Written by: Elena Paweta, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
When you are leading the team, effective communication is incredibly important. As a leader, you have to inspire people for action through your clear messaging, communicate vision and goals with confidence and to provide motivational feedback. In this article you will find three simple methods that will help you to increase the effectiveness of your communication with the team.
Being in the leadership position, we often don’t realize that we are in the spotlight all the time. Every word, every gesture can have a huge impact on our team. When communication problems with the team appear, it can have an impact on our results. Let’s see in what way we can avoid the basic mistakes and increase communication effectiveness.
Set the rules
Communication starts when you get the new leadership role and you have to present your vision, priorities and goals. That’s why it is important to start from defining the rules. Set the principles of cooperation at the point of building relationships with your team – what are the rules, what is expected and what will not be tolerated. Make sure to remind your team about it regularly and follow those principles yourself – if you expect punctuality – always arrive on time.
Regular reminders about the expectations are important to reinforce the understanding. Research results published in Harvard Business Review confirm that when the message is repeated by the manager regularly, it increases the probability that the project will be completed faster and with less amount of mistakes.
Make sure to regularly repeat your principles of cooperation set in the beginning. That will help you and your team to achieve the results faster. Use different ways of communication each time – for example, after presenting your message at the meeting, send them an email summarizing what was discussed.
Communicate your expectations clearly
To avoid misunderstanding, communicate your expectations in a clear and concise manner. Divide complicated communication into parts and present it in an easily understandable way for your team members. Try not to use technical or business jargon. If you have a problem with making your message more simple, it means that you don’t understand it completely yourself.
Don’t communicate your expectations too broadly – make sure that your team knows exactly what is expected from them. If they don’t understand your expectations – they will not know what to do. Ask your team if they understand expectations the same way as you do and listen carefully to understand.
Listen to understand
Experienced leader knows how to ask good questions and carefully listens. Active listening is focusing 100% on the speaker and ignoring other triggers, even our own thoughts and possible answers or comments that pop up in our head. Refrain from interrupting, give the person time to finish the sentence, show that you listen through nodding, smiling and paraphrasing what you heard. Experienced managers often have proven ways to do things. However, as a leader, if we want our team members to develop, we should ask questions and allow them to come up with the solution themselves.
Remember that as a leader you have to make sure that your communication is effective and clear. I invite you to read more about leadership communication in my blog articles and on LinkedIn profile.
Elena Paweta, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Dr. Elena Paweta is an executive communication coach, speaker, TEDx organizer, and university professor. She conducts courses, trainings, and workshops on effective communication and business presentations internationally. As a TEDx organizer, she coached top speakers who achieved over 1 million views of their talks. Now she is lecturing at leading business schools and working with managers and CEOs on their business presentations. Elena is also a marathon runner and mother of 2 daughters.
