles, we’re able to go into quite a bit of detail providing a practical approach individuals can apply right away so they pick up on the other person’s primary style and adapt their own to that. Quite honestly, I wish I had access to a session like that twenty years earlier in my own career because it makes that much of a difference! But to fully accept the responsibility of leading our teams the best we possibly can and providing them with a message truly tailored to what they need, having access to their complete communication style blend is even more powerful!
When we have that full picture, as well as a firm comprehension of The Model of Human Behavior so we can take action, knowing the individual on a more personal level gives us insight a chart or graph never will - it provides us with perspective on what they have going on at any given time. Being able to piece all those things together nearly always allows us to realize what they need in that moment and provide it for them in a way that genuinely meets their need!
As a supervisor, a manager, or even the owner of a company, do we really have to invest that level of time and energy into learning about our team members? Of course we don’t have to… But leading isn’t based on what we have to do but developing leadership communication skills will yield more in return so we’ll wrap this all up by working through a few quick things we can all keep in mind to meet our team members’ needs - based on their primary communication style…
Who Are You Even Talking To?
If you’re willing to wear that cape that comes with truly leading your team, you know that phrase I shared as we started down this path won’t be one you’ll be using as your own any time soon! That whole idea of “I’m only responsible for what I say, not for what you understand” just ain’t leadership! But when we’re willing to do whatever it takes to build the kind of relationships where we know our team members, and we have a foundational understanding of how we can apply The Model of Human Behavior every time we interact with them, we can be very responsible for what they understand.
I just promised to work through a few things we can each keep in mind as we work to provide the kind of communication each of our individual team members need, rather than what’s most natural for us. One thing that can complicate this is that our team members may not need the same type of message in every situation, and that can get a bit tricky…
So picture this: I’m sitting at my desk late one evening several years ago and get a text from our son asking, “How do I get the people on my line to do what I tell them to?” You’re probably thinking the same thing right now that I did then - I need more information to even have a chance at answering that question! Since he was on a break and didn’t have time to call, I told him we could talk the next morning.
Just for perspective, he had just started filling in as a back up lead on the assembly line in the manufacturing facility he worked for at the time. He was in his early 20s and had only worked there for 18 months or so. And while I didn’t have a grasp on why he was asking, I was thrilled that he was willing to ask!
When we talked the next day, he explained the whole scenario and I was a darn proud dad! He wasn’t looking for ways to crack the proverbial whip or feed his ego, he believed the team working with him was capable of more and he wanted to help them achieve it!
He and I spent the next hour or so talking through some things he could do to provide each one of them with what they would need to reach that next level of performance. He did, and they did - and that opened some doors for him to shine moving forward. None of that would have been possible though without him knowing them really well (or without me knowing each of them really well too since I had worked with them for years before he did).
Since there’s no way I can go into all the detail here that I did with Matt in that phone call, you can download the whitepapers I wrote soon after we had that conversation as a way to tie what he was working through back to The Model of Human Behavior. Prior to now, I’ve only shared these as special bonuses so I hope you get some value from Speaking the Language of Leadership and Applying the Language of Leadership.
Here’s one last thing I’ll challenge you to consider, even after you’ve invested the energy to do everything else I’ve covered to this point… Is the team member you’re dealing with going through something at that moment that could change what they need from you? Nearly every single one of the thousands of people who have completed DISC assessments with me and Cindy have at least a moderate change in how they behave and communicate when they’re under stress. And that stress also impacts how they receive any message we’re trying to communicate with them! If we want to take our leadership communication skills to the next level, recognizing those changes in the individuals on our team and adapting our message to what they need in that moment is huge! But we can’t do any of that if we don’t know them well enough to recognize where they are or what they need!