A difficult question, isn’t it?
The answer is less obvious than it seems. After all, we keep promoting people who do not know how to communicate.
And here is the bad news: without action, that skill does not improve over time.
Research from Stanford, MIT and Forbes points to a consistent finding: most leaders believe they communicate much better than their teams think they do. The more senior the position, the wider the gap between intention and perception.
MIT Sloan found that even top leaders struggle to ensure strategy is understood throughout an organization. Stanford GSB confirms that a lack of communication is a structural weakness among executives.
Research from Axios and People + Science also shows that only a fraction of employees feel truly aligned with, or heard by, leadership.
The cost of poor leadership communication
Communication failures carry a high cost. A Johns Hopkins Carey Business School study reviewing 50 years of research on leadership communication concluded that how leaders communicate directly affects their teams’ motivation, mood, ethical behavior and trust.
All of this influences how much people want to support the organization and give their best.
In other words, leaders often lose performance because of communication rather than a lack of technical expertise.
Why communication remains leadership’s biggest bottleneck
There is no shortage of communication training. It appears in practically every leadership development program. Even so, communication remains leadership’s Achilles’ heel.
Why? Because communication is a metaconcept.
It is a skill that overlaps with other concepts, chiefly leadership itself. In leadership development programs, for example, the leadership component often covers nonviolent communication, different feedback formats or sharing evidence in performance management.
All of this is essential. But it does not resolve the real problem: an inability to communicate an idea with clarity, purpose and impact, generating engagement and performance.
How to develop people managers’ communication
Developing leaders’ communication capacity requires self-awareness, technique and discipline. They need to learn to:
- Recognize the impact of their own voice on the team.
- Develop presence and earned authority, beyond authority imposed by a job title.
- Listen properly, asking the right questions to understand what the team means.
- Practice deep empathy, understanding each person’s story and adapting the message to the context.
- Be radically clear, eliminating ambiguity and noise.
- Above all, take communication seriously, using discipline and technique to plan everyday communications and critical moments.
Communication for people managers at Smart Academy
Smart is a strategic communications agency with 23 years of experience. Our program draws on neuroscience and journalistic methodologies such as the inverted pyramid and Smart Brevity. During the course, we use a Communication Survey developed from Columbia University research, which can be completed as a self-assessment or a 180-degree assessment.
The program is segmented by management level so that leaders and their direct reports do not attend the same group. Workshops last four to eight hours and include practical experiences, tools and tailored exercises.
Each session is adapted to the company’s reality and the specific communication challenges at each management level.
The final message
Communication for people management is more than a soft skill. It sustains engagement, trust and performance. Leading means turning words into direction and direction into results.
If your company still has leaders who speak without being heard, or listen without understanding, it is time to act.
Want to know how to address this challenge in your organization? Explore leadership communication or talk to us.
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