4 tips for better communication as a leader
To be a successful leader, you have to develop your communication skills. Communication doesn’t just involve you sharing your ideas to your team. It also involves dealing with emotions, listening to your team’s ideas and a lot of other factors. Here are some simple and effective tips that you can follow to develop your communication skills and perform your leadership role to perfection.
1: Having control over your emotions
As a leader, this is one of the most important tips that you have to follow for improving your communication skills. You should ensure that there is no ambiguity in the message that is conveyed to your team. You should be clear and crisp and should never let your emotions get the better of you while communicating. You should know your strengths and weakness fully well, and you should be filled with confidence when you speak to your team to help them stay motivated.
2: Having a good understanding of the target audience
Whom are you speaking to? This is an important question that you have to ask yourself before communicating. You may have to adopt different styles of communication for different groups. For example, a one-to-one meeting with your subordinate may require more listening than talking, and understanding him at a personal level. Knowing your target audience and communicating in the way that they like, is one of the key skills that a successful leader possesses.
3: Making sure that you and your audience are on the same page
Misunderstandings between a leader and his team are often because of misinterpreted communication. As a leader, you may be expected to assign tasks to your team frequently. When you do this, you must ensure that you give clear instructions to your team about how and by when a task should be completed. You should provide them all the support and guidance that they need to get the project completed on time. When there are any challenges, you should speak to them and motivate them enough so that they combat the challenges and come out successful. You should always be empathetic towards your team, which help you improve your interpersonal skills to a great extent.
4: Reading between the lines
When you communicate with your team, be sure to watch out for clues in your team that tell you that they are not interested. Yawning, drooped shoulders, not having eye contact with you, casual postures, not paying attention to the topic, etc. are some clues that will tell you that your employee is not interested to hear what you have to say. You have to take them apart (that’s to pick apart their reasons for not being interested, not give them a good trashing!) and understand from them if they have any challenges that are bothering them. You should talk to them to understand the reason for their discomfort.
Similarly, when you talk to your team, you should remember that people look at your style of communication as well. More often than not, it is not what you talk; it is the way you talk that makes a huge difference in them. So, though your speech is full of confidence, if they don’t see an iota of confidence in your body language, they will not be convinced. You need to work on the way you present your information to be sure that what you speak reaches the target audience in the same way that you intend.
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