Less Chatter, More Matter: The Communications Podcast

#135 5 communication skills every leader needs to master

• Season 1 • Episode 135

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Stepping into leadership doesn’t magically equip someone with the ability to communicate well. Yet, so many organisations still assume it does. In fact, research shows that 82% of new leaders receive no formal training, which means many simply copy the habits of their past managers. 

The result? Poor communication that trickles down and impacts whole teams.

Which is why this episode of the Less Chatter, More Matter podcast explores the five core communication skills that every new leader needs to master. From listening with intent and translating strategy into something meaningful, to adapting communication styles, navigating difficult conversations and telling stories that inspire, these are the skills that build trust, motivate people and create clarity. 

If you’re new to leadership yourself or supporting others in their journey, you’ll walk away with practical ways to strengthen communication and avoid the common pitfalls. So get listening!

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In every organisation I've ever worked with, I've seen the same situation play out. People are promoted to leadership roles and then just expected to know what to do. It's like the expectation is that with the title comes automatic knowledge and skills and experience. In fact, a 2023 study of 4,500 people in the UK found that a staggering 82% of new leaders did not receive any formal training. That same study found that managers who did receive formal training were also more likely to call out poor behaviors or report concerns compared with leaders who received no formal training. But the flip side is that a 2018 study found that because new leaders aren't given any training or any formal mentoring, they tend to mimic the behaviors of their previous leaders, which obviously has its own risks. The problem is that all this does is set a new leader up to fail, and it has flow on impacts to the people they lead. Now, I'm not saying this to disparage new leaders, you don't know what you don't know. But it does explain why we see poor leadership in so many organisations and poor leadership communication. So in the absence of hours of leadership, communication, training, I'm going to share five skills leaders need to focus on to make sure they're doing the right things by their people and by their company. What are they? Stick around to find out. Hello friend, and welcome back to another episode of Less Chatter, More Matter, the communications podcast. I'm your host, Mel Loy, and I'm recording this episode on the lands of the Yuggera and Turrbal people here in Meanjin, also known as Brisbane. And apologies for my voice today. I have been a bit unwell, but I am determined and committed to producing this podcast episode every week. So here we are. And today I'm going to touch on a hot topic, leadership communication. And why? Well, because there seems to be ongoing challenges in this space everywhere I look. Now, this isn't the first time I've spoken about this topic. If you go back to episode 119, I shared five tips from improving leadership comms. But you'll find they are very much practical, actionable steps, those

five were:

