Complex Communication Skills for Managers

As you move upwards in your organization, your communications become more complex, thereby putting greater demands on your communication skills.  Effective leadership communication, therefore, calls for an array of specific skills that you can apply when necessary.  These skills are divided into three levels – core skills, managerial skills, and corporate skills – which correspond to your level of leadership.

Core skills include writing, speaking and strategizing, and these will be applied continuously and with increasing importance as you move upwards.  Now that you‘ve moved into management, however, a new list of additional communication skills comes into play, and your successful performance as a manager depends on the effective application of these skills.  To ensure that your management communication skills are in place, let’s briefly review them.

First, as a manager, you’re making key decisions to make sure your targets and KPIs are met.  You’re anticipating problems before they arise and solving them when they do.  To do this, you rely on consistent sources of upline and downline information.  That’s why listening is now your most important communication skill.

Second, as a manager, you’re working not only to get the best from your staff, but to challenge and develop them so they can contribute to your organization with greater value.  In this way, you contribute towards developing a pool of readily available talent that’s there when your organization needs it.  That’s why coaching and mentoring are also key communication skills. 

Third, as a manager, you supervise teams working on specific projects and aiming for specific targets.  Ensuring that they meet their objectives requires that you are constantly updated on their progress so that you can strategize and delegate accordingly.  That’s why running an effective business meeting is another important management communication skill.

Fourth, as a manager, you realize that your corporate environment affects how work is accomplished.  When productivity slows, you need to press the correct buttons to motivate or discipline as necessary within the context of a diverse workforce.  That’s why cultural intelligence is a critical communication skill for you.

Finally, as a manager, you are a role model and you need to recognize and manage your own emotions on the job.  Additionally, you need to recognize and manage the emotions of others to control on-the-job conflict.  Your conduct will affect how your staff conducts themselves.  That’s why emotional intelligence is another key management communication skill.

Effective communicators make better leaders.  Knowing the leadership communication skills you need leads to using them successfully.

Core Skills for Leadership Communication

Your ability to lead is directly related to your ability to communicate.  Leaders who have strong communication skills find it easier to inspire and influence people than those who do not.  And further, the communication style that you exhibit and use in your organization will shape how the entire organization communicates.

Communication skills for you as a leader are more elaborate than those of the rank and file.  Although they begin with similar core abilities, leadership communication skills spiral outwards to the application of these skills in more complex organizational situations.  Skills areas are divided into three levels which we call core skills, managerial skills and corporate skills.  The higher up you move in the organization, the more complex your communications skills become. 

Let’s examine the skills necessary at each level, beginning with the three core skills.

The first core skill is writing.  Although it may seem that you write less as you move up in the organization, the writing you do becomes more important.  E-mail and memos that you write carry weight.  Reports that you compile have importance.  Even the periodic column that you write for your company’s quarterly newsletter has impact.  That’s why your ability to plan and write both simple and complex documents – from e-mail to annual reports – is critical to your success as a leader. 

The second core skill is speaking.  You may be writing less, but you’re probably being called upon to speak more as you move up in your organization.  This may include business presentations at management meetings, speeches at company functions, and even appearances before the press.  Whatever the situation, members of your audience must always detect confidence in your delivery.  Content must be lucid and relevant.  Your voice must be clear and resonant.  Body language must be controlled and eye contact consistent.  As you speak, your message and your image must both project leadership.

Finally, the last core communication skill is strategy.  Writing and speaking are important skills, but how you write and how you speak affect how your audience will receive your message.  That’s why before sending a message out, it’s good to do a complete assessment of your message, your audience, and the channels available to you.  Communication strategy means planning to say the right thing at the right time to the right people over the right channel. 

It's said that leaders are made, not born, and you never know where a strong leader will come from.  Regardless of their origins, however, emerging leaders with strong core communication skills have got a head start.

Leadership: What's Your Working Climate?

The ability to communicate effectively is the foundation for every leadership skill.  As a leader in your organization, strong communication skills will make it easier for you to connect with others, build morale, manage conflict and maintain a steady course through difficult times.

Likewise, the quality of communications throughout your organization will depend largely on the working climate that you set.  What do we mean by a ‘working climate’ and how does it affect your organizational communications?  Let’s find out.

On one extreme, you have the Dehumanized Climate.  Here, the value of human relations in the workplace is minimized.  The basic assumptions creating this climate are that subordinates prefer to be led by others and rarely make their own decisions.  They also put their own needs before those of the organization and, as a result, lack the initiative to achieve significant results on their own.  Management confirms these assumptions by withholding information and communicating to subordinates in the form of directives.  As a result of all this, rumors are frequent, exclusive cliques are common, and very little is done by staff or by management for the real betterment of the organization.

