{"id":7720,"date":"2025-10-24T15:28:27","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T15:28:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wearesmart.com.br\/?p=7720"},"modified":"2026-10-29T20:56:52","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T20:56:52","slug":"leadership-communication-skills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wearesmart.com.br\/en\/leadership-communication-skills\/","title":{"rendered":"Should people who cannot communicate be leaders?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Should people who cannot communicate be leaders?<\/h1>

By<\/span>Silse Martell<\/span><\/p>

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A difficult question, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>

The answer is less obvious than it seems. After all, we keep promoting people who do not know how to communicate.<\/p>

And here is the bad news: without action, that skill does not improve over time.<\/p>

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.<\/p>

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.<\/p>

Research from Axios and People + Science also shows that only a fraction of employees feel truly aligned with, or heard by, leadership.<\/p>

The cost of poor leadership communication<\/h2>

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\u2019 motivation, mood, ethical behavior and trust.<\/p>

All of this influences how much people want to support the organization and give their best.<\/p>

In other words, leaders often lose performance because of communication rather than a lack of technical expertise.<\/p>

Why communication remains leadership\u2019s biggest bottleneck<\/h2>

There is no shortage of communication training. It appears in practically every leadership development program. Even so, communication remains leadership\u2019s Achilles\u2019 heel.<\/p>

Why? Because communication is a metaconcept.<\/p>

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.<\/p>

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.<\/p>

How to develop people managers\u2019 communication<\/h2>

Developing leaders\u2019 communication capacity requires self-awareness, technique and discipline. They need to learn to:<\/p>