ask your team what they want and need from your communication. Number two was set a rhythm because people like predictable patterns. Number three was say more with less. So keep your comms short and to the point, but not at the expense of tone or authenticity. Number four was find out the answers. That's part of your job as a leader. And number five was to be authentic. Now, in today's episode, we're going to lift things a little higher, and I'm going to share some of the core skills. New leaders in particular should focus on building. So let's get into it. Skill number one, listening. You might recall my conversation with Howard Krais a few weeks ago where we delved into what he calls the listening organisation and how leaders really need to develop that skill. But what does that actually look like for a leader in the context of communication? Well, there's a few things. Firstly, especially for a first time leader, there can be a real temptation to jump straight into action, into changing things but you might also expect your team to come along with you with no questions asked. The reality is that is very unlikely to happen. You have to build trust and rapport with your team first. If they don't trust you, they will not follow you. And part of building trust and making sure that the action you take will actually be effective is really listening to your new team. So in the first few weeks of your job. All you should be focused on is listening to as many people as possible. That means setting up one-on-one conversations with every team member and your key business stakeholders, and ask questions like, what's working well here? What's not working well and why? What would you change and why? What opportunities do you see for our team? Then you get that really broad perspective instead of just your own, and you also get to know your new team and your new stakeholders better and start to build relationships. Importantly, this has to be genuine listening. So a few tips here to show that you're not just hearing them, you're actually listening to them. Number one, after they've said something or responded to a question, paraphrase it back before you ask another question. So for example, maybe someone has just given you a rant about how bad a process is. Paraphrase back with a sentence that starts like this. So it sounds like that process is something we should fix and quickly, is that right? How could we do that? So again, this is about making sure that they feel heard, but also starting to get them involved in the process. Uh, tip number two here, don't jump into solution mode. This is just about listening. Remember. So ask follow-up questions, get more information, check that you've accurately heard them, and show that you listened. And the third tip here is consider your body language in this as well. When you're fidgeting or looking away from people... Or having a defensive posture that all sends messages that you don't actually care what people have to say. So do this listening, and then make sure you report back to everybody around the key themes that you found, you know, and start to get them involved in creating solutions. One more thing on listening. Keep it up. It is a practice that you need to keep doing even after your first few weeks of your listening tour. And actions are starting to form. You need to regularly listen to keep improving and make sure actions are on the right track. Listening is a forever job. Skill Number two, and this is another core skill that leaders need to master, is the skill of translation. I'm not talking about different languages, although in some cases that might be useful. What I'm talking about is the ability to translate strategy, messages, and complex ideas for your team. Now, let's start with strategy. This is typically set at the top right by the C-suite and then filtered down through the organisation. And you might even be given some handy tools to use to communicate the strategy with your team, like key messages, speaking points, FAQs, email or PowerPoint templates, et cetera, et cetera. And that's all well and good. But that stuff is typically going to be pretty high level, quite vague, and honestly, probably not a lot of it's going to be useful. And I say that as someone who used to create those things. I'm a reformed sinner, I swear. So your job as a leader is to work with your leader and your team and others in the business. To work out well, what does this strategy actually mean for your team? In tangible terms, what will change for them? What will stay the same? And if you don't know, you need to find out. Work through that with your team as well. Ask them what they think it means for them that gives them a little more skin in the game. Basically, it's about taking those broad organisational strategic goals and using them to shape the goals for your team members. Now, sometimes, especially during change, you might be given messages to share with your team about what's happening. And again, your role here is not to spout those messages word for word verbatim. It's to get granular and work out exactly what this change means for your team. Now, it could be a really simple change of process or new tech, or it could be something much bigger, like a complete restructure or change in responsibilities. Whatever it is, people love certainty and without it you get a lot of fear. So your job is to translate the change to bring certainty to your people. The other part of translation as a skill is complex ideas. So sometimes these could be part of the strategy. Sometimes they're delivered by a senior leader or they're part of a change program of work. Something might be considered complex because there's a lot of different parts to it, or it's being shared with you in very technical terms, or it uses a lot of jargon or it's completely new concept or idea That's very unfamiliar. And again, your job is to take that complexity, translate it, make it simple for your team to understand. So once more, you may need to work with whoever is responsible for that program of work or that idea to help you break it down, make it tangible, make it clear for your team. So that's skill number two, translation. Skill number three is adapting. Now, as a leader, you should pretty quickly pick up on how your individual team members prefer to consume information and prefer to share their own information. If you're not sure, we will pop a link in the show notes to a quiz that you can do with your teams to understand each other's. Uh, communication personality types. If you've done my workshops before or read my books, you'll know that we've developed our own audience centered framework for understanding communication preferences. Now, I'll do a quick refresher now, or if it's new to you, that's great too. Keep listening. So there's three pieces to this pie. The first piece is context and experiences. So for example, are your people very overwhelmed right now? Do they feel like they've got a psychologically safe space? Have they experienced a lot of poor change or poor leadership in the past, et cetera? What is their role? Are they out on the road all day? Are they working from home a lot? Whatever that might be. This is about understanding how people's context and experiences can influence their perception of your communication. The second piece to the pie is diversity, inclusion, and