On the other end of the continuum, you have the Overhumanized Climate.  Here, organizational objectives are second to human relations.  Groups and teams are formed for participative decision making whenever possible and self-directed motivation is encouraged.  Conflict and tension are managed and prevented.  Management in this climate is likely to emphasize individual over organizational needs.  While this all seems pleasant, the organization may suffer.  The warm social atmosphere may actually be covering up unresolved interpersonal conflict and periodic decisions by management not made in groups may be unpopular.

Between the dehumanized and overhumanized climates you have the Situational Climate.  Here, organizational and individual needs are compatible.  Whether the situation calls for a crackdown to increase productivity or a structure to enhance staff development, either can be done.  In this climate, because staff feels respected, they may develop a greater sense of self-worth and respect for others.  This, in turn, may increase intrinsic motivation and a greater sense of responsibility.  As a result, personal and organizational objectives become similar.

As a corporate leader, you model the communication style that everyone in your organization will follow.  Therefore, open, effective communication throughout your organization depends on the working climate that you set. 

Managing the Mentoring Fear Factor

If you’ve decided to take on the role of a mentoring manager and develop a protégé from your staff in a one-on-one relationship, the first step you need to take is to find out what that person wants to achieve as a result of the mentoring process.  This is relatively easy to do.  In a mentoring relationship, learners are usually straightforward in telling you want they want.

What they don’t tell you, however, is what they fear.

Mentoring is a learner-focused process.  You want to do the best you can in bringing out the best in your learners.  Sensitivity towards some of the apprehensions they might have about this process can make you more effective.  Let’s examine what some of those learner fears might be.

Like most of us, learners may fear the unknown.  Coming into a mentoring relationship presents new situations and circumstances which may cause nervousness and discomfort.  You can mitigate this, of course, with a warm and welcoming approach.  And, you can also take advantage of this.  Fear of the unknown is often accompanied by anticipation, which can be functional in helping your learners raise their performance.

In addition, your learners may fear an early sense of failure.  The outcome of a successful mentoring process is improvement in performance, and many learners begin with anxiety about not coping.  Where learners feel their abilities are poor, they may feel vulnerable.  If you can anticipate this, you can be more sensitive in assuring your learners that your role is to encourage them rather than to judge or evaluate them.

This leads us to the fear your learners may have of being scrutinized.  They may feel that their performance is constantly under a microscope with you and everyone else looking in.  They may receive a good deal of feedback from you about how others see them.  To relieve this, always evaluate your learners fairly.  A heavy, judgmental approach can cause more harm than good.

Finally, your learners may fear the relationship itself.  Until you’ve established trust and openness, a mentoring relationship between a senior manager and a subordinate can be intimidating.  Soon after the ice is broken, however, this fear recedes.

Anticipate these fears in your learners.  Acknowledge them and provide assurance.  Make adjustments in your style if necessary.  The sooner you help your learners overcome their fears, the sooner you can guide them towards self-development.

Five Steps for the Mentoring Manager

An effective method of knowledge transfer that works as an alternative to traditional training is mentoring.  When you take on the role of a mentoring manager, you develop a one-on-one relationship with a protégé from your staff and facilitate his or her development.  This means that you’re helping that person maximize their own potentials and find solutions on their own while giving them just minimal input.

Mentoring can be accomplished using a five-step facilitation process that you can remember easily as 5Ds: Define, Describe, Decide, Do and Debrief.  Here’s how you can apply it with the learners you’re mentoring.

Step One: Define.  At this stage you are encouraging your learner to set specific outcomes that they would like to achieve as a result of the mentoring process.  You can help by challenging them to state positive, agenda-oriented outcomes.  If, for example, your learner presents a problem saying, “I’m too shy to be working in sales,” you can challenge immediately by asking, “How would you like it to be?”, which may be answered as, “I’d like to be more confident in the way I approach people.”  Already, you’ve made considerable progress.

Step Two: Describe.  The objective of this step is for you and your learner to become aware of the dimensions of the problem.  Your role, therefore, is to listen while your learner talks.  Ask open-ended questions to keep your learner talking while you check for emotions, feelings, and facts.  The information you’re provided with will help you formulate an approach suitable to your learner’s development.

Step Three: Decide.  The key here is to guide your learner towards deciding which solutions will work best.  Be patient at this stage, because the temptation will be for you to jump in and offer the solutions you may think are best.  Remember, however, that as a mentor you are facilitating a process rather than imposing your own agenda.

Step Four: Do.  This is the implementation step where your learner will go out and apply the agenda that they’ve developed with your guidance.  Your learner will operate independently at this stage, while your role may be to check in periodically and assess how things are going.

Step Five: Debrief.  When your learner has made significant progress, it’s time for you to step back in to evaluate the process with them.  What worked?  What didn’t?  What did you do well?  What could have been done better?  This is your learner’s opportunity to reflect on the learning process they have been through and your opportunity to set the stage for the next phase of development.

Galileo once said, “You can’t teach a person anything.  You can only help them find it within themselves.”  In other words, everyone already has what they need to learn and develop already.  As a mentoring manager, it’s your job to bring it out.