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CONTENTS

Introduction

Competency 12: Conveying a Positive Attitude

Competency 13: Promoting Trustworthiness

Competency 14: Articulating the “Why”

Competency 15: Providing Compelling Content

Competency 16: Engaging the Audience

Competency 17: Listening Attentively

Competency 18: Motivating

Appendix:

The SCOPE of Leadership Scorecard for Book 3

About the Author

Books by Mike Hawkins

FIGURES

Figure 3.1: Communications Purpose Matrix

Figure 3.2: Consultative Selling Presentation Flow

Figure 3.3: Communications Framework

Figure 3.4: Five Levels of Conversation

TABLES

Table 3.1: Communications Frequency and Intensity Exercise

Table 3.2: Staff Meeting Agenda

Table 3.3: Presentation Outline

Table 3.4: Presentation Checklist

Table 3.5: Eight Levels of Listening

Table 3.6: Listening Attributes and Best Practices

Table 3.7: Sources of Inspiration and Motivation

Table 3.8: The SCOPE of Leadership Scorecard for Book 3

INTRODUCTION

The art of communication is the language of leadership.

—James Humes

Inspiring Performance: Skillfully giving and receiving information through speaking, writing, listening, questioning, and doing in order to secure an intended result.

The second level of competencies in the SCOPE of Leadership is about effective communications. Leading and influencing people requires strong communication and interpersonal skills. You utilize communication competencies every time you participate in a meeting, give a presentation, talk on the phone, and engage in a face-to-face discussion. Rarely does a waking hour or minute go by without you exchanging information with colleagues, customers, partners, friends, or family. You communicate through your proposals, letters, messages, webpages, and marketing collateral. You are communicating when you sell an idea, product, or service. Through communications you motivate your team, promote your vision, and inspire performance.

Communication is the means of leading. Through communication, you share information, build relationships, motivate people, develop your team, and collaborate with others. Through communication, ideas are explored, decisions are made, and action is taken. What, why, and how you communicate are critical to your leadership success and your team’s performance.

Great leaders are great communicators. They speak with authority and listen with compassion. They draw people into conversation with an engaging communication style. They keep people informed and ensure good communications flow throughout their organization. They deliver compelling presentations that inform, motivate, and inspire others to action.

Organizations that foster effective communications perform well above their peers. Studies find that organizations with effective communications have an almost 20 percent higher market valuation and over a five-year period create an almost 60 percent greater return to their shareholders. For the companies that figure out how to communicate well, the payoff is significant.

When organizations engage me as a consultant to assess their operations, I consider all aspects of their organizational ecosystem. I assess the organization’s strategy, skills, systems, processes, incentives, and so on. When I find an area that deserves more attention, I dig in deeper. In regard to skills, I might check into hiring practices, training programs, and manager effectiveness. When I’m done, I analyze my findings and provide an assessment of the primary issues preventing higher levels of performance. Without exception, communication is always an issue highlighted in my assessment. Either the organization’s communications are too infrequent or incomplete. Communication isn’t meaningful or transparent enough. It is ambiguous or too detailed, too candid or too fluffy. If there is one competency that organizations can’t seem to get right, it is communication. Poor communication is at the root of most organizational and leadership performance issues. Communication issues are also the primary cause of problems in families and in friendships.

A common communication issue is the withholding of information. People don’t share their knowledge, expectations, concerns, ideas, feelings, or suggestions. Many do this unintentionally and unknowingly. They are simply too busy running on the treadmill of busyness as usual. Introverts, who are discussed in competency 13, withhold information because they discuss it so much in their heads they think others must surely know their thinking. Extroverts, in comparison, often give out too much information.

Some people believe that withholding information gives them power. They think the less knowledge they share with their colleagues, the better. They think their knowledge advantage gives them more control and makes them more valuable. The problem is that those who depend on them don’t work as productively or collaboratively without timely and detailed information. People without the benefit of information are unclear about intentions, expectations, roles, responsibilities, activities, resources, and schedules. Without clear information, people look for things that don’t exist, wait on things that aren’t coming, and do work that isn’t needed. A void in communication creates inefficiency, quality issues, and performance issues that impair the entire organization.

WITHOUT CLEAR
INFORMATION, PEOPLE
LOOK FOR THINGS
THAT DON’T EXIST,
WAIT ON THINGS
THAT AREN’T COMING,
AND DO WORK THAT
ISN’T NEEDED.

Great leaders and communicators don’t withhold information. They take the lead in ensuring frequent and clear communication flow throughout their organization. They utilize communications to improve productivity, quality, and performance. They use communications to inspire, motivate, encourage, assimilate, and coach their people.

In addition to withholding information, people make many other communication mistakes. Studies find that when senior managers share information, they rely too much on e-mail, mistakenly assume a single message is sufficient, don’t provide an effective feedback channel, and don’t communicate clearly. In helping clients develop their presentations, I frequently find that people know their content well but don’t organize it well. They don’t properly establish the context for their content or make it compelling, which prevents them from delivering it in a way that engages their audience.

The harsh reality for many leaders is that you can be intelligent, well educated, experienced, and a master in your domain, but if you can’t articulate your point, your effectiveness is marginalized. You might have a great new idea or offering, but if you can’t sell it, the idea is worthless. You are only as effective as your ability to communicate.

Moving from the foundation level of leading yourself and setting the example to this second level of the SCOPE of Leadership, we turn our attention to developing seven competencies of interpersonal skills and effective communications. Great leaders who communicate effectively and inspire performance

Convey a positive attitude.
Promote trustworthiness.
Articulate the “why.”
Provide compelling content.
Engage the audience.
Listen attentively.
Motivate.

These competencies apply to both verbal and written communications. Many people think of communication effectiveness in terms of the spoken word, but effective communicators are also adept at writing. In many ways, written communication is even more important than verbal communication. What you put in writing is indisputable. What you type or write becomes a record. Records can be shared, copied, and distributed. Therefore, letters, messages, e-mail, and recordings of verbal communications can be more significant than talking and presenting. Great leaders are careful with what they put in writing or say on camera. They write in a way that is unambiguous, factual, and appropriate. They are careful to manage their emotions and maintain a proper tone. They also assume that their message will find its way to the front page of a newspaper, uploaded to the Internet, or reported somewhere in the news media.

Written communication is often overused and misused. People regularly use e-mail for situations that are better served with a phone call or face-to-face meeting. The problem is that written communication lacks up to 90 percent of the information that would normally come through voice inflection and body language. You have to be much more careful about word choice, narrative style, and providing supporting detail when communicating in writing. Everyone has had the experience where an e-mail was intended to be humorous but was misinterpreted to be acrimonious.

Regardless of delivery channel, there are many considerations when preparing a message. Great communicators consider the context, content, and intended outcome. They consider their style, voice inflection, and body language. They consider the most appropriate level of detail, interactivity, and candor to use. They consider the most suitable delivery channel whether e-mail, social media, text messaging, report writing, phone conversation, video conversation, or face-to-face communications.

Great communicators understand the communication options at their disposal. They skillfully employ them like tools of a craftsman to deliver the exact message needed to obtain the specific outcome they desire.

COMMUNICATIONS:
INSPIRING PERFORMANCE