The Leadership Communication Skills You Need to Improve?   Along with interpersonal skills, effective leaders must continually improve five leadership communication skills essential for group performance.
LEARNING CENTRAL Get Involved Grow Your Knowledge—Build Skills Managing Through Change: Learn the Essense of What it Takes To Better Manage and Lead To Purchase The CD   KEEP UP ON LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT Job Ready: Six Communication Skills Needed to Get and Hold Onto a Job "Just because you have two ears and a mouth doesn't mean you know how to communicate." — A Mother's Advice To Her Son Learn advanced skills for: developing positive impressions, effective listening, establishing rapport, spot on conversations, powerful questions, nonverbals such as reading face and interviewing strategies and tactics. Learning Objectives. . .Refund Policies. . .Guide to Learning On-line. . . Instructor Bio. . . Detailed Course Description . . .To ENROLL Next Class Begins: June 6, 2010. . . Open Enrollment begins on 12 May, 2010

While writing is important, it's really the focus on verbal skills that makes the difference. That's because the written word primarily appeals to reason and logic, while speaking besides appealing to logic and reason, arouses emotions, motivates and persuades.

How important is it to improve communication skills? According to this article published by INSEAD, "Effective communication skills outrank other core business competencies as the number one skill for corporate recruiters looking to hire MBA graduates." This startling conclusion is supported by the organization which runs GMAT testing for MBA applicants.

In the September 24th issue of Business Week, the magazine had listed 95 corporations as "Best Places to Launch a Career." Of these top 95 companies, they also listed what skills employers are selecting for (see below).

What's interesting about the results, is that when one adds both leadership and communication skills together, you have over 45% of the total employers.

It's interesting to note that many employers are looking for communication skills even in new hires strait out of college. Unfortunately, the top two skills are not classes of study most college students take.

In this area you have a five different communication skills to prove that can be built through communication skills classes. These are:

Organizational Communication

Organizational communication is an absolutely essential skill for anyone who occupies a leadership role in the organization. Prior to the use of the internet, it consisted of four major communication flows:

• Upward
• Downward
• Lateral, and
• Rumor control.

Now, however, there are new electronic communication mediums, mediums creating both opportunities and problems. For example, email is great communication tool for many. For too many, however, it is becoming a burden.

It used to be, the only executives functioned in an environment of information overload. Today, all levels of the organization have that problem.

Feedback

Feedback is the breakfast of champions.

Cynics might say that at work, we don't want champions, we want workers. True, True. Still, one shouldn't keep the workers in the dark about their own performance. Too many times we hear someone at work frustrated with a bad performance appraisal, seemingly blindsided by an arbitrary and capricious manager who seems to be out to get them. In reality, it simply a case that the manager did not give enough feedback. After all, one should not be surprised at what the appraisal says.

In systems theory, there is two types of feedback, positive and negative. Both are absolutely essential if you are to have high levels of performance. But bosses find it difficult to give negative feedback and subordinates find it hard to receive it.

Small Group Communication

If interpersonal communication wasn't hard enough, group communication adds a whole new level of complexity. That's due the fact that in many meetings, there are three major processes running at the same time: a meeting process, a problem solving process and a communication processes.

To complicate matters further, the person running th group can play either the leader role or the facilitator role. While both make use of same communication microroles, they are used in a different manner. The leader role is more directive, typically making use of many statements. The communication style for the facilitator role, on the other hand, is more indirect, requiring as it does the use of questions.

To be a meeting leader in groups, you must learn how to play communication roles. There is over 25 of these roles.They can be broken out into three categories:

• relationship,
• task and
• self-oriented.

Task roles get the job done, relationship roles maintain harmony and good feelings. However, when people pay self-oriented roles, it leads to all sorts of problems. So effective group communication boils down to playing the right task and relationship roles while minimizing the disruption caused by self-oriented roles.

Persuasive Skills

I once asked a leadership communication class this simple question, "How many of you are in sales?" Out of twenty individuals, only two raised their hands (and of course, they were in sales.)

The rest failed to realize that no matter what their job description. they had to be in sales if they wanted their ideas to be accepted by the boss, their peers and others outside of the organization. They fundamentally failed to realize an important truth, "All ideas must be sold.

Of course, many will say, "My mama didn't raise me to be a salesman." They have a point. But humans are less rational than the economists assume. Logic alone is not enough to insure that a new idea gets adapted.

A tool that we commonly use is a model called Margerison's Persuasive Continuum. This model focuses on how someone responses to a persuasive communication message.

Public Speaking

Few in leadership positions know how to speak in public. And since most presentations in government and business tend to be boring and monotonous. . Ones greatest challenge in most business presentations is to stay awake. It's something should have been advertised as a cure for insomnia.

It should be that way. Great speeches have a structure. The structure has long been known, but few business presentations use it.

Self-Talk

You might ask, why self-talk is included as a leadership communication skill? Good question. Most would say that leadership is essentially about influence—how we can influence other others. Yet, if we fail to engage in the right kind of self-talk, our ability to lead, to communicate the proper words in the moment will be severely compromised.

Partly this is due to the power of expectations. It has long been known that what we expect tends to occur. The great writer Ovid in his Metamorphosis wrote in this into the story of Pygmalion, the poor sculptor in search of true love. In this case, the power of belief was a positive one and there was a typical Hollywood happy ending. However, people sometimes talk themselves into many unhappy endings. And lets face it, people are not going to follow someone who is not in charge of their own mind.

Self-talk is typically what the Ego thinks about. It's the internal thoughts that we hold inside and don't share. So while a leader might project an image of self-confidence, in their own thinking they may have many doubts, doubts that prevent them from taking the right actions.

References:

Moss, Stewart, and Tubbs, Sylvia (2006). Human Communication, Principles and Contexts, 11th Edition. New York: Prentice Hall.

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