accessibility. So think about your team and what they might need to consume information more effectively. For example, if you know you have someone with dyslexia on your team who struggles to read things quickly, you might offer a verbal briefing or a screen reading tool. This piece of the pie also includes different languages and how different cultural nuances play into communication. Think also about the language you use when it comes to people's personal characteristics. And the third piece is what we call the communication personality type. So this is made up of three key pairings. One is, is your team member more of a strategic or a detailed thinker? Are they more of an introvert or an extrovert? And are they more of an auditory or visual learner? Knowing their preferences can help you shape the communication for their individual needs. Now, outside of doing a quiz, how can you find out what they prefer? Well, there's two ways. Number one, and most importantly, ask them. They'll probably tell you. And number two, observe them. So for example, if they're sitting there staring at you, looking confused while you're talking away, but they start to look interested when you sketch a diagram on a piece of paper, there's a good chance they're more of a visual learner. If they don't ask a question in a meeting but come to you later with questions, there's a good chance they're an introverted personality and so on. So that's tip number three, adapting skill number four, it's a big one. Challenging conversations. Now, challenging conversations can work both ways. It might be you having to give critical performance feedback, or it could be your team coming to you with feedback about your performance, how you conduct these conversations and respond. It's critical to ensuring the team remains engaged and that you continue to continuously improve together. Now, having challenging conversations is a whole topic in itself, so I will not wax lyrical here, but here's a few tips when you need to give feedback to a person who may have made a mistake or maybe they need a bit of a performance boost. The first tip is talk about the expectations of the role. Not the person and be specific. So for example, instead of saying something like, "Joe, what you did there was really terrible work," you'd say, "Joe, what we expect of this role is really high attention to detail. When I saw what you produced, I realised it was not meeting that expectation." Uh, the second tip is if a person comes to you with a grievance about their work, another person, et cetera, avoid jumping to blame or conclusions or even jumping into that solution mode. Instead, acknowledge their feelings and if it's appropriate, the courage in coming forward. And then ask them about their intentions in sharing that information with you. So for example, you might say,"thank you for sharing that. I know that must have been difficult, and it sounds like you've been having a really hard time. What would you like me to do with the information you've shared?" The reason why we ask that is that it provides clarity on potential actions, but also sometimes people just want to feel heard and have a rant, and that is enough for them. And the third tip with having these conversations is to co-create the actions. If you keep stepping in and providing solutions and taking all the action yourself, you are helping nobody. The other person could slip into that state of learned helplessness, where they never tried to fix anything themselves, and it also means they feel no sense of ownership over the action. So there's a good chance that they won't happen, and then you will end up doubling your workload. So instead ask the other person for ideas on how to fix something. And tip number five is storytelling. Now, this is a skill that might feel outside of your comfort zone as a new leader, but stop for a second and think about all the stories you already tell and listen to every day, the little stories that you share in the kitchen, at work, in meetings, after meetings, at home, at the end of the day, et cetera. You are already a storyteller. The trick is to learn how to be more intentional about the stories you tell in the right moments. And the reason this is listed as a top five skill is because, number one, people's brains are wired for stories, not bullet points. If you want something to cut through that noise and be remembered, then you need to tell a story. Number two is because stories demonstrate the message in action, they make it much more real and tangible for people. And three, because stories build rapport and connect people with each other, especially if they can relate to the story you are telling or see themselves in it in some way. Now this skill of storytelling is closely linked to skill number two we mentioned, which was translating. You can use stories to help make the complex simple, or help make big ideas and strategies really meaningful for your team members. But you can also use stories to engage and motivate and inspire your team. So for example, using a story of a team member who went above and beyond for a colleague or customer, and with a fantastic result. Great story. Or sharing a previous experience that you had that showed how with a bit of determination, anything is possible. Storytelling amongst a team can also help them better understand each other and therefore better communicate with each other when we understand each other better. It helps to grow emotional intelligence. So you could offer space in your team meetings, for example, for a team member to share a story about an experience that might have shaped who they are or where they had a wonderful time at work, et cetera. There's also plenty of resources out there about storytelling, so go check it out. Okay folks, we're at the end of the episode, so it is time for your episode recap, and today I shared five core skills. New leaders should prioritise building now. You will not master them immediately. Please keep that in mind. We are always continuously learning and improving. But you do need to at least start developing and using these skills today. Skill number one, listening, authentic, genuine listening, especially in the first couple of weeks in your new leadership role, can help build relationships and help inform your action plan for change. Skill number two is translating. So this is about making the strategy, the change or complex idea meaningful to your team with tangible outcomes. Skill number three, adapting. As a leader, you should quickly learn how your individual team members prefer to consume and share information and adapt your message style to their preferred style. There is no one size fits all approach. Skill number four, having challenging conversations. Learn how to give and receive feedback in a way that is helpful and with a touch of grace. And skill number five, tell stories. Use storytelling to help people understand a message, but also to build relationships and inspire and motivate your team members. Alright, team, that's all we have time for today. Thanks for tuning into another episode of the podcast. And as always, if you have ideas for topics you would like me to cover or guests that you think I should try and get on the show, please reach out. I'm more than happy to hear your ideas. In the meantime, keep doing amazing things and bye for now.