📣 The 3 great communication sins

leadership Jul 23, 2021

I think you'll agree: Effective communication is one of the pillars of successful leadership. Because it is through communication that we exert influence and convince others - both are foundations of good leadership.

If that's the case, then I keep asking myself why so much goes wrong in communication. Why is so much communication in organizations ineffective, if not directly counterproductive?

The consequences are tremendous: things are not implemented because of poor communication, misunderstandings arise and enormous reactive power is generated - through unnecessary queries and so on.

The topic is of course complex - and often it is worth working with a coach to improve communication in the long term.

Here are three big communication sins that you can start weeding out right away:
  1. Unclear goals. A quick hint: In the future, ignore any message (email, phone, in person, etc.) that doesn't make it clear to you within 5 seconds what the sender wants from you. You can probably forget 95 percent of all messages by doing this. What I'm saying is this: in your own communications, make sure that recipients can immediately understand what your intent is in sending the message, giving the presentation, etc.
  2. Boredom. It's an old adage: only emotions move us to action. Therefore: effective communication always has strong emotional messages, delivered in an emotionally credible way. Boring presentations and messages dramatically reduce effectiveness. We know this from studies, and you know this from your own experience: just ask yourself which types of communication have stuck with you the most in the past: the humorous video or the boring PowerPoint with 37 bullet points? Then you'll have your own proof.
  3. No Call to Action. Effective communication always includes a clear call to action: what exactly do I expect the recipient to do? If this is not explicitly stated, no action usually follows. Attention: The assumption that it is "already clear" what has to be done often completely misses the point.

If you avoid these three sins in the future, your effectiveness in leadership will increase dramatically. Unfortunately, this is often not that easy to implement.

👉 Therefore: If you are serious about this issue and want to improve yourself and your team, contact me with the keyword "communication" and we'll take a look at it together.

 

